Liberal teaching means putting everything I know, and everything I am, at risk in the classroom. And not just in general, but specifically as well. That is, I put it all on the line during every meeting of every class. I’ve been wrong often enough to know it could happen again, and I’m willing to admit my errors in the pursuit of truth.

How courageous is this approach? Remember how it turned out for Socrates.

Pursuing a liberal approach to teaching is dangerous. It requires courage, a thick skin, and recognition that the personal costs of pursuing liberalism in the classroom are far exceeded by the opportunity costs of failing to do so. Indeed, I would argue that the pursuit of a liberal approach to any of life’s important activities is dangerous.

I am often criticized for continuing my educational efforts here at Barefoot College. During the last couple years, I have hosted more than 200 people, showing how we might muddle through an ambiguous future if we work together. In return, many people question whether I should be demonstrating this doomstead to potential future marauders. Most of these people are anthropocentric, short-sighted, narcissistic cowards commenting anonymously on fora focused on economic collapse.

Image courtesy of Lesley Ash

When I point out I’m anti-civ, these and other people take issue with the language: “It’s better to be for something than against something, so your message should be pro, not anti.” I point out anti-civ means pro-life, but the latter label has been co-opted by a group with which I fundamentally disagree.

And so it goes, spiraling down into the uncomfortable abyss of talking past one another. We are so adept at finding an other with whom to part ways.

And I am not surprised many people fail to understand that we’re all in this together. Our culture has driven us apart, valuing competition over cooperation. I am not surprised many people fail to understand that, as the expression goes, divided we fall. And so we are. Our culture has promoted faux individualism instead of real collaboration. It’s all about me and my stuff, me and my success, me and my ego in this hyper-indulgent morass of American exceptionalism. It’s small wonder, then, that many people fail to understand the importance, to me, of educating others. It’s everything to me, more important than life itself.

I am profoundly committed to a life of service. For me, a life lived otherwise is not worth living.

As any real radical reformer knows, some things are worth dying for. Service to community and lifelong learning certainly fill the bill.

Mind you, I’m not acting heroically. I’ve built a lifeboat, after all, that might allow my survival for a few years beyond completion of the ongoing economic collapse. I’m not dependent on western medicine to maintain my life. In addition, absence of free will precludes an alternative route.

If you’re looking for heroes, look no further than Derrick Jensen. His level of commitment extends beyond his own life. He depends in the short term on the industrial economy, a system that is killing him in the long term. Yet he is willing to sacrifice the ability to extend his life to give the living planet a chance. Somebody who comments now and then in this space, demonstrating he is halfway along the path toward becoming an idiot savant, used Jensen’s example in a botched attempt to argue the contrary point. Jensen’s writing and speaking are heroic because he argues for termination of the industrial economy, knowing it will lead quickly to his own death.

I recognize that it’s too late to save society, and industrialized society is irredeemable, regardless. Capitalism is assumed to be the best, most efficient economic system, but I think it’s better described as a pathology than an economic system. So I’ll keep moving seemingly immovable individuals beyond their comfort points. I’ll inject empathy, therefore resistance, into a sociopathic culture largely devoid of people willing to stand in opposition to the mainstream. I’ll move individuals beyond dark thoughts and into the light of a new world. I’ll move them beyond inaction. I’ll move them beyond the oppression of civilization and into the brave new world of a life that gives as well as taking.

Or die trying.

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents.

At some point, we simply lost track of the importance of communities, human and otherwise. Along the way to becoming a nation of multitasking, Twittering, Facebook “friends” we abandoned the ability to connect meaningfully, viscerally, individually. If we are to thrive during the post-carbon era, we’ll need to create groups of straight-talking, look-’em-in-the-eye, mean-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean, self-reliant, individuals who are not afraid to ask for help from the neighbors and who, when asked, readily offer assistance.

I know you hate those stories that start with, “When I was a kid, ….” But here goes, regardless. I grew up in a tiny, backwoods, red-neck logging town. By the time I was 18 years old, I’d seen more bar fights than first-run movies. I knew that when a man was driving home after getting whipped in a bar fight, and the man who beat him up drove drunkenly into a ditch on the way home, the guy who got pummeled had no choice but to stop and give a hand to the guy who whipped him. If the whippee didn’t stop to help, and anybody in town found out, he’d be better off driving to the next state than hanging around. Helping neighbors in need was not optional. The benighted community of my youth was a worthless pile of crap. But to me and my neighbors, it was our worthless pile of crap, and an outsider who threatened people in our town would have been better off bobbing for apples in a bucket of piranhas. The people who lived in that town, like the ones who still live there, are shoulder-to-the-wheel, down-to-earth folks who care about their community.

For a diametrically opposed perspective, see contemporary suburbia. Our self-proclaimed independence is a bad joke made possible only by cheap energy. As we leave cheap energy in our wake, it becomes increasingly clear the joke’s on us.

As Dmitry Orlov points out with his usual brilliant wit, communities arise organically. Despite the multi-million dollar efforts of countless scientists at Biosphere II, for example, the resulting collection of communities is a pale and pathetic imitation of the naturally occurring ecosystems they are designed to replicate. As with ecological communities, we know little about human communities and what makes them “work.” Nonetheless, we fill tomes about both kinds of communities. Along the way, a few people, including the always-thoughtful Dan Allen, think before they write. How refreshing is that?

Were I still a self-respecting, objective scientist reluctant to express an opinion or make a forecast, I’d stop with those two endorsements wrapped around a nod to ignorance. Actually, I would proceed to write a grant proposal explaining how I would overcome our collective ignorance for a few hundred grand and 50% overhead. Instead of taking either rational route, it’s onward, through the fog.

Although communities are self-organizing, we are able to nurture them and therefore influence species composition. We can plant trees and pull weeds. We can add water and compost. In fact, we do all these things, and we call the result a garden. As I’ve pointed out in prior posts, scale matters: I’m a huge fan of gardens, for reasons that run from healthy food to healthy psyches, but I detest farms. The former characterize Eden, the latter civilization.

As with ecological communities, I think we can and should nurture our human communities, recognizing and encouraging positive elements and weeding out negative ones. We may not be capable of building communities, but we can work with the ones we’ve got to the betterment of individuals who contribute to the common good. And, as with ecological communities, our ability to nurture human communities will vary. Every community is unique, and will require a unique set of approaches.

Too corny? Maybe. But I’m in the fine company of Plato, Aristotle, and Dan Allen, so I’ll run with it.

As I’ve indicated previously, as recently as my latest post, location is everything. Try nurturing community in the suburban wasteland filling most American cities, and you’ll run smack into the horrifically omnivorous maw of culture. If the most visible portion of every house is the garage, good luck organizing the neighbors into building community gardens fed by harvested rainwater and humanure. If it works in the short run, be sure to keep tabs on all the unprepared, self-indulgent free riders you’ll need to feed and water in the longer run.

I was, and am, quite concerned about my late arrival to the region surrounding the mud hut. As I’ve indicated before, I am quite fortunate to have found a like-minded couple of people who were willing to share their property. Financially, my wife and I could not have pulled this off ourselves. In addition, it would have been unwise from an interpersonal perspective. But our partners have lived in this area for nearly a decade, and they’ve worked hard during that time to develop strong relations with the neighbors. At some level, we’re the free riders I warned about in the previous paragraph. At another level, though, we came to the community with a strong endorsement and a built-in set of human ties.

Thus, my first recommendation: Community starts at home. If you can find somebody who is willing to take you in, I propose pooling resources. Given the increasing poverty in a nation addicted to the stock markets, this counter-cultural notion — which goes against the American cultural ideal of “independence” — is starting to make a lot of sense. I suspect we’ll see a lot more collaboration and a lot less ego-laden, look-at-me-and-my-mansion competition in the years ahead.

After establishing a home-based beachhead, the remainder involves common sense and little else. This ain’t rocket surgery, after all. Make yourself valuable by finding a niche. Provide a service, or set of services, integral to the daily lives of your neighbors. What do they do?

They drink water. So find a way to extract, purify, and deliver water when municipal power is no longer available.

They eat. So find a way to produce healthy food at a smaller scale than the big-box grocery store. Grow chickens, ducks, and goats. Make yogurt, butter, and cheese. And then develop a means of preparing the food without fossil fuels. Think drying racks, sun ovens, and firewood.

They wear clothes. So stock up on needles and strong thread, and sell your skills as a tailor, or even a mender.

They sleep. Make ’em blankets. Or, if you have the requisite skills, beds and other furniture.

Can you care for animals, including human animals? They have tender psyches and bodies that were not designed for the rigors to which they’re about to be subjected. They need therapy, just like the rest of us, and they’ll soon need a lot more. Can you provide it, at a finer scale than the current model, and for barter? Are you a medical herbalist? Can you become one?

They need respite from the drudgery of labor. Already, everything is amazing and nobody is happy. Imagine what our lives will be like when we can’t take our annual summer driving vacation, much less the once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe or the Caribbean. Can you spin a yarn or play a tune? I recommend traveling minstrel as an occupation about to make a serious comeback.

They want educated people, and some of them want educated children. If you can write a coherent paragraph and perform long division, you’ll be in constant demand in a world without hand calculators. If you can teach children to perform these miracles, get set to launch your career as a post-carbon teacher.

They have sex. Never mind the world’s oldest profession: The potential for midwives and childcare should be obvious.

I could go on, but the point should be clear by now. As we leave the Age of Entitlement and transition into the Age of Consequences, everybody will need to make a contribution to their community. Those who are unwilling or unable to make a contribution will not be welcome. If you value living in a particular place, think about tight-knit Stone Age communities or contemporary Amish communities. The worst possible fate for an individual is to be shunned, because that means you’ll need to find your own way in a large, unknown world.

So, what about me, and my adopted community? What specific steps have I taken, along with my partners at this property?

We barter, and we’re ratcheting up the barter at every opportunity. These efforts are welcome in a valley filled with self-reliant, life-loving economic doomers. We provide plenty of eggs (chicken and duck) and milk, and in return we have received various kinds of food (fruits, vegetables, and the most wondrous imaginable bread), heirloom seeds and bulbs, a large iron triangle for announcing dinner is ready at the outdoor kitchen, a full clean-and-trim job on our goats’ hooves, and other goods and services too numerous to list (and, in my case, too varied and numerous to remember).

On the personal front, I am working hard to befriend members of my community. I’ve joined an effort to reintroduce river otters into the nearby river, and worked shoulder-to-shoulder on constructing government-mandated otter pods for their release (the pods are large boxes built from plywood and construction lumber). I join a gang of locals at the nearest café for coffee every Tuesday morning (and I don’t drink coffee). I substitute teach at the local K-12 school (“today we’re learning about entropy”). I partake of potlucks and dance parties, as well as more formal annual events such as craft fairs. I’m extremely introverted, so each of these social gatherings is painful. As Nietzsche pointed out, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Perhaps it’ll make my community stronger, too.

