Thursday, September 28, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
BIG history
These sound like potentially fascinating books. Have you read any of them? No? Yes? If so, what did you think?
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
by David Christian
Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past
by Patrick Manning
The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy
by Robert D. Kaplan
Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
by William Cronon
Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
by Jonathan Lear
The first book, Maps of Time, turns out to be the seminal work in a whole school of historical study of which I was completely and inexplicably unaware, called “big history” or “world history.” Not your high school social studies teacher’s world history, either. My sister’s partner is a student of the afore-mentioned David Christian, movement founder. (So that’s—let’s see—three degrees of separation?) Turns out Jared Diamond is arguably the best-known popularizer of the approach, although not, of course, an historian. And it seems to me that The Clock of the Long Now project also fits right in to this very big picture.
I can’t help but feel there is amazing, breathtaking, groundbreaking, though-provoking work going on around the globe. Everywhere.
That’s on my good days—but then, most of them are good.
p.s. Yes, yes, OK, I've ordered the first volume of Endgame by Derrick Jensen. It remains to be seen if I possess the, er, necessary fortitude to actually read it, and not employ it with other very large depressing books (such as anything by Laurie Garrett) as an impromptu flower press/end table/door stop.
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
by David Christian
Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past
by Patrick Manning
The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy
by Robert D. Kaplan
Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
by William Cronon
Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
by Jonathan Lear
The first book, Maps of Time, turns out to be the seminal work in a whole school of historical study of which I was completely and inexplicably unaware, called “big history” or “world history.” Not your high school social studies teacher’s world history, either. My sister’s partner is a student of the afore-mentioned David Christian, movement founder. (So that’s—let’s see—three degrees of separation?) Turns out Jared Diamond is arguably the best-known popularizer of the approach, although not, of course, an historian. And it seems to me that The Clock of the Long Now project also fits right in to this very big picture.
I can’t help but feel there is amazing, breathtaking, groundbreaking, though-provoking work going on around the globe. Everywhere.
That’s on my good days—but then, most of them are good.
p.s. Yes, yes, OK, I've ordered the first volume of Endgame by Derrick Jensen. It remains to be seen if I possess the, er, necessary fortitude to actually read it, and not employ it with other very large depressing books (such as anything by Laurie Garrett) as an impromptu flower press/end table/door stop.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Raw materials
Some days it seems as if the entire species is one seething mass of unexamined assumptions.
When we aren’t paying attention, we all tend to behave as if it’s possible for human beings to be …something other than human beings. We’d all be happy, healthy and morally upright if gender inequities were eliminated, true democracy instituted, the word of God made law, tribal lifestyles revived, corporations outlawed, breastfeeding banned in public—pick any utopian notion.
But would we? Can elephants be something other than elephants? Lizards, pigeons, luna moths something not envisioned in their respective genetic encoding? Is homo sapiens so different from other members of the Gaian family? What evidence supports this unexamined assumption?
Steven Pinker raises this question in The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature. He insists that there is such a thing as “human nature” and that human behavior tends to fall within certain recognizable parameters. In fact recent decades have seen quite a lot of research and speculation about what these givens might be and how immutable they are.
Our continued existence as a species now depends on our willingness to examine our own determinants, to understand and accept who we are. We must hope that amongst our basic instincts are some which can lead us away from self-destruction.
When we aren’t paying attention, we all tend to behave as if it’s possible for human beings to be …something other than human beings. We’d all be happy, healthy and morally upright if gender inequities were eliminated, true democracy instituted, the word of God made law, tribal lifestyles revived, corporations outlawed, breastfeeding banned in public—pick any utopian notion.
But would we? Can elephants be something other than elephants? Lizards, pigeons, luna moths something not envisioned in their respective genetic encoding? Is homo sapiens so different from other members of the Gaian family? What evidence supports this unexamined assumption?
Steven Pinker raises this question in The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature. He insists that there is such a thing as “human nature” and that human behavior tends to fall within certain recognizable parameters. In fact recent decades have seen quite a lot of research and speculation about what these givens might be and how immutable they are.
Our continued existence as a species now depends on our willingness to examine our own determinants, to understand and accept who we are. We must hope that amongst our basic instincts are some which can lead us away from self-destruction.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Unreasonable accommodation OR the dilemma of attenuated feedback
My little toes began to hurt. Sharp pains, thickened calluses, and then small wounds the podiatrist called “ulcerations.” He explained that these, the outermost of my toes, tend to rotate so that their sides meet the ground, rather than the padded bottoms.
Huh.
No, there wasn’t really a way to prevent it, but if I wanted to come in whenever it got too uncomfortable, there were some minor outpatient procedures he’d perform to relieve the pain.
OK.
He didn’t know why it was worse for me in the summer. Was I more likely to go barefoot?
Not really.
Then one summer day I looked down at my Birkenstocks. My wonderful old Birkies, famous for molding themselves to the wearer’s feet. As mine had. They’d lovingly embraced my quirky little toes, accommodated dysfunctionality—and amplified it. They actually encouraged my toes to roll out.
Something comfortable which, in time, produced discomfort. All of which might be an argument for spending some time outside your comfort zone.
In fact, it’s a case of long-delayed consequences. It didn’t feel bad when the weather warmed and I first put the sandals on. It felt good. There was absolutely no reason to suppose the shoes would ever cause a problem. The problem only became perceptible months later.
So much is learned from consequences. We connect cause with effect, effect with cause. It’s difficult to do, however, when the consequences of an action are delayed beyond one’s event horizon. All around us we see the disasters, now, of unintended, unanticipated consequences.
How can we improve our ability to anticipate?
Huh.
No, there wasn’t really a way to prevent it, but if I wanted to come in whenever it got too uncomfortable, there were some minor outpatient procedures he’d perform to relieve the pain.
OK.
He didn’t know why it was worse for me in the summer. Was I more likely to go barefoot?
Not really.
Then one summer day I looked down at my Birkenstocks. My wonderful old Birkies, famous for molding themselves to the wearer’s feet. As mine had. They’d lovingly embraced my quirky little toes, accommodated dysfunctionality—and amplified it. They actually encouraged my toes to roll out.
Something comfortable which, in time, produced discomfort. All of which might be an argument for spending some time outside your comfort zone.
In fact, it’s a case of long-delayed consequences. It didn’t feel bad when the weather warmed and I first put the sandals on. It felt good. There was absolutely no reason to suppose the shoes would ever cause a problem. The problem only became perceptible months later.
So much is learned from consequences. We connect cause with effect, effect with cause. It’s difficult to do, however, when the consequences of an action are delayed beyond one’s event horizon. All around us we see the disasters, now, of unintended, unanticipated consequences.
How can we improve our ability to anticipate?
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