the end

by sam enderby 2/11/2014

"There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent"- R.W. Emerson ("History")

"There really is only one world soul, which I for preference call my soul and as which alone I conceive what I call the soul of others"- L. Wittgenstein

In the end we're all toast anyway. Frozen dust perhaps? Everyone and everything. Unless we take Dr. Hawking's advise and get the hell off this orb we're doomed and our little dog, too. He's figuring another 300 to 1000 years and we should all live so long (wait-on second thought) . Of course if we do make it off this planet in time- find another life-sustaining ball spinning around

out beyond the outskirts of Cassiopeia or at least beyond Bayonne we'd probably wind up wrecking that sphere too within unreasonable time. In all of god's blue Earth there aren't that many of us who have learned not to hate or at the very least learn how not to distrust someone because they are different than you are; speak differently;  believe differently, look differently, eat differently, dress and even work differently. As if we inhabit this one planet with aliens -  and according to Prof. Hawking when we meet the real aliens OUT There- R U N ! -  who need to be controlled, enslaved , and, eventually, exterminated-because they ain't US. And we're going to take such basic earthbound sentiments along to a new world that is if we can agree to who gets to go? That should be interesting-if and when that time draws nigh. Well you and I won't be around if that leave-taking earth day ever comes (maybe Ted Williams can still make it-someone should reserve a seat for him)

(Oil on canvas by Jacqueline Jolles)

 but our descendants will be and I can't be convinced that they will take along for the long journey the same old faults and ignorance and hatreds that we seem to always have- part of our DNA I guess because we never learn as I say,. Why just the knowledge and know-how to be able to do that- take off for distant stars - came with a price too horrible to imagine and yet there we go and here we are. So what EXACTLY are we supposed to learn from HISTORY?  If its how to be better humans - forgedaboutit.  And that includes everyone. Memo to Pew and Gallup: Be sure to question all Republicans on what should be America's goal in the next 300 years- A deficit of 0 ? or good jobs and decent wages for everyone? That is if there is still an America to be around. I guess as long as we stay away from the drinking water in West Virginia, keep praying and dancing for rain in California, keep clear of any mismanaged (ha!) nuclear waste and assorted toxic chemical sites , stop ingesting too much contaminated meat and sugarinfused snacks (damn), limit our burning of fossil fuels (perhaps just for the weekend grill), stop paying heed to the NRA and if need be start treating the sale and use of guns as we do cars (for a start), start buying coastal properties in western Tennessee or at least in West Carolina,  because we're in big trouble here as Prof Hill tried to tell the Iowa caucuses and we will not allow ourselves the communal will and imagination to do anything substantial about it. But don't take only my word for it ( Memo to myself for a future post (maybe) - the sign on the message board outside that church atop Scotchtown hill read yesterday: "Words are the windows to our hearts".- ) As it seems to be always the case here at the Joyful Moocher we are on the same worldly wavelength with our more articulate brothers and sisters; I know its easy - too easy at times to be drawn to those that we are more -what? simpatico? have the same or almost the same political bent? are fans of Willie Mays (although I have big problem with George Will-, Murray Kempton was one thing, but Will? Hey, its baseball afterall.)?

["Humanity will disappear in 300 years. The word 'apocalypse' appears in the media on a regular basis. Some scientists believe that the planet will be destroyed as a result of the Third World War, others believe that it will be a deluge. Some others predict an impact with an asteroid. The list is endless. Recently, however, the most popular idea is the idea of ​​global warming. Thus, according to forecasts of Australian scientists, by 2300, due to global warming, humanity will not be able to exist normally on Earth. A change of the thermal regime will change the moisturizing regime. All this may undermine the natural water cycle. The speed of the increase of temperatures and the reaction of the entire climate system to this factor will play a decisive role in the process."]

As we have pointed out in other posts and related sites the similitude of our concerns and thoughts are already well articulated by quite a few others, not surprisingly, of our liberal cast. But I guess that's always the case. What I can never understand-satisfactorily- is why those who aren't of similar reflection cannot see the folly or if you prefer the evil of their way. (Just by way of example: in a country where children are starving and in too many cases, dying because of inadequate healthcare- why would someone who can help alleviate such conditions by voting to increase food allotments and extending health benefits -why would they vote to do the opposite and site some Dickensian-sounding mean-ness as an excuse to do so while alleviating even more of the infinitely affordable taxes of the very rich and adding on to the burdens of the poor? Nobody can think such a course is right without keeping some other -nefarious, perhaps, evil in mind. Don't you dare Sunday- morning- TV paralogize this)  