In the not-so-distant future, we intend to provide a much broader array of services to our community. We can extract water from the ground via solar pump and hand pump. In addition to the daily overload of eggs and milk, we’re making and aging plenty of hard cheeses. We’ve stored some luxurious food and drink that will age well (and I don’t even drink alcohol). We can grind grains. We have the capacity to cook food via sun oven, Earth oven (orno), and wood-fired cook stove. We have solar-powered electricity and an assortment of power tools to aid with minor construction projects. This entire infrastructure is designed not merely for our survival, but also for the survival of others in our community. We thrive when our community thrives. We suffer when our community suffers.

I’m certain I’m missing many things. But any number can play, so please help me out. What can we stock for barter? What’s small, inexpensive, and easy to store, yet useful? What other skills should we learn in anticipation of a contracting economy and therefore an enlarging world? What other services can we provide, within the constraints of a small piece of land and little remaining money?

And what about you? How are you preparing for a life of service in the Age of Consequences?

__________________

This essay is permalinked at Island Breath, Sustainable Tucson, and Energy Bulletin (with photos and minor editing).

I’ll start with definitions, straight from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Resource: 1 a: a source of supply or support : an available means –usually used in plural b: a natural source of wealth or revenue –often used in plural :c: a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of human life d: computable wealth –usually used in plural e: a source of information or expertise.
All these definitions imply an anthropogenic basis for resources, and c is particularly transparent on this point. Digging a little further, the etymology of “resource” brings us directly to lifelong bedfellows anthropocentrism and Christianity. “Resource” is derived from the Old French “resourdre” (literally, to rise again), which has its roots in the Latin “resurgere” (to rise from the dead; also see “resurrection”).
From this etymology, it’s a simple step back in time to Aristotle’s “final cause” (which followed his material cause, efficient cause, and formal cause). Aristotle posited that, ultimately, events occurred to serve life, particularly the life of humans. This anthropocentric take on causality grew directly from the philosophy of Aristotle’s teacher Plato, who focused his philosophy on separating humans from nature while popularizing the feel-good notion that humans have immortal souls. The idea that humans have souls, which was subsequently discredited by the (western) science that grew from humble Grecian roots, became the basis for Christianity, one of three Abrahamic religions that developed in the Mediterranean a few centuries after Plato learned from Socrates and then taught Aristotle.
Considering the history of western thought, it’s no surprise we view every element on Earth as feedstock for industrialization. The only question is when we exploit Earth’s bounty, not if. The logical progression, then, is to exploitation of humans to further feed the industrial machine.
Within the last few years, personnel departments at major institutions became departments of human resources. Thus, whereas these departments formerly dealt with persons, they now deal with resources. There’s a reason you feel like a cog in a grand imperial scheme: Not only are you are viewed as a cog by the machine, and also by those who run the machine, but any non-cog-like behavior on your part leads to rejection of you and your actions. Seems you’re either a tool of empire or you’re a saboteur (i.e., terrorist).
It’s time to invest in wooden shoes.
As if fifteen people are even willing to poke a stick in the eye of the corporations that run and ruin our lives. Why is that? Probably because we think we depend upon them, when in fact they depend upon us. And, to a certain extent — to the extent we allow — we do depend upon industrial culture for our lives. But only in the short term, and only as self-absorbed, comfortable individuals unwilling to make changes in our lives (even ones that are necessary to our own survival). Taking the longer, broader view, it is evident industrial culture is killing the living planet, and our own species. The cultural problem we face is not that we’re fish out of water. Rather, it’s that we’re fish in a river. We don’t even know there’s an ocean, much less a landbase.
Aye, there’s the rub. Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
___________________
This post is permalined at Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, mostly water, and Eco Friendly Mag.

It’s a good thing I love highly individualized projects, because my department head banned me from teaching in my own department when she arrived two years ago. One of her very first actions was to prevent me from teaching a class I created and then taught for ten years. Apparently students were learning all the wrong things. Instead of focusing narrowly on production of livestock and other amenities critical to human well-being, thereby training students for jobs, I was educating them to lead lives of excellence. As you can imagine, the university administration put a stop to that nonsense.
If you’re keeping score, training is for dogs. Education is for scholars.
Then, of course, there is my scholarship, which has been reviled by my college dean and university president for years. My open letter to the president, which appeared nearly a decade ago in the morning daily because he wouldn’t respond to my individual requests, got his attention and helped save the final, tiny patch of desert in the center of campus from red pavers and fountains (the fountains, which were installed nearby, were turned off earlier this year as a cost-cutting measure). The situation has since eroded, while spreading well beyond the university president. I just kept asking the hard, but obvious, questions and, in exchange, I kept getting kicked in the head. Consider this exemplary exchange, in which I pointed out the dire state of our energy situation (albeit before it became apparent to the masses), to which the dean responded with “he’s not one of us,” and I forced him to admit his error (in return, I let him keep his job and I let the university keep money in their litigation coffers).
And finally, there’s my embarrassing outreach. Imperialists would rather ignore important issues than address them in a constructive manner. And there’s no denying the imperialism of typical administrators at any Research I university. Or, for that matter, the honesty and integrity of the typical inmate relative to the typical administrator. Why, the administrators plead, would I bother to work with criminals when I could be doing important work, such as justifying livestock on public lands and otherwise promoting imperial ambitions? Never mind that, last year, the United States became the first country in history to incarcerate more than one percent of its adult population. And it’s working so well, wouldn’t you say? By nearly every measure, we’re spending more and getting less from our “justice” system than any other country (well, okay, we’re not getting less violent crime … but less of the good stuff, if not less of the bad).
Teaching? I’m doing the best work of my life. Scholarship? Likewise. Outreach? Ditto. Obviously, it’s time for me to move along.
I never thought I’d give in. I thought I’d be holding administrative feet to the proverbial fire, forcing deans, department heads, and presidents to do right until the whole thing fell down. Illegitimi non carborundum: It’s been my rallying cry for 15 years, since one of my beloved graduate students explained the phrase to me.
Alas, the bastards wore me down. And, finally, out. My last day on the taxpayer dime will be 1 May 2009, twenty years to the day after I was hired. Fittingly, 1 May is a day of celebration for labor and laborers throughout the world. My department accepted my resignation with considerable glee, and the university granted me emeritus status so I can keep working for free. Stunningly, they didn’t offer a gold watch.
Perhaps I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face. But, as my brother points out on his blog, that’ll make it easy for me to stick my head up my butt. And I can assure you I’m terrified. As I abandon the ship of empire for my lifeboat, it’s difficult to see anything but choppy seas between here and the distant horizon.
In an apt twist of fate, the Dow Jones Industrial Average started its current four-week rally the day I gave notice. That’s the power of one: I’m saving the industrial economy all by myself.
Next up: organic gardening at the mud hut, sans money. We’re all headed there soon enough.
Same-day update:
I’ve selected my post-carbon theme song, which was submitted by one of the students with whom I’m fortunate to work. It’s Peter Gabriel’s Down to Earth, and you can listen to it here.
In the spirit of engaging collapse and the people experiencing it, I’ll be blogging from the mud hut until the power goes out.

Reason arose in Greece about 25 centuries ago, and is perhaps best known from Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. Plato (ca. 428-348 BC) uses the conversations of Socrates to pose and explore questions in considerable detail. Although many of the issues and associated conversations seem unsophisticated to contemporary readers, these initial attempts to employ logic to study the natural world and the role of humans in the world are remarkable precisely because they were the unprecedented. The contributions of ancient Greece to the material worldview that characterizes modernity cannot be overstated; that so many of the contributions came from Athens, a city that never exceeded 250,000 residents, is simply astonishing.
Although the ancient Greeks laid the foundation for modernity, few bricks were added to the structure for nearly two millennia. During the early seventeenth century, the empiricist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the deconstructionist René Descartes (1596-1650) ushered in the Enlightenment, thereby triggering a flurry of construction to the edifice of knowledge. Almost overnight it became clear that the world was a material one that could be observed and quantified by all who dared think and observe. Nature obeyed rules and humans were big-brained animals capable of discovering and describing those rules.
Thus, the Enlightenment eroded the role of authority as a source of knowledge. In the wake of Giordano Bruno’s heinous execution by the Catholic Church, Bacon recanted earlier statements in which he denied the Ptolemaic view that Earth was the center of the universe. But the erosion of authority that began as a trickle quickly became a flood, and the Church was increasingly marginalized as a source of knowledge.
David Hume (1711-1776), in his initial written piece of philosophy, presented a compelling case against miracles, hence against religion: “Of Miracles” was published in 1748 as an essay in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understandings. This essay should be required reading for anybody interested in understanding reason and religion. Considering the ludicrous religious statements coming every recent U.S. President and every recent presidential candidate, it should be required reading for them, too.
Shortly before Charles Darwin formalized the theory of evolution by natural selection in the Origin of Species (1859), Schopenhauer (1788-1860) used Plato-like dialog to question the basis of religion in his well-known essay, “Religion: A Dialogue.” Can you imagine such a nuanced and reasonable debate between candidates for political office in our burgeoning theocracy?
Notably influenced by Schopenhauer and writing shortly after publication of Darwin’s dangerous idea, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) vociferously spread the word about God’s death (probably unaware that Max Stirner had declared the death of God shortly after Nietzsche’s birth in his 1845 book, The Ego and Its Own). Nietzsche predicted Reason would overwhelm worldviews based on mysticism, a prediction that turned out to be hopelessly optimistic. As S. Jonathan Singer concludes in his 2001 book, The Splendid Feast of Reason, it appears unlikely that more than ten percent of people are capable of employing reason as a basis for how they live. Singer likely did not know he was echoing Schopenhauer, although Schopenhauer’s use of dialog in his essay clearly indicates he knew he was echoing Plato in reaching the same conclusion. In any event, the absence of reason on the campaign trail represents a distinct and disturbing departure from reality, though it closely matches the ten percent figure given by Plato and Singer. Are the candidates pandering to the public, hence satisfying our obvious desire to be lied to? Or do they really lack the ability to discern fantasy from reality?
Which is worse?
Nietzsche expressed his views on Christianity early and often in his writings, most popularly with Thus Spoke Zarathustra; I recommend that classic book and, for the condensed version of Nietzsche’s view, The Antichrist (the latter, which probably should have been titled The Anti-Christian, represents Nietzsche’s views on God particularly clearly and vehemently, and if you’re short on time, I recommend sections 1-9, 29-39, and 47-49). The Antichrist was intended to be shockingly blasphemous, but it cogently makes many important points and articulates them vividly. The Antichrist is an excellent and strident follow-up to Schopenhauer’s thoughtful essay.
To further muddy Nietzsche’s clarity, be sure to read the 1953 essay published in Look magazine by Bertrand Russell (1903-1959):”What is an agnostic?” Russell was the world’s last philosopher of significance, and his views superbly reflect reality. The birth of postmodernism often is traced to 1960, the year after Russell’s death. I don’t think it’s causal.
Collectively, these four essays illustrate the capacity for, and importance of, Reason. Reason is the basis for understanding the material world. As such, it serves as the foundation upon which we can understand and practice conservation of species and cultures. That is, we can conserve the last remaining shards of nature only through description and understanding rooted in reality. Or, of course, by bringing down the entire world’s industrial economy. The latter seems a lot more likely than application of reason to the issue.
Mysticism has proven an insufficient foundation for conserving nature. Ultimately, I suspect it will prove inadequate for saving humanity as well. Although we could blame the lying clowns who represent us, the politicians merely reflect the populace, and therefore contemporary zeitgeist. Like it or not, the politicians we elect are six flights below the lowest common denominator in large part because we cannot reason our way up the stairs.

