Drink Up, Dreamers - Part 3
The phone rang and I answered it. Saved by the bell. I needed some time to think. It was my daughter, Kate, just calling to say hello. When I got back to my computer, a sticky awaited: I just watched that bit of al gores documentary again about denial and despair theres something that feels true there theres something that feels right
I smiled and sat down. “What feels true to you, Todd?” I asked.
it doesnt feel right to just be hopeless I mean we dont know we dont know whats possible weve done incredible things in the past did you watch that red hat thing weve been here before people saying we cant do something and we did it you dont know whats possible dude
I’d forgotten the Red Hat video. I took a moment and watched it. “You’re right, Todd,” I typed. “The future is not yet written. And I don’t have perfect knowledge of what’s possible. None of us do. But acknowledging that we don’t know what’s possible doesn’t mean, then, that anything and everything is possible. Our knowledge and understanding is not perfect, but neither is it useless and irrelevant. It’s possible, in an infinite universe, that the sun will rise tomorrow in the west. But I feel fairly certain in my prediction that it will not.”
“The Red Hat folk, bless their hearts, are trying to make a statement about standing up to those who would keep you down. Good for them. But to make their point they buy into and perpetuate one of the most deeply loved stories of Empire: human ingenuity can solve anything.”
and you dont think thats true
“I don’t. In fact, the situation we are in now is largely the result of our previous attempts to solve problems. We’re now talking about carbon sequestration… burying carbon back underground. Why? To solve the greenhouse warming problem caused by burning fossil fuels. Why were we burning fossil fuels? To solve the growing problems of feeding and warming and transporting and providing goods for people. Why were these things problems? Because the population was growing. And the population was growing based on previous solutions to these same problems.”
I stopped for a moment to listen to Peter Gabriel:
I took the old track
The hollow shoulder, across the waters
On the tall cliffs
They were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
And as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain was warm and soaked the crowd
Todd pasted another sticky: so you think we should have just stayed small and lived in caves and stuff
“I think the people of this culture will have to come to terms with the fact that there are limits, and that there are rules we have to follow if we want to be long-time members of the community of life. We’ve been running on arrogance and power and control and entitlement for so long now that we hardly notice. And now we’ve run up against a situation that cannot be solved, at least in the terms of the current dominant paradigm. We’ve set ourselves up perfectly to either learn what we need to learn, or to die in the attempt. As Peter Gabriel just pointed out, we’ve been riding high