"According to Australian experts, in 300 years, more than 40 percent of land will be flooded. The remaining part of the land will quickly use up all available resources and become unsuitable for human life. The scientists say that in 300 years, average annual temperatures will grow by 12 degrees, which will have a devastating impact on people. It is quite possible that we do not have 1,000 years to live on this planet, as Hawking said. Will mankind be able to live in space?"- S.Vasilenkov

I had an inkling, a hint of what I wanted to jot down - usually around 3 or 4 in the morning while in bed and too warm and comfortable to emerge from out of the covers to make notes and when I did finally emerge I find -these olden days-that the very act of putting pen to paper is quite arduous for me as my hand and fingers tighten too soon and after a brief stint I find I cannot even read what I had been writing and as for my Mac program and my blogging -well, lets just say I am at the mercy of poor excuses and technological glitches I have no understanding of and spend a good deal of my time writing e-mails to "hosting services" and talking to customer service reps in Mumbai who are incredibly patient

with this grouchy old man who wakes up ( my dog is always grateful that I did, my wife, I'm not too sure although she does makes me coffee every morn) to a world of forgotten dreams and a new ache.  It had to do with connections - again. I wanted to somehow share with my reader the unremarkable happenstance while reading a new (?) Roger Rosenblatt memoir I came across the passages of his walking around Herman Melville's old neighborhood in Manhattan - Rosenblatt grew up near Gramercy Park - and Melville lived for a time on 26th St -well anyway no sooner than I put this aside I come across -online- a rather poignant and extraordinary article by the great Chris Hedges for whom "the most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage. He is our foremost oracle."

Of course Mr. Hedges isn't the first to offer up Melville as our great chronicler of power and authority and, even, virtue (talk about forgotten dreams) but nevertheless to come across old Herman twice in the course of a solitary morning should be taken - I believe- as some kind of wake up call-again. Mr. Hedges considers: 

       "Yet we, like Ahab and his crew, rationalize our collective madness. All calls for prudence, for halting the march toward economic, political and environmental catastrophe, for sane limits on carbon emissions, are ignored or ridiculed. Even with the flashing red lights before us, the increased droughts, rapid melting of glaciers and Arctic ice, monster tornadoes, vast hurricanes, crop failures, floods, raging wildfires and soaring temperatures, we bow slavishly before hedonism and greed and the enticing illusion of limitless power, intelligence and prowess.

      The corporate assault on culture, journalism, education, the arts and critical thinking has left those who speak this truth marginalized and ignored, frantic Cassandras who are viewed as slightly unhinged and depressingly apocalyptic. We are consumed by a mania for hope, which our corporate masters lavishly provide, at the expense of truth." 

Still there is much ambiguity in Melville (as there should be) but you know that somewhere in this favored land his spirit (and words) reside with the crew of the

Pequod and workingmen and women everywhere. He may have had Capt. Vere hang Billy Budd but he at least made him cry in his heart for the rest of his shortened life.

"As the planet begins to convulse with fury, as the senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion implodes the global economy, as our civil liberties are eviscerated in the name of national security, shackling us to an interconnected security and surveillance state that stretches from Moscow to Istanbul to New York, how shall we endure and resist?"
And he answers:

Our hope lies in the human imagination. 

And toward the end of his thoughtful and so well-written ( as always) article Mr. Hedges posits a course of action for the rest of us to perhaps- if we dare- follow. 
It is only those who harness their imagination, and through their imagination find the courage to peer into the molten pit, who can minister to the suffering of those around them. It is only they who can find the physical and psychological strength to resist. Resistance is carried out not for its success, but because by resisting in every way possible we affirm life. And those who resist in the years ahead will be those who are infected with this “sublime madness.” As Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” the only morally reliable people are not those who say “this is wrong” or “this should not be done,” but those who say “I can’t.” They know that as Immanuel Kant wrote: “If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.” And this means that, like Socrates, we must come to a place where it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. We must at once see and act, and given what it means to see, this will require the surmounting of despair, not by reason, but by faith.