History provides some excellent company. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are among my favorites. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those hopelessly optimistic writers and thinkers who don their rose-colored-glasses and conclude we can always find a way to advance civilization: Lester Brown, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and many, many others in positions of power.
Of course, power doesn’t come to those who deal in reality (e.g., Nietzsche, Schopenhauer). Not only does no good deed go unpunished, but no bad act is unrewarded. Consider this anecdote from renowned ecologist and AAAS Fellow Charles Hall, a professor at the State University of New York:
Hall has worked on ecological issues his entire career, and has been rewarded in the usual sense. He has received grant funds totaling millions of dollars and has published hundreds of papers. At the same time, he has spent his spare time working on energy issues, and has published more than 200 papers in this arena. But he has landed a total of $800 in grant funds to work on these issues, and he is perhaps the only person to be denied tenure from an Ivy-League university the very week one of his papers landed on the cover of Science (the paper was titled, Energy and the U.S. Economy: A Biophysical Perspective).
Obviously, Hall is not the only person who has been marginalized for his work on important issues. But his is a telling contemporary example of the type of infamy M. King Hubbert earned in his day, and a reminder how Cassandras (i.e., realists) are treated in any empire (at least as far back as Socrates).
Optimists, however foolish, earn external rewards. Realists are not so fortunate. On the other hand, realists get to deal in reality, and therefore face with honor the toughest judge: the mirror.
Yes, I’m a doomer. And damned proud of the company I keep, too.

One result of my abstemious existence, as we venture into the dark days ahead, is that I spend considerable time reflecting on my life goals and evaluating — constantly re-evaluating — what I live for. I have abandoned vigorous attempts to right the sinking ship of civilization, as well as half-hearted efforts to convince university administrators that my cause is just and therefore worthy. But my inability to adopt a completely hermetic life leaves me pathetically seeking solace from an indifferent universe, uninterested colleagues, and you, my online comrades.
Obviously, it didn’t start out this way.
As a carefree child in a tiny redneck logging town, smack in the heart of the Aryan nation of northern Idaho, I didn’t have a clue. According to the many email messages I’ve been receiving about my lack of belief in a single god, I still don’t. But that’s another issue. I spent the 1960s and 1970s in youthful ignorance, chasing athletic fame and the girls who came with it. In college, hormonal lust had me blowing off a decent education while I majored in basketball and women’s studies, even though Women’s Studies departments didn’t yet exist. I wasn’t particularly good at either subject, and immature adolescence eventually gave way to a responsible life in avid pursuit of the “American Dream” of financial security.
To paraphrase author and social critic Daniel Quinn, the problem was not that I thought too highly of myself, or that I thought too little of myself, but that I thought constantly of myself.
As I was working hundred-hour weeks in graduate school and beyond, I was socking away the money and serving the cultural machine of western Civil-Lie-Zation. I was simultaneously reading and failing to heed the words of Edward Abbey: All gold is fool’s gold.
Somehow, though, despite my best attempts to hide from reality, I discovered that relationships are far more important than accomplishments. Stunningly, that occurred even before I earned tenure. Not surprisingly, I learned it from my students.
I left the ivory tower to work for The Nature Conservancy, only to find more of the same. I came back and immediately taught Bill Calder’s Conservation Biology course in the wake of this friend’s death. It changed my life. It was the best course I’d ever taught because it was populated with students from more than 20 different majors, from creative writing to biology, none of whom was required to be there. During the autumn of 2001, we applied art and literature to the newly emerging enterprise of conservation biology in an attempt to bridge the two cultures of C.P. Snow (and Socrates before him, and E.O. Wilson after).
Needless to say, we failed.
Actually, we succeeded, in our own small way. Forty of us came together as a group, but society didn’t come along. We had our bubble, but reality kept sneaking in and thwarting our efforts. But I learned something important, albeit small and personal: I had to serve, in my own small way, as a teacher and social critic and companion and friend and mentor. I had to bridge the two cultures, as if that’s possible, and I had to show others how to do the same.
Along with this realization, I lost my anchor. Until I discovered myself, at the age of forty, I had believed science would save us. I had believed that rational thought was our savior. I had believed that, by abandoning fairy tales and magical thinking, we could find a secular way to enlightenment.
I failed to account for how badly scientists have lost their way. Science, as a process and a way of knowing, has unrivaled power. And you know what they say about power and corruption.
Science has not lost its way, but scientists have. They have been co-opted by objectivity, failing to recognize the impossibility of the task. They are unwilling to sacrifice their objectivity, which they do not and can not have, in exchange for doing the right thing. Like everybody else, they are unwilling to make sacrifices to serve the common good. Indeed, many of them believe they are serving the common good, although they most often are confusing the common good with common culture.
Science is no longer my anchor. But teaching is, at least for now. And trying to live, for now, as if my life matters, as if it has meaning beyond the meanings I assign it. But I’m a lot more cynical and a lot less enthusiastic than I used to be about my tiny role in this grand play.
I still struggle every day to find meaning in a universe without meaning. Who shall I serve? For now, I can serve students and society by teaching and acting as if a single life can make a difference in a world gone awry. For now, I can demonstrate the value and importance of relationships, relative to accomplishments. For now, I can be kind to individuals while forcing institutions to do right, even if it means being unkind to individuals who represent institutions. For now, I can serve people by criticizing society.
And I can find meaning everywhere, in small observations and small acts. I can find meaning, and mystery, in cliff swallows and butterflies, the kindness of strangers, and a child’s love.
But there’s no role for a social critic when civilization collapses. What then?
And there’s no role for a university professor when the university ceases to exist. What then?
It’s too late to meet the three goals I had for myself as a teenager: Live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse. I’m too slow, too old, and too late, respectively.
What now?

I’ve been spending a lot of time with believers lately. Their ability to suspend disbelief, to rely on faith instead of evidence, is damned impressive. And it extends well beyond the supernatural. Once you take Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith,” it’s a small step to believe in the Empire. Surely gawd won’t stop taking care of the chosen people of the United States.
Or will she?
Reason arose in Greece about 25 centuries ago, and is perhaps best known from Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. Plato (ca. 428-348 BC) uses the conversations of Socrates to pose and explore questions in considerable detail. Although many of the issues and associated conversations seem unsophisticated to contemporary readers, these initial attempts to employ logic to study the natural world and the role of humans in the world are remarkable precisely because they were the unprecedented. The contributions of ancient Greece to the material world view that characterizes modernity cannot be overstated; that so many of the contributions came from Athens, a city that never exceeded 250,000 residents, is simply astonishing.
Although the ancient Greeks laid the foundation for modernity, few bricks were added to the structure for nearly two millennia. During the early seventeenth century, the empiricist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the deconstructionist René Descartes (1596-1650) ushered in the Enlightenment, thereby triggering a flurry of construction to the edifice of knowledge. Almost overnight it became clear that the world was a material one that could be observed and quantified by all who dared think and observe. Nature obeyed rules and humans were big-brained animals capable of discovering and describing those rules.
Thus, the Enlightenment eroded the role of authority as a source of knowledge. In the wake of Giordano Bruno’s heinous execution by the Catholic Church, Bacon recanted earlier statements in which he denied the Ptolemaic view that Earth was the center of the universe. But the erosion of authority that began as a trickle quickly became a flood, and the Church was increasingly marginalized as a source of knowledge.
David Hume (1711-1776), in his initial written piece of philosophy, presented a compelling case against miracles, hence against religion: “Of Miracles” was published in 1748 as an essay in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understandings. (Hume became particularly well known for the idea that what “is” does not indicate what “ought” to be.) Shortly before Charles Darwin formalized the theory of evolution by natural selection in the Origin of Species (1859), Schopenhauer (1788-1860) used Plato-like dialogue to question the basis of religion (“Religion: A Dialogue”) and Max Stirner declared the death of God in his 1845 book, The Ego and Its Own. Notably influenced by Schopenhauer and writing shortly after publication of Darwin’s dangerous idea, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) vociferously spread the word about God’s death (probably without awareness of Stirner’s work) while predicting that Reason would overwhelm world views based on mysticism (while proclaiming science to be a lie; like all other humans, Hume and Nietzsche contained many contradictions). Nietzsche expressed his views on Christianity early and often in his writings, most popularly with Thus Spoke Zarathustra; I prefer The Antichrist because it represents Nietzsche’s views on God particularly clearly and vehemently. This work was intended to be shockingly blasphemous, and it has significant errors. Nonetheless, The Antichrist cogently makes many important points and articulates them vividly.
With respect to the rise of Reason, Nietzsche was an optimist. As S. Jonathan Singer concludes in his 2001 book, The Splendid Feast of Reason, it appears unlikely that more than ten percent of people are capable of employing reason as a basis for how they live. Singer likely did not know he was echoing Schopenhauer, although Schopenhauer’s use of dialog to in his essay clearly indicates he knew he was echoing Plato in reaching the same conclusion.
Reason is the basis for understanding the material world. Mysticism has proven an insufficient foundation for dealing with peak oil and runaway greenhouse. As such, I suspect it will prove inadequate for saving humanity. Whether or not we’re worth saving is a separate issue.
The pursuit of truth is not always fun, of course. Popular culture and its cousin, organized religion, constantly impede the quest of knowledge and search for wisdom. I am reminded of the Catholic Church’s treatment of my long-time hero, Giordano Bruno, which gave Galileo reason to recant in the face of astronomical truth. Trapped and captured by the Inquisition, Bruno was periodically interrogated during eight years of torture-laden imprisonment. Refusing to abandon the Copernican view that Earth orbits the sun instead of the converse Aristotelean (and, more importantly at the time, Catholic) view, Bruno was tongue-tied (literally) and burned alive in February of 1600. Legend, which is seldom true but which nicely embellishes a good story, has him spending his last words assailing the Church because its fear of the truth exceeded his fear of death. Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo were right, of course, as the Church admitted a scant 392 years after murdering Bruno. In a remarkable demonstration of how quickly the Church is capable of admitting its errors and catching up to scientific facts, it concluded Charles Darwin was right about evolution only a couple years later. Perhaps in another few years they will admit the Jesus-as-prophet craze was just a joke that got out of hand, or, more outrageously, they will begin asking their practitioners to follow Jesus’ teachings.
Unfortunately, the Church does not reward those who speak the truth today nearly as publicly as it once persecuted them, and it does not preach scientific truth nearly as vociferously as it preaches mindless mysticism. Periodic condemnation of Darwin by priests and bishops suggests that the Church is slow to educate its own leaders and that it tolerates some facts more willingly than others. But enough, for now, about the Catholic Church, which is too easy a target for those who purposely invoke reason. Furthermore, the Church’s fundamentalist Protestant descendants are making even the Catholic Church seem sensible of late.
I don’t mind the precepts of religion, even though religions are founded on an idea for which there is no evidence. What I mind is religious adherents living contrary to their prophets. If Christians lived as Jesus did, or as he instructed them to live, I would be a big fan of Christianity. As Nietzsche pointed out in The Antichrist, there was one Christian. And he died on the cross.
Our challenge may be far greater than I once imagined. I would not be the first to suggest that, just as a minority of people is incapable of distinguishing colors that are obvious to the majority, a majority is unable to differentiate between reasonable arguments and specious ones. Jonathan Singer makes perhaps the strongest argument for this case in The Splendid Feast of Reason. The evidence he reviews shows rational people have not comprised a majority of any society, suggesting that rational thought lies beyond the realm of most humans. He further concludes that such “rationalists,” as he calls them, comprise fewer than ten percent of American society. Mind you, this is not about intelligence: Plenty of people who are very intelligent (by any measure) are unable to allow logic and reason to overcome irrationality. Thus, contrary to the belief and expectation of Bacon and Descartes, it would appear that efforts to unlock nature’s secrets and then pass along this knowledge have become a lost cause. Indeed, “lost” may be the wrong term for it: Perhaps most people simply cannot receive and interpret the language of reason. If this is the case, as increasing evidence purports, it should be no surprise that history has treated badly the few rational people bold enough to take a firm stand in the face of an irrational majority.
The rational minority often is treated as irrational, making me wonder if assuming a rational stance is, in fact, as irrational as it is abnormal. This appears to be classic case of the inmates running the asylum, and proclaiming one’s sanity is a one-way ticket to solitary confinement (from which, to begin with, rationalists are only one step removed). The impressive swiftness with which the majority has persecuted vocal proponents of reason provides plenty of cause for reflection and even retraction, which was the path taken by Galileo when faced with Bruno’s fate. The title of Singer’s book is well chosen, for it glorifies reason while acknowledging the rarity of its application.
A fundamental question thus becomes: Is the inability of most people to employ reason sufficient justification to cast aside the quest for truth? What about to deny the truth? Why should we try to teach the irrational majority? Why not continue the quest for truth, enjoy the company of the rational ten percent, and leave the masses to their apparently inherent ignorance? Contrast the choices of Galileo and Bruno. Some causes are worth dying for, even though the number of Martin Luthers pales in comparison to the virtual unknowns such as Giordano Bruno.
Singer proposes science as the solution. I’d like to believe science would succeed where reason has failed, but it is difficult to maintain optimism. After all, science gave us evolution by natural selection, and overwhelming evidence has subsequently reinforced Charles Darwin’s dangerous idea. Yet the American public cannot grasp the notion, with denial of the rudimentary science-based facts consistently running at seventy-five percent (among industrialized nations on this topic, none come close to American ignorance and denial of the facts).
But it appears we have no viable choice. If reason is not the answer, then Renaissance and Enlightenment were temporary diversions along the path of absurdity and Giordano Bruno died in vain. I cannot accept mysticism as a legitimate alternative to rational thought any more than a philosopher can accept superficial thinking or a musician can tolerate improper pitch. I cannot surrender to the dual forces of ignorance and denial, though I recognize their great power.
Some of these ideas first appeared in my 2006 book, Letters to a Young Academic: Seeking Teachable Moments