Homer, Dante, Beethoven, Melville, Dostoevsky, Proust, Joyce, W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson and James Baldwin, along with artists such as the sculptor David Smith, the photographer Diane Arbus and the blues musician Charley Patton, all had it. It is the sublime madness that lets one sing, as bluesman Ishman Bracey did in Hinds County, Miss., “I’ve been down so long, Lawd, down don’t worry me.” And yet in the mists of the imagination also lie the absurdity and certainty of divine justice:"   

It reminded me of another passionate and articulate teacher who taught about the history of  American education and who wrote in a book published over 40 years ago :

"The grounds for the establishment of limits are already present in the works of the giants of the twentieth century. Freud, Dewey, Einstein, Sartre, Schweitzer,Camus, Oppenheimer, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, Orwell, Russell, and Buber called for an end to the monism of pure science or pure religion or pure individualism. They also refused to adjust to dualisms which end by favouring one side and tolerating the other. They disregarded the drive to promote exact definitions free of emotions. They accepted the present and acted in it, promoting full, human possibility inside the present. ..schools need to clarify these grounds and need to keep clarifying them so that everyman can establish limits not out of desperation or despair, but through hope and faith in the worth of fellow men living together in a new version of communities."   - B. Mehl, Classic Educational Ideas

I confess I have many books within reach as it is a constant wonderment to me  how alike the good people are and unfortunately the converse and sometimes how much certain opposites are more alike than they care to realize let alone admit ( why just see an old post we called "The Commonwealth").  And yet for some dumb reason each succeeding generation has to learn and unlearn once again what it means to live together.  Is it not so that ever since some brilliant s o b  came up with the concept of the "American way of life" it is left to the generation coming of age to try to solve the same old problems  that for a number of reasons should have been worked out long ago; how to be with one another. C'mon people lets get it together. (But we don't.)    There is a book recently reviewed by Al Gore in last Sunday's NYTimes chronicling what is referred to as the sixth mass extinction which is being caused by what biologists and scientists and Algore-ists know to be man-made climate change - although NBC and CBS and Fox  still seem to think there should be discussion on the matter - pretend its not happening or their ginormous oil company ad revenue may get hurt feelings ( I wonder if that blonde actress who shills in black pants outfits for the American Petroleum Institute and whose ads play on every channel I have ever watched and more recently has been seen

hawking the godbearing gifts of fracking for shale oil is among the richest performers on earth- but its not really my business - but, oh, the deviousness) if the so-called news reporters and readers so much as whisper that they are among those that are responsible for, as Al notes, "destroying the integrity of our planet's ecology" ( which sort of fits our attractive spokewoman's shushing gesture in some of those commercials, you know "don't tell anyone how lucrative and earth destroying this really is').  Of course we are destroying our only planet ( and with opening day  7 weeks away) and of course there are many things we can start doing about saving? it; at least prolonging the inevitable? Because somewhere back in those historical extinction epochs or whatever it seems COMMON SENSE went the way of the last dinosaur. For every Al Gore (I hope this doesn't give him a swell head) and Prof. Hawking there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of Fox Hate watchers and holier than thou believers and American states who insist that creationism be included in their children's text books. Get on board The Pequod boys and girls the voyage has just begun.   



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The rate of global temperature rise mayhave hit a plateau, but a climate crisis still looms in the near future

Mar 18, 2014 |By Michael E. Mann                                                                                                                                          

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One-Fifth of China’s Farmland Is

Polluted, State Study Finds

By EDWARD WONG, NYTIMES

APRIL 17, 2014

BEIJING — The Chinese government released a report on Thursday that said nearly one-fifth of its arable land was polluted, a finding certain to raise questions about the toxic results of China’s rapid industrialization, its lack of regulations over commercial interests and the consequences for the national food chain.

The report, issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land Resources, said 16.1 percent of the country’s soil was polluted, including 19.4 percent of farmland. The report was based on a study done from April 2005 to last December on more than 2.4 million square miles of land across mainland China, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

The report said that “the main pollution source is human industrial and agricultural activities,” according to Xinhua. More specifically, factory waste products, irrigation of land by polluted water, the improper use of fertilizers and pesticides, and livestock breeding have all resulted in tainted farmland, the report said.

The study found that 82.8 percent of the polluted land was contaminated by inorganic material. The most common pollutants were cadmium, nickel and arsenic, and the levels of these materials in the soil had risen sharply since land studies in 1986 and 1990. The level of cadmium had risen by 50 percent in the southwest and in coastal areas and by 10 percent to 40 percent in other regions, Xinhua reported. The soil in southern China is more polluted than in the north.

The report confirms spreading fears among many officials and ordinary Chinese that the country’s soil has been in severe decline. Its numbers also indicate a more serious problem than statistics did in a book published in early 2013 by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” which said one-sixth of China’s arable land, or nearly 50 million acres, was polluted.