This is the transcript of a talk I delivered 17 August 2007. It was the keynote address for a conference organized by, and for, students in the University of Arizona’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program. I sent the transcript to a few people, upon request, after I gave the talk. It’s been making its way through cyberspace and judging from the many unsolicited email messages I have received from people I don’t know, it’s been provoking some thought and perhaps even some action. My ego is going to miss the Internet.
This talk started as a 20-minute set of after-dinner comments at a conference on assigning economic value to ecosystem services (the conference was organized by The Research Ranch Foundation). It grew into this hour-long polemic after a few iterations and much commentary. (Thanks to the following for the commentary: Sheila Merrigan, Peter Russell, Court Merrigan, James B. McPherson, Carol Wallace, Carolyn Baker, Matt Skroch, and Mike Fugagli. Thanks to the following for inspiration from their own writings: James Howard Kunstler, Derrick Jensen, Carolyn Baker, Matt Savinar, and Sharman Russell). Due to time constraints, I cut about a quarter of it before I delivered it to the MPH crowd. You’re getting the unconstrained version here, which serves as a long-winded response to Robert W’s comment on my first blog entry: I welcome comments even from irrational people (many would argue I am one), and you’re right about them (me?) as a source of answers. When the inmates are running the asylum — and they seem to be, at least in this country — it doesn’t pay to scream, “You’re all crazy” at them.
As always, comments are welcome. Energy Bulletin has a link to this post.
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The invitation to speak today is quite an honor, and I appreciate the opportunity. It’s also quite a challenge, because I know so little about what you do. As I understand personal health, from my medical doctor, I should eat less and exercise more. I assume public health means everybody should eat less and exercise more. That’s about all I know about public health, and I assume it’s not quite the whole story.
The standard approach at commencement ceremonies, graduation events, and other such celebrations is to tell young people they are this country’s most precious resource. Frankly, I think that should scare the hell out of you. Have you seen what we do to precious resources in this country?
Since my knowledge of public health is, shall we say, incomplete, I can make few promises about content and none about quality. That said, I must warn you: I’m an equal-opportunity offender with a passion for stirring the societal stew. Edward Abbey, the iconoclastic author from Tucson, was fond of saying society is like a stew: if you don’t stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top. Clearly, we’ve needed a lot more stirring since we lost Cactus Ed’s voice in 1989.
Speaking of scum rising to the top, my dean keeps asking me to quit stirring the pot. Apparently by pointing out the absurdities of Americans and their self-indulgent lifestyles, university professors threaten to interrupt the money being siphoned away from big-business donors and toward our football team. So I keep reminding my dean, and anybody else who’ll listen, that one of my favorite quotes comes from George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Not surprisingly, my dean doesn’t appreciate Orwell nearly as much as I do. Of course, he doesn’t appreciate me nearly as much as I do, either. Fortunately, if tenure means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In my case, that means trying to wake people up: specifically, the inordinate number of them who are sleeping on the railroad tracks.
It’s a wonderful afternoon and I love the idea and format of today’s program. I would much rather use this opportunity to discuss our common future with you than deliver a sermon to you. As a result, I tried to prepare these comments in light of three criteria – they should be brief, they should be funny, and they should be brief. Considering my lack of skill as a standup comic, I will focus on the first and third criteria.
My internal clock is set at the standard professorial 50 minutes. So in this case, “brief” means early an hour. I suspect it will not seem brief to you, though: I’ve been told that listening to me is about as much fun as gargling razor blades, so this might seem like a long time. This is my way of admitting I will fail to respect any of the three criteria.
I have been plagued lately with the central question underlying Schopenhauer’s philosophy: How to get through a life not worth living?
Socrates famously concluded that the unexamined is not worth living. I’m surprised it took two millennia for somebody — that somebody being Schopenhauer — to realize that the examined life is far, far worse.
I told you I wasn’t funny.
This is one of the many prices you pay for having a PBS mind in an MTV world: You realize that, although ignorance is bliss, bliss is overrated. Otherwise, we’d all be comfortably stoned, all the time. Especially you, since you have ready access to the appropriate pharmaceuticals. We can talk more about those pharmaceuticals later this afternoon … preferably in private.
So then: How to get through a life not worth living?
Schopenhauer gave the answer to his own question in three words: Will to live.
Schopenhauer’s successor Nietzsche extended this idea with his own three-word answer: Will to power. Nietzsche knew the lust for power often exceeds the will to live.
And shortly before his death in 2003, the great human-rights advocate and intellectual leftist Edward Said addressed the issue: “There is no point to intellectual and political work if one were a pessimist. Intellectual and political work require, nay demand, optimism.”
Said was suggesting that, without optimism, we may as well take the Hemingway out.
They say the truth will set you free. The truth does not set you free, it just pisses you off. At least, that’s my experience.
I admired Said for his courage, and I still admire his contrarian views. And, as a self-proclaimed intellectual who is often accused of inappropriately meddling in political work, I am naturally inclined toward optimism. There’s no reason to stir the pot if you think the human condition is hopeless.
But I suspect Said did not know about Peak Oil or runaway greenhouse. Surely his optimism would have been dampened, had he only known about these two profound consequences of our insatiable desires.
Oil supply — at the level of the field, county, state, country, or world — follows a bell-shaped curve; the top of the curve is called “Peak Oil,” or “Hubbert’s Peak.” We passed Hubbert’s Peak for world oil supply and began easing down the other side about two years ago. We’ll fall off the oil-supply cliff next year. Because this country mainlines cheap oil, it is easy to envision the complete collapse of the U.S. economy within a decade. The Great Depression will seem like the good old days when unemployment approaches 100% and inflation is running at 1000% per year. Obviously, this is a very good thing … for the world’s cultures and species, other than our own. After all, in the name of economic growth we have ripped minerals from the Earth, often bringing down mountains in the process; we have harvested nearly all the old-growth timber on the continent, replacing thousand-year-old giants with neatly ordered plantations of tiny trees; we have hunted species to the point of extinction; we have driven livestock across every almost acre of the continent, baring hillsides and engendering massive erosion; we have plowed large landscapes, transforming fertile soil into sterile, lifeless dirt; we have burned ecosystems and, perhaps more importantly, we have extinguished naturally occurring fires; we have spewed pollution and dumped garbage, thereby dirtying our air, fouling our water, and contributing greatly to the warming of the planet; we have paved thousands of acres to facilitate our movement and, in the process, have disrupted the movements of thousands of species. As I wrote in one of my recent books, the problem is not that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions — it’s that the road to Hell is paved. We have, to the maximum possible extent allowed by our intellect and never-ending desire, consumed the planet and therefore traded in tomorrow for today. And we keep making these choices, every day, choosing dams over salmon, oil over whales, cars over polar bears, death over life. And when I say we keep making these choices, I do not mean you and me — we have essentially nothing to do with it — I mean the politicians and CEOs who run this country. They are killing the planet and, when they notice the screams, they turn up the volume on Fox News. Meanwhile, most Americans took the blue pill without really thinking about the consequences. In the wake of these endless insults to our only home, perhaps the biggest surprise is that so many native species have persisted, thus allowing for our continued use and enjoyment.
When I tell people about Peak Oil, the immediate response is something like, “C’mon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is setting records; the economy looks great.”
Uh-huh. Never mind the asset bubble built by shaky investments. Never mind the manipulation of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Bank since the Fed’s monetary policy was removed from public view by Ben Bernanke. Never mind that the Dow, which is based on a whopping 30 companies, is in free-fall when measured against any metric except the U.S. dollar, which is falling even faster. Never mind that serious stock-market investors represent a slim minority of the world’s populace.
Ignore all that, and think about this: When you jump off a 100-story building, everything seems fine for a while. In fact, the view just keeps getting more clear as you get closer to the ground. What could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe one thing. It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop at the bottom.
The American pragmatist philosopher and pacifist William James struggled with the same question every single morning: Shall I get out of bed? I really don’t know how he did it … physically, that is: Personally, I’m emptying my bladder before I’m fully awake in the morning. So I struggle with the follow-up question: Shall I spend the day teaching and writing, or shall I do something useful? Shall I blow up a freeway, a building, a dam, or some other sign of destruction disguised as progress? So far, I’ve opted for the “civilized” option, the one that results in more people consuming more stuff and hurtling us ever closer to the sudden stop at the bottom of the fall. But tomorrow’s a new day; there’s hope for me yet. ‘Course, a career in academia has me ill-prepared for useful work, so I’ll have to learn a lot before I can take meaningful action against the machine of death known as “civilization.”
Passing Hubbert’s Peak may be good news for species and cultures, other than our own, but it obviates technological solutions to many of our most pressing problems, including runaway greenhouse. You could argue that technology has never solved a social problem, but only made them worse, so this point may be irrelevant. If you’re a fan of technology, you might conclude that burning the planetary endowment of oil precludes development of a sustainable civilization on this planet. Any intelligent species that evolves in the wake of our demise — our planetary successors — will lack the supply of inexpensive energy necessary to create a sustainable civilization. Following this line of thought, each planet gets a single shot at sustainability, and we blew ours when we let the neo-conservatives rip the solar panels off the White House and pursue economic growth as our only god. Again, you could argue — and I would agree — that civilization is inherently unsustainable, and that we can approach sustainability only by accelerating civilization’s ultimate collapse and forcing us back into the sustainable societies of the Stone Age.
As the Buddha said, “there is no torrent like greed.” Or, as Al Gore said in a recent speech about our national energy policy, this country needs a new dipstick. I did not get the impression he was volunteering. And that’s okay with me. I mean, here’s a guy who thinks the climate crisis can be solved by a bunch of professional narcissists strutting across the world’s stages stroking their Stratocasters. Sorry, folks, but even the world’s greatest consumers can’t spend our way out of this one.
Speaking of the climate crisis, what about runaway greenhouse? Runaway greenhouse simply means that positive feedbacks are overwhelming Earth’s climate system and we cannot stop the warming of planet Earth. Had we passed the oil peak a decade earlier, we would have been forced to reduce CO2 emissions and therefore prevent the frying of the planet.
But Peak Oil came too late to save us. It appears humanity will be restricted to a few thousand hardy scavengers living near the poles within a century or two. Shortly thereafter, Homo sapiens will join, in extinction, every other species to occupy the planet. Recent projections indicate that, by century’s end, there will be no planetary ice. That’s dinosaur days, and the end of the human experience. It’s very small consolation to me that, as the home team, Nature bats last.
We will persist about 10% as long as the typical species of mammal, giving credence to Schopenhauer’s view that the human experience is a mere blink of an eye bounded on either side by infinities of time. Despite our apparently brief stay on this most wondrous of planets, it has become clear we will take a large percentage of the planet’s biological diversity along with us into the abyss.
Alas, “there is no torrent like greed.”
Knowledge of Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse leads me, again, to the question of Schopenhauer: How to get through a life not worth living? I have struggled mightily with this question – much to the chagrin of my wife, I can assure you – and have turned to my intellectual predecessors and heroes for answers.
I start, as I often do, with Socrates. Socrates pursued a life of excellence by questioning those who would tolerate him and his many inquiries. He knew we were beings singularly tuned to quality. Within the next few minutes, I will mention each of the six primary questions of Socrates, the questions that represent the qualities he found so important to the human condition: What is good? What is piety? What is virtue? What is courage? What is justice? What is moderation? These questions are as vibrant and relevant today as they were more than two millennia ago. I encourage you to consider the questions of Socrates as you attempt to live a life of excellence, and as you move forward in your promising careers. I suspect many of you are thinking: “My career seemed promising … until he showed up.”
At about the same time Socrates was getting himself killed for asking too many questions, the son of a wealthy king on the other side of the planet was forsaking the family fortune and asking questions of his own. Unlike Socrates, the Buddha was willing to hazard a few answers, which have come to be known as his four noble truths. The first of those truths: “Life is suffering.”
It’s hard to believe Schopenhauer wasn’t a Buddhist, given the primary question underlying his philosophy.
Never mind runaway greenhouse: The Buddha didn’t even know about oil, much less Peak Oil. In the absence of such knowledge the Buddha, like Socrates, concluded that a life of moderation contributes to a life of excellence. I think it’s pretty impressive that Socrates and the Buddha reached the very same conclusion even without using the Internet to assist their obvious plagiarism. In the spirit of Socrates and the Buddha, we may want to consider some moderation ourselves, although it’s likely too late for moderation to solve the pressing problems associated with Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse.
So then, back to the question: How to get through a life not worth living? Schopenhauer was a very smart guy, but his response to his own question is wholly insufficient: Will to live is inadequate for most philosophers, as it is for me.
Nietzsche was perhaps the most brilliant person to occupy the planet so far, but his response similarly leaves me wanting: Will to power is meaningless if we abuse the power … and it seems that abuse of power is what the hairless monkey does best. Small wonder Nietzsche was impressed with Buddhism and the Buddha’s second noble truth: “Desire is the source of suffering.” As Americans, we expect our every desire to be fulfilled, planet Earth be damned. If our desires include Hummers and hang-gliders, Thai take-out and plasma-screen TVs, well, those are among the many rewards of Empire. As long as the costs of Empire remain obscured from view, we’re as happy as pigs in … well, you know.
So much for these two famous 19th-century German philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. But even Said’s unremitting optimism may seem unwarranted in light of knowledge that has emerged since his death.
But wait. I’m not ready to dismiss Said just yet. My response to the question of Schopenhauer is rooted in Said-style optimism that is perhaps unwarranted but nonetheless undeniable.
You’ve likely heard the old expression: An optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist fears this is true.
My optimistic response to the question of Schopenhauer has two primary components: friendship and hope.
I’ll talk a little more about hope shortly. But I’ll start with friendship.
I turn to Aristotle for my favorite definition of friendship: a relationship between people working together on a project for the common good. Without the common good, we might as well restrict friendship to drinking buddies. The distinction is as clear as that between being a citizen and being a consumer. Sadly, I suspect most Americans don’t know the difference. Public health is a paradigmatic example of the common good, making us friends in the Aristotelian sense.
In Aristotle’s definition of friendship we find traces of his teacher’s teacher, Socrates. After all, one of the six primary questions of Socrates was, “What is good?” For focusing on the common good, I suspect Socrates would have been pleased with Aristotle – and perhaps even with those of us in this room, although I will admit it may be asking too much to expect the blessing of a long-dead Greek Cynic.
And speaking of Greek Cynics, it’s pretty clear the prophet of America’s dominant religion was heavily influenced by Greeks and especially the Cynics. Yet a Time magazine poll conducted late last year found that 61% of Christians in this country believe God wants them to be financially prosperous. Never mind the biblical root of all evil. Never mind the gospels, especially the gospel of Mark. When three out of five self-proclaimed followers of a poor, homeless prophet who dedicated his life to working with the poor believe they are entitled to wealth, it’s no wonder you don’t hear much about the common good these days. This stunning statistic brings to mind another of Socrates’ questions: “What is piety?”
The Greatest Generation of Tom Brokaw, the generation that saved the world from fascism during World War II — or so the story goes — that’s the generation that begat the greatest generation of consumers in world history. It’s been a wild ride, but it’s time to turn out the lights: The party’s just about over. The baby-boom generation’s legacy, their “gift” to you, is a world depleted of resources, ruined by Empire, and ruled by fascism masquerading as Republic.
In One with Nineveh, the ecologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich describe the American social system as, “capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.” Our socioeconomic system is designed to subsidize the wealthy and pulverize the downtrodden. And, of course, to pulverize our precious resources.
Contrary to society’s general disregard for the common good, I have to believe that the greatest measure of our humanity is found in what we do for those who cannot take care of themselves: the myriad species, cultures, and yes, even impoverished individuals in our own country, who never stood a chance in the face of American-style capitalism.
I have to believe, in other words, that our humanity is measured in our willingness to protect the common good. And, by pursuing and protecting the common good, we become friends in the Aristotelian sense.
I’m willing to call the pursuit of the common good an exercise in virtue, bringing to mind another Socratic question: “What is virtue?”
With today’s focus on public health, we are pursuing the common good. But I will be the first to admit that we have our differences. Indeed, the wonder of DNA ensures our uniqueness. The odds against any one of us being here are greater than the odds against being a particular grain of sand on all the world’s beaches — no, the odds are much greater than that: they exceed the odds of being a single atom plucked from the entire universe. To quote the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, “In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I that are privileged to be here, privileged with eyes to see where we are and brains to wonder why.” If a student in one of my classes wrote like that, I would reward the sentiment … but I would correct the grammar.
Enough about friendship for now. What about hope, the second component of my optimistic response to Schopenhauer’s question?
I view hope as the left-brain product of love, analogous to democracy as the product of freedom, or liberty. Notably, Patrick Henry did not say, “Give me democracy or give me death.” Like the rest of the founding fathers, Henry knew that freedom was primary to democracy; without the guiding light of freedom, or liberty, democracy breaks up on the shoals. Love keeps our left brain in check — that’s the message of the world’s religions. But our right-brain love creates the foundation for hope: love for nature, love for our children and grandchildren, love for each other. Without love to light the way, hope breaks up on the shoals.
Mind you, hope is not simply wishful thinking. And that’s a problem, considering we’re immersed in the ultimate “wishful thinking, something-for-nothing” culture. How else to explain books such as The Secret, which proclaims that happy thoughts will generate happy results, including personal wealth? How else to explain the prevalence of, and widespread acceptance of, casinos? And it’s not just acceptance: it’s adoration, if the boob tube and the local movie theater are to be believed. Not so long ago, gambling was frowned upon because, instead of adhering to a culture of an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, it reflects the expectation that a person can get something for nothing. No, hope is not wishful thinking.
And another thing: hope is not a consumer product. You can’t walk into Wal-Mart and order up a carton of hope. Indeed, given the demise of cheap oil, there’s unlikely to be a Wal-Mart — or any other large institution, for that matter — to walk into at all within a few years. Even if Wal-Mart, the federal government, or the University of Arizona somehow find a way to survive, we’re going to have to generate our own hope, one person at a time. Just as an economic collapse happens one person at a time, so too must hope happen one person at a time.
When I’m not playing social critic, I am a conservation biologist. I admit conservation biology is a value-laden enterprise, hampered by — and perhaps assisted by — bridges between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The greatest value of Earth is, always has been, and always will be, that it exists. Not that it is useful. But that it is. Perhaps that makes me an artist trapped in a scientific pursuit. But, at least for me, it allows hope to emerge from the tonic of wildness, thereby providing context for this most insignificant of lives. It allows hope to flicker. And if there is a flicker of hope, I believe we must treat it like a beacon. Hope, my friends, is everywhere.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” said Emily Dickinson. Her other poems indicate that she was not restricting her thoughts to birds: Dickinson found hope throughout the glory and wonder of nature.
My friend and colleague, the planner Vern Swaback, is fond of saying he finds hope in “a person’s dedicated life.” I cannot improve upon Vern’s comment, but I can offer a few other personal examples.
I find hope in the poems of the teenaged girls at the juvenile detention facility where I help teach stewardship through poetry.
And I see hope flickering every day in the eyes — and therefore in the minds and in the hearts — of the students with whom I am fortunate to work on a daily basis.
Hope is our humility overcoming our hubris in the face of long odds. This will require an enormous amount of courage. We must rise to Nietzschean heights in the style of the Overman.
Hope is self-proclaimed liberals and self-proclaimed conservatives in the same room, discussing our common future.
Hope, then, rooted in friendship, is my response to Schopenhauer. Hope, in other words, rooted in friendship — let’s call it Platonic love — rooted in the right-brained friendship expressed by honoring each other and hugging trees.
Will to live is no solution: It’s a problem, as Schopenhauer himself admitted when he proclaimed, “to desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.”
Our will to live — rooted in the evolutionary drive to survive — makes us shortsighted and self-motivated (or, in the case of many of us, self-absorbed).
We are inherently incapable of considering, much less empathizing with, our grandchildren’s grandchildren. That’s why we are willing to bake the planet beyond the point of habitability within a very few generations. This brings to mind another question of Socrates: “What is justice?” I do not know what justice is, but I know it is unjust to leave the world worse than we found it.
It seems evolution dealt us a bad hand — it gave us the big brains, but they’re not quite big enough.
Evolution drives us toward “flight or fight” — that is, to survival.
If we survive, evolution drives us to procreate: Nearly 4 billion years of evolution are screaming at us to breed. Evolution has some bad company on this one, in the form of the world’s largest religious group, and the world’s fastest-growing one.
If we clear the first two hurdles, evolution prods us to acquire material possessions.
And these three outcomes of evolution — the drives to live, procreate, and accumulate possessions — are disastrous to the common good.
If Schopenhauer’s “will to live” offers no viable solution, Nietzsche’s “will to power” is even worse, for it reveals our darkest nature. It’s small wonder Nietzsche abandoned the Overman late in his career. Or perhaps the Overman abandoned Nietzsche.
Maybe Said wasn’t so far off the mark:
Said said “optimism” … I say “hope.”
Said said “intellectual and political work” … I say “the common good.”
But we seem not so far apart, Said and I. Just like, on close inspection, those of us in this room: Our intellectual and political work require, nay demand, optimism. For without it, hope is lost for both kinds of humanity:
Without optimism, hope is lost for the individual, personal variety of humanity that is the measure of our character.
And without optimism, hope is lost for our entire species, and many others on this planet. That hope is lost, too, without big doses of courage, justice, moderation, and virtue.
Well, then: How do we get from here to there? How do we, in the words of the anthropologist and poet Loren Eiseley, “seek a minor sun” when faced with our final freezing battle with the void? How do we, as a species, use our hope and our friendship to address the urgent issue of Peak Oil while simultaneously solving the problem of runaway greenhouse? These are the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. Tackling either of them, without the loss of a huge number of human lives, will require tremendous courage, compassion, and creativity. Many experts who write about simply one of these issues — Peak Oil — predict complete economic collapse within a decade, followed shortly thereafter by utter chaos and the subsequent death of more than 80% of the world’s population. After all, the exponential curve of human population growth matches perfectly the exponential growth of world energy supply, suggesting that the downturn of the energy curve will cause a large-scale die-off of human beings. And if you think chaos can’t overwhelm descend on this country, you weren’t paying attention to New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Horrible as that event was, nearly everybody involved knew it was a temporary inconvenience; I’m concerned how people might act when they recognize Peak Oil as a long emergency. One by one, starting in 2012, the world’s cities will experience permanent blackouts; and once we enter the Dark Age, the Stone Age won’t be too far behind. Bear in mind, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I know the current culture — the culture of make believe, or the culture of death, depending on how deeply you care to think about it — is the worst possible route for most of the planet’s species; as a conservation biologist, I realize the faster and more complete the collapse of Empire, the greater our biological legacy. On the other hand, the paralyzing hand of fear grips me every time I think about Peak Oil; a life in the ivory tower is damned poor preparation for Stone-Age living. Fortunately, I only think about it a few thousand times each day.
Can we get from here to there? We have the best excuse in the world to not act. The momentum of civilization is powerful. Resisting those in power will almost certainly lead to imprisonment, torture, perhaps even death. Those are pretty good excuses to forego action. So the question becomes, in the words of author and activist Derrick Jensen: “Would you rather have the best excuse in the world, or would you rather have a world?” To tackle Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse at the same time might require larger doses of courage, compassion, and creativity than we can find in ourselves.
But I hope not. And in that hope, we find the agenda ahead, laid out in ten huge steps by James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. This is a not a 10-step plan in the usual sense; rather, we will have to start all of these steps simultaneously, and now. These steps are ginormous. That’s a new word, as of last month when Webster‘s declared it so. Interestingly, I read about it under a tiny headline. And I was quite disappointed that ginormous was chosen, but gihugic was not. In any event, here are the 10 steps:
Step 1: Expand our horizons beyond the question of how we will run the cars by means other than gasoline. The TechnoMessiah will not save us from ourselves, nor will she magically create a substitute for crude oil. The mainstream media would have you believe ethanol is the savior, when in fact the most likely outcome of the ethanol craze is that we’ll use our gas tanks to burn through the last six inches of topsoil in America’s breadbasket. Biodiesel represents the most viable of the alternative fuels, but it requires a choice: We can use our farmland to grow food, or we can use it to grow fuel for our cars. Given the choice between eating and driving, I suspect many Americans would choose driving. But cognitive dissonance runs so deep, they’ll choose to drive … to Burger King. This obsession with keeping the cars running threatens our lives and our species. Cars are not part of the solution, whether they run on fossil fuels, moonshine, peanut oil, or buffalo chips. Rather, they are very clearly part of the problem, and a large part at that. It’s time to abandon the car, time to make other arrangements for nearly all the common activities of daily life.
Step 2: We must produce food differently. Industrial agriculture is destined for disaster, and will leave in its wake sterile soils and an agricultural model at a grossly inappropriate scale. Within the next decade or so, small-scale farming will return to the center of American life. Think of the Victory Gardens of Oil War II as a small-scale, temporary experiment. Say goodbye to the 3,000-mile Caesar salad to which we’ve become accustomed; say hello to locally grown food, recognizing that you might have to grow your own. In the near term, this situation presents many business and vocational opportunities for creative, hard-working people. First, though, we will have to retrieve considerable knowledge from the dustbin of history. And in arid regions such as Tucson, Arizona, we’ll need to obtain our water differently, too. When oil becomes too expensive or too limited in supply, we won’t be using it to suck water from deep in the ground. In the absence of fossil fuels, the human carrying capacity of the Tucson basin is approximately zero.
Step 3: We must inhabit the terrain differently. The American suburbs and the interstate highway system are designed for a culture that has no future: the misguided car culture. The suburbs in particular represent perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. Our suburbs essentially require us to live far from our places of work and play, and also far from all consumer goods, from food to furniture. We will have to learn to inhabit differently, or not inhabit at all, most areas currently dominated by asphalt, concrete, and tall buildings. These include, for example, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Tucson. Our cities must contract. Our towns must be re-inhabited and the areas around them must be re-structured to accommodate small farms and the manufacture of goods to serve the towns. This entire process will require gihugic demographic shifts and is likely to be turbulent. When the trucks stop bringing food and the water stops flowing through the taps and the diesel-powered trains are no longer bringing coal to the power plant; when all this is happening and the thermometer reads 105 degrees and the calendar says summer’s not here yet; you’d better get along with your neighbors, especially the heavily armed ones who take a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment. If you’re looking for a job in the decades ahead, look no further than the brand-new fields of architecture, planning, and political leadership. The old versions of these enterprises are useless and must be abandoned. Consider our cities, as they currently stand: We have no sense of public space. Any small piece of beauty we might otherwise find between Wal-Mart and Target is obscured by the curvature of the earth. Our strip-malls are so ugly even winos won’t hang out there. There’s not enough Prozac in the world to make them seem nice. Are these places worth caring about? Are they worth defending? I’d guess there are at least 100,000 places not worth caring about in this country, and the number is growing. Actually, there might be 100,000 places not worth caring about in the Phoenix metropolitan area alone. When we have more places not worth caring about than places that are worth caring about, perhaps that day will come that we’ll run out of young people — people your age — willing to spill their blood in the Middle East to defend our hyper-indulgent, non-negotiable way of life. That’ll be a dreadful day for American Empire, but a wonderful day for the rest of the planet.
Step 4: We must move people and things differently. You’ve probably all seen the bumper sticker on about every fourth 18-wheeler on the interstate: “Without trucks, America stops.” That’s about right, at least with respect to economic growth. And the trucks are going to stop within the next half-decade or so. Shortly thereafter, the interstate highway system will simply collapse. Let’s not waste our time trying to prop up our hallucinatory economy with its fatal dependency on cars and trucks. Rather, we could restore public transit. We could start with our railroads –currently, we have a rail system the Bulgarians would be ashamed of — and we could electrify our railways so they can run on renewable energy. Then we could move to the waterways, starting by ripping out the condos and bike paths from the inner-city harbors and then restoring the piers and warehouses (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Numerous career opportunities lie ahead for those hardy individuals willing to put away their iPods and Blackberries long enough to chart the course. Whoops, there I go, showing my age again … put away their iPhones, not their Blackberries.
Step 5: We need to transform retail trade. The demise of Wal-Mart is at hand. Personally, I think that’s a nice silver lining, albeit in a large bank of very dark clouds. The national chains have used inexpensive oil as the foundation for predatory economies of size, and therefore as the springboard for killing local economies. Cheap oil is fundamental to the 12,000-mile supply chain underlying the “warehouse on wheels” approach to the just-in-time delivery of cheap plastic crap. Don’t think for a minute that Internet shopping will replace small, locally owned shops in every town: After all, Internet shopping relies on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap in the days ahead. In addition, Internet shopping depends on reliable electric-power systems. Electricity is a short-lived luxury because all sources of power are derivatives of oil; for example it takes a lot of oil to rip coal out of the ground, and then a lot more to deliver it to the power plant; it takes a lot of oil to construct a solar panel or a wind turbine, or even to maintain dams used to generate hydroelectric power. Again, there are plenty of career opportunities for energetic individuals interested in small, local businesses. In the locally owned shops of the future, even the much maligned “middle man” will be making a comeback (so, too, will the lesser-known “middle woman”).
Step 6: We have to start making things again. We will have far fewer choices when we go to the store, but we still will need clothes and household goods. We don’t know how we’re going to make things, or even what we’re going to make, in part because we haven’t made much of anything in this country for such a long time. But I’m counting on American ingenuity to light the way. If you’re looking for a job, there’s plenty that needs to be done because there’s plenty that needs to be manufactured.
Step 7: We need artists again. When the power goes out, we won’t get to decide between listening to Britney Spears and watching the latest rendition of American Idol. See, I’m full of good news! We’re going to need playhouses and live performance halls, albeit without high-tech light and sound systems. And we’ll need musicians and actors and playwrights and stagehands and theater managers. We’ll need storytellers, too, to keep history alive when the publishers stop printing books. Again, the Internet is unlikely to save on-demand canned entertainment if the power’s on the fritz. We’ll be able to look back on the Internet as a wonderful piece of technology, if only because it unmistakably disproved the old expression: “A million monkeys at a million typewriters could reproduce Shakespeare.”
Step 8: We must reorganize the educational system. Yellow fleets of school buses are on their way out. We have invested heavily in centralized systems of primary and secondary school — most recently and disastrously in the form of “No Child Left Behind” — and we will undoubtedly continue to invest in that centralization at the expense of true education. Such investment will slow the transition to a reasonable system of education that perhaps will grow, in fits and starts, from the home-schooling movement. More good news: It seems we will not be stuck with a public school system focused on churning out automata to serve industry. The current system was described by Jules Henry in his 1963 classic, Culture Against Man: “School is indeed training for later life not because it teaches the 3 Rs (more or less), but because it instills the essential cultural nightmare fear of failure, envy of success, and absurdity.” Henry’s scathing critique correctly pointed out that public schools eviscerate individuality and creativity, and therefore serve corporate America at the expense of Americans. The demise of corporate America will solve that problem. I suspect higher education is doomed to fail for myriad reasons, including terminal indifference of the academy to societal needs. But if you can write a coherent paragraph and do long division, you can already out-perform most college graduates. If you can teach youngsters to do these things, I suspect you have a bright future as a teacher in a post-carbon world.
Step 9: Our medical system must be completely reorganized, and I’ll expand on this topic shortly. Without power-hungry high-tech tools, we’ll need real doctors again: people who understand how the body actually functions. In the coming barter economy, they’ll likely make house calls to work for a meal or a place to sleep. On the other hand, we’ll all be eating less and exercising more, so my doctor will be happy about that. All in all, there will be less concern about blood pressure, cholesterol, and various pulmonary conditions. And, for people like you, there will be plenty of career opportunities in the near future.
Step 10: Our entire socio-economic and political system will become much more local. Every large system will fail. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to be well fed and even revered in your local community. Local politics will assume increasing importance as first the federal government, then the state government, simply fade from relevance. Neo-conservatism clings tenuously to life but, much to the dismay of Business Party I and Business Party II, will soon be dead. The collapse of American Empire will bring many opportunities for local heroes. I can imagine one possible exception, one large system that may not collapse: the Church. Because religions deal in the transport of ideology, rather than Wheaties and widgets, I fear they might assume the same power they did during the last Dark Age. I fear the rise of the Church not because I am opposed to other peoples’ spirituality, but because I believe the problems we face can be solved only with secular approaches, not with wishful thinking. That said, the worst possible outcome would be a battle to the death in a game of Last Man Standing. Our focus on the common good precludes a mentality of Us vs. Them; with the common good, there is no “Them.”
There you have it: a thumbnail sketch of the agenda. I’m sure I’ve left out many important items, but take heart: any number can play, and there is so much to be done. We’re sleepwalking into the future — headed for a cliff of our own making — and it’s time to wake up.
This, then, is the bottom line: This is not the time for wishful thinking. It’s the time for doing. The way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your butt and demonstrate to yourself, and perhaps to others, that you are a capable, competent individual determinedly able to face new circumstances.
In the arena of public health, that means dealing with the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
During the time of Christ, in the Mediterranean region, the population of humans was viewed through the same lens as other populations. As such, human deaths often occurred in large numbers, as a result of war, conquest, famine, and pestilence – these are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as described in the gospel of John. The Four Horsemen of the New Testament are reminiscent of much of the Old Testament. Among the many exemplary passages in the Old Testament is this one from Deuteronomy: “The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning.”
Yikes. A quick review of the Old Testament suggests the Lord was partial to quite a bit of smiting. Strange and often fatal diseases were attributed to Divine Retribution. They still are, by some people. Not so long ago, President Ronald Reagan declared AIDS to be “God’s revenge” on homosexuals. That was after he ripped the solar panels off the White House, but before he oversaw the military conquest of Grenada, a tiny island-country in the Caribbean most of you haven’t heard of, until now.
Until very recently, large-scale die-offs were viewed as “normal,” in much the same way we view as “normal” our K-12 system of education, or weekly shopping trips to Safeway, or using a cellular telephone. The description and management of human populations back in the days of the Greek Cynics was oriented along population lines, with relatively little societal regard for individuals. Contrast that perspective with our laser-like focus on individuals. Let’s take a quick look at the Four Horsemen, one at a time. Famine’s as good a place to start as any, considering that my limited understanding of public health tends toward eating … or, eating less.
The years ahead will see a dramatic rise in deaths from starvation, as we become unable to transport vegetables from the Central Valley of California to the American Southwest, or any place else in the country. The inability to retrieve high-fructose corn syrup in the form of cheese doodles and soda pop from the vending machine down the hall won’t hurt us a bit, individually or collectively, but it’s symptomatic of far greater problems. At the population level, starvation is called famine. And famine looms large, right here in the richest country in the history of humanity.
We’ll also see pestilence — what we call disease, when it happens one person at a time — making a big comeback. Cheap oil allows us to sanitize our water, lethally cook harmful organisms, sterilize the surfaces on which we prepare and eat food, and manage many potentially catastrophic diseases. Contemporary American healthcare is completely dependent on ready supplies of cheap oil, for grid-based electrical power, backup generators, and thousands of pieces of equipment we all take for granted, from IVs and syringes to disposable gloves and plastic containers for tossing out contaminated needles and other sharp objects. When the trucks stop running, we won’t even be able to deliver antibiotics, unless ginormous numbers of non-apocalyptic horsemen suddenly appear. I hope society will retain some understanding of germ theory, so you are able to live at least half as long as your grandparents.
Famine and pestilence are two of the Four Horsemen; war and conquest are the other two. Already, resource wars have begun, and they are likely to ratchet up in the near future. The so-called bipartisan Iraqi study group concluded that Operation Iraqi Freedom was conducted in pursuit of black gold. In fact, just to make the acronym transparent, the invasion should have been called Operation Iraqi Liberty.
Regardless of the name of the invasion, it truly was “mission accomplished” for George W. Bush: We ensured ourselves a spot at the OPEC table, while also piratizing … er, I guess I’m supposed to call that privatizing … the oil fields of Iraq for American companies. Although the Oilman in the Oval Office correctly pointed out, in his 2006 State of the Union Address, “America is addicted to oil,” his solution is absurd. Rather than stressing conservation, as a conservative might do, his goal is to find more oil by any means necessary. ‘Cause that’s the way to deal with addiction: find more substance for the addict.
I fear Oil War III is just getting started.
And conquest? That’s just another name for war, albeit without a fight from the vanquished. We’ve done that throughout our history, as have many other nations. I’ve no doubt we’ll continue.
The Four Horsemen are lurking in the background, obscured by the never-ending, irrelevant chatter of the corporate media. Here’s my impression of Fox News: blah blah blah Britney Spears blah blah blah Threat Level Orange blah blah blah Paris Hilton blah blah blah … Fox News: the only national news source without a liberal bias. The corporate media’s weapons of mass distraction notwithstanding, soon enough the Four Horsemen will be riding tall enough for everyone to see. Population-scale rules from two millennia ago will re-assert themselves.
Socrates understood the importance of maintaining societal norms in the name of the law, even when justice failed at the level of the individual. And public-health practitioners back in Socrates’ day undoubtedly understood that the good of the one, or of the few, sometimes must be sacrificed for the good of the many. These practitioners understood this fundamental concept even before Mr. Spock pointed it out on the starship Enterprise. (One of the problems I encounter in speaking with people your age is that my cultural references pre-date you by a couple generations; sorry about that.)
A lot has changed in the two thousand years that have transpired since Socrates drank from that fatal cup.
As an aside, I once asked a roomful of students, “What was Socrates’ most famous quote?” I thought someone would answer with the one about the unexamined life being not worth living. Instead, somebody immediately yelled out, “I drank what?”
Many, and perhaps most, of the changes that have transpired during the last two millennia have occurred during the last century. We can trace many of those changes to American exceptionalism and our focus on the individual. In this country, we too infrequently take a population approach to public health. We decree every life worth saving, including the one-pound baby born 12 weeks premature, the 95-year-old with cancer in all the major organs, and everybody between. To a great extent, we have traded in a perspective on the population for an obsession with the individual.
Never mind human dignity. Our doctors are the best. They — meaning we — can save anybody. The costs, which are enormous, have been ignored in the name of vanity. These costs include economic, environmental, political, social … and moral.
Some countries have looked back to move forward. Ireland uses medical generalists in their communities to advance the public health. They preserve the good of the many at the occasional expense of the one, or of the few. Yet babies and old people die at the about the same annual rate in Ireland as in the United States. No, Ireland’s public-health practitioners don’t get to write articles about saving the lives of babies with no statistical chance of living. They don’t get to bask in the reflected glory — or maybe it’s the hubris — of their seven-figure salaries while their peers enviously wonder when they’ll have a chance to break the new record. But perhaps, in focusing on communities and therefore letting go of some individual lives, Ireland has preserved something we’ve lost: something economic, environmental, political, social … or moral.
I’ll finish where I started, which was the common good as the basis for friendship and hope. And, of course, with the ancients.
Without the common good, and the struggle on its behalf, there can be no Aristotelian friendship. There can be no justice. And there can be no virtue.
Therefore, I am forced to conclude that: 5,000 generations into the human experience, with the end of humanity in clear view, our shared goal must be … the common good.
And I further conclude that: As friends, we reveal our differences, we appreciate our differences, and then we set them aside … for the common good.
With hope shining like a beacon, we struggle together … for the common good.
We have in our hands the destiny of our planet, including our own species and so many others. In the end, for finite beings such as ourselves, the historical process is irrelevant; all we have is our legacy, but that legacy is lost to us (as individuals). Yet we are unique beings in that we are able to recognize the historical process as something larger than ourselves. We judge that process worthy or not worthy based on our own singular experience (we judge the universe; fortunately, it doesn’t judge us back). For me, the universe is a worthy endeavor because the lens through which I view it is colored with the relationships I have experienced; those relationships include humans and nature.
All the Socratic ideals are born again in the love we feel … for each other, for our families and tribes, and for the natural world. Walking a path that honors the planet and ourselves is a responsibility we share, you and I — a responsibility unlike any other in human history. And it is not just a responsibility, but also something more: It is a joy, and a privilege.
Thank you.

Yet the identical twins Science and Philosophy were born in ancient Athens. Most contemporary philosophers claim the twins’ father was Thales of Miletus (a city in Asia Minor, now Turkey), largely based on two events: Thales was the first to calculate the height of Egypt’s pyramids (which he did before traveling to Greece by measuring the length of the pyramids’ shadows) and, even more notably, the first to predict a solar eclipse (in 585 BC). Inseparable and indistinguishable for nearly two millennia, Science and Philosophy were viewed as one and the same child. Little evidence remains of Thales, and the majority of his ideas ultimately were buried beneath the landslide of Grecian reason capped by Socrates and Plato. Philosophical advances continued to pile up, but Alfred North Whitehead famously described two millennia of these advances as mere footnotes to Plato.
Despite minor quibbles, Science and Philosophy remained close for several centuries before they were irrevocably forced apart during, ironically, the Enlightenment. Although most educated people could distinguish the twins by the mid-1600s, when intellectual and political battles produced notable differences in the twin icons of reason, they remained friends for another three centuries, until the biblical root of all evil came between them. By 1945, Bertrand Russell introduced his comprehensive History of Western Philosophy by dividing knowledge into three categories: science represents the known universe, theology represents dogma (which I would not call “knowledge”), and philosophy represents the “No Man’s Land” between the two. Russell concluded that philosophy, like science, relies on reason and that, like theology, it consists of speculations beyond definitive knowledge. Scientific advances resulting from the Enlightenment reduced philosophy to such a narrow domain that it “suffered more from modernity than any other field of human endeavor,” according to Hannah Arendt’s 1958 book, The Human Condition (p. 294). The post-Aristotle shift from deduction to induction contributed to, or perhaps merely was symptomatic of, philosophy’s demise and the coincident rise of science.
In the wake of World War II and five years after Russell’s capacious historical account acknowledged and contributed to the chasm between science and philosophy, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the legislation that created the National Science Foundation of the United States (NSF). This new and influential organization swung the final ax that doomed Science and Philosophy to separate existences. The NSF was created in 1950 and became a dominant influence — perhaps the dominant influence — on the nature and conduct of science by 1955. Confined to separate quarters, Science and Philosophy barely speak to each other in the 21st century. Casual observers would never know they once looked alike, as evidenced by treatment of the two entities on university campuses: compartmentalization is the order of the day.
The marginalization of philosophy has coincided with the rise of “big science.” British philosopher John Gray goes so far as to write (in his excellent short book, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals), “philosophy is a subject without a subject matter” (p. 82).
Well, maybe. I tend to think of philosophy in much the same way I think about science and art: it’s personal. Paul Feyerabend notwithstanding, science has rules, more or less. But science as a way of understanding the universe — in sharp contrast to the societal expectation of science as a never-ending font of technology — is a personal journey of curiosity addressed with unbridled creativity. So, too, are art and philosophy. Although science often produces knowledge that is more repeatable and reliable than the other two endeavors, it’s not at all clear that either outcome is used by, or useful for, the typical person. On the other hand, many people use technology — the perceived point of science — as a tool to assault the natural world while temporarily satisfying our insatiable urge to divorce ourselves from physical reality.
If reason arose in Athens, passion for the natural world was born in the Orient. Specifically, Lao Tzu’s masterful book of poetry Tao The Ching was written approximately coincident with the development of pre-Socratic philosophy in Greece (the birth year of Lao Tzu, who perhaps represented a single person, traditionally is accepted as 570 BC, 15 years after Thales predicted a solar eclipse). Whereas Platonists often are blamed for divorcing humanity from the natural world, Eastern thought has maintained a tight connection between humans and their environment, and has exalted nature in the process (China’s recent embrace of free-market capitalism has produced the expected deterioration of that country’s environment). Tao Te Ching is the most famous example in the Western world, but Lao Tzu merely was reflecting his culture. Further, cursory inspection of virtually any of the major Eastern religions reveals strong links between nature and humanity.
Reason arose in Greece about 25 centuries ago, and is perhaps best known from Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. Plato (ca. 428-348 BC) uses the conversations of Socrates to pose and explore questions in considerable detail. Although many of the issues and associated conversations seem unsophisticated to contemporary readers, these initial attempts to employ logic to study the natural world and the role of humans in the world are remarkable precisely because they were the unprecedented. The contributions of ancient Greece to the material worldview that characterizes modernity cannot be overstated; that so many of the contributions came from Athens, a city that never exceeded 250,000 residents, is simply astonishing.
Although the ancient Greeks laid the foundation for modernity, few bricks were added to the structure for nearly two millennia. During the early seventeenth century, the empiricist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the deconstructionist René Descartes (1596-1650) ushered in the Enlightenment, thereby triggering a flurry of construction to the edifice of knowledge. Almost overnight it became clear that the world was a material one that could be observed and quantified by all who dared think and observe. Nature obeyed rules and humans were big-brained animals capable of discovering and describing those rules.
Thus, the Enlightenment eroded the role of authority as a source of knowledge. In the wake of Giordano Bruno’s heinous execution by the Catholic Church, Bacon recanted earlier statements in which he denied the Ptolemaic view that Earth was the center of the universe. But the erosion of authority that began as a trickle quickly became a flood, and the Church was increasingly marginalized as a source of knowledge.
David Hume (1711-1776), in his initial written piece of philosophy, presented a compelling case against miracles, hence against religion: “Of Miracles” was published in 1748 as an essay in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understandings. (Hume became particularly well known the idea that what “is” does not indicate what “ought” to be.) Shortly before Charles Darwin formalized the theory of evolution by natural selection in the Origin of Species (1859), Schopenhauer (1788-1860) used Plato-like dialogue to question the basis of religion (“Religion: A Dialogue”) and Max Stirner declared the death of God in his 1845 book, The Ego and Its Own. Notably influenced by Schopenhauer and writing shortly after publication of Darwin’s dangerous idea, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) vociferously spread the word about God’s death (probably without awareness of Stirner’s work) while predicting that Reason would overwhelm worldviews based on mysticism (while proclaiming science to be a lie; like all other humans, Hume and Nietzsche contained many contradictions). Nietzsche expressed his views on Christianity early and often in his writings, most popularly with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I prefer The Antichrist because it represents Nietzsche’s views on God particularly clearly and vehemently. And also because this work was intended to be shockingly blasphemous.
With respect to the rise of Reason, Nietzsche was an optimist. As S. Jonathan Singer concludes in his 2001 book, The Splendid Feast of Reason, it appears unlikely that more than ten percent of people are capable of employing reason as a basis for how they live. Singer likely did not know he was echoing Schopenhauer, although Schopenhauer’s use of dialogue in his essay clearly indicates he knew he was echoing Plato in reaching the same conclusion.
Collectively, these authors from the Enlightenment illustrate the capacity for, and importance of, Reason. Reason is the basis for understanding the material world. As such, it serves as the foundation upon which conservation biology can be understood and practiced. We can willingly conserve nature and its parts only through description and understanding rooted in reality. Mysticism has proven an insufficient foundation for conserving nature. Ultimately, it doubtless will prove inadequate for saving humanity as well.
It is not at all clear that humanity can be saved (or, for that matter, is worth saving). Evolution drives us to breed, drives to procreate, and drives us to accumulate resources. Evolution always pushes us toward the brink, and culture piles on, hurling us into the abyss. Nietzsche was correct about our lack of free will — as Gray points out in Straw Dogs — free will is an illusion. It’s not merely the foam on the beer: it’s the last bubble of foam, the one that just popped. It’s no surprise, then, that we are sleepwalking into the future, or that the future is a lethal cliff.
I’ll write more about the cliff next time, when I post the transcript of the talk that’s flying around cyberspace faster than the latest dirty joke (according to one reader).