Considering Dialectics

I’ve been asked by one reader to speak more simply. At first I balked at the request, and told him, “You get what you pay for.” Meaning, in this case, not that the blog was free, but that the harder we work at ideas that are difficult the more we get out of them. I’m ready now to give up on that notion, and speak plainly, and seek ideas that speak plainly to me.

            Right now I’m fascinated by the idea of dialectics – which, in the way I mean, could also mean I’m fascinated with the way dualisms move in the progression of one’s thought. Many take a single idea and then see opposing tensions inherent within that idea. From this they build a hopefully productive back-and-forth between the poles of tension. Others take oppositions/dualisms and seek to unify, to find the synthesis of the tensions, as a forward movement in one’s thought. Recently I’ve come across this interesting little quip from Dewey:

           I can see that I have always been interpreting dialectic wrong end up, the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth, and thus translated the physical tension into a moral thing... I don't know as I give the reality of this at all,... it seems so natural & commonplace now, but I never had anything take hold of me so.

           I like this quote because it makes me imagine the silhouette and growth pattern of a tree. I imagine something like the multiple bifurcations of branching as a fractal pattern of growth. And I think finally it makes sense to me that no theory, no philosophy will today describe all situations, or be everywhere applicable. There is no universal theory and every passing moment it becomes less possible. The relativist believes the world is full of truth…

Hazards & Heartland

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O7acht5JaM

From Newton's children to the Diver's clothes

Where is the truly radical located within the movement? Sustainability practitioners and theorists are easily pigeonholed with the well-intentioned social scientists of past and present, despite an often times fundamentally different orientation to the world. In turn, many a modern day social scientist sees a home in sustainability; yet how often is it really the new and radical movement that is perceived, and how often is the enticement merely the similarities, the few commonalities with that which existed previously? Academia as institution will surely conform the movement to its structures before it shifts its structures to accommodate the movement. Knowing this, how many deeply rooted, even born into the movement, still mean to venture and practice in the academia?

Advise from Love on Love

From a long conversation about changing a relationship came these things…

She wrote him, saying what she couldn’t voice, “I love who you are. I haven't known any friend as much like myself as I find in you now. I've grown apart from any friend I have ever known and find myself growing to this place that seems to be exactly where you are. At the same time, I feel extraordinarily ambivalent about our friendship. I value you dearly. And I grow weary. I can't stop being in love with you. I can't pretend that I won't have my heart broken repeatedly when you find the one you are looking for, if our friendship won't forever fit into the plans when your future love life unfolds, if our friendship is forsaken. I have to consider breaking my heart with you once will be easier to deal with in the long run than to do it several times over. Not having even friendship is an idea that hurts me terribly. I do not know how to remedy this.”

Then she wrote in sweet sustained invitation, “As an individual with some of the greatest insight I have ever wished to hear, would you have insight into this?”

A 1 Act 4 Idealism

Scene: A dusty smoky brothel. A single oppressively bright lamp shines down on a table occupied by Nietzsche’s distant and under appreciated half-brother. He is drunk, still drinking. A woman with rosy cheeks, a woman with sunglasses, a woman with no makeup(confidently), and a woman with dusty dry curls of brown sit with him at the table. While he rants in a slow and confident drunken slur, the women watch him and occasionally pass knowing glances to each other when he’s not looking.

Nietzsche’s half-brother:

Sustainability for some is a collective immortality flag; some may never see sustainability. Religion for some is a collective immortality flag; some may never see how religion promotes sustainability.  

Many read the history of war and violence – the history of oppressors, and see no signs of religion wholesome and in touch with a deep ecology.

The work of religion goes unseen.

Losing Victories Already Won?

A different public, existing in those times beyond the scope of my nature or my public, though perhaps not beyond my scope of natures or publics, lay in the 1950s and the inception of environmentalism as an anti movement. This distinction, this separation from my subject does not add grace to mine or any other historical project, yet this distance can hardly be a defect. For it is as the gaze of a lover’s longing, that science and its public’s infatuation with distance must be described; it is hard to trace a shape here, a meandering flow of consequences stretching to the horizon, no matter how distant the horizon, yet consequences felt ever more personally, ever more apparent on each and every doorstep. It is a connectedness of such depth and richness as cannot be fathomed, and so it is viewed from afar with scope and speculation, and it is pined after by intellect and passion.

The Gunnell to My Head

We should begin by considering how such an endeavor will be of use, and likewise speculate how it may do no great harm. It is conceivable that the sense of helplessness that accompanies the inspired passions of many a student of sustainability might have sprung up similarly in the early days of social science. But helplessness teased, dear professors of reason and criticism, must not make hopeless the student. Accordingly, when an eager student seeks to design solutions, even and perhaps especially solutions based in theory, all the various impediments and personal cynicism of the professors at attention will likely flame as dry tinder awaiting just such a spark.

Tracking Down the Wonder

Here's where Carson's The Sense of Wonder first appeared, as a magazine article. It wasn't published as a book until after she died. The magazine, Woman's Home Companion, began in 1873 and ended the year after Carson's article was published.

My Hypothesis (see Losing Victories Already Won):
is that despite Carson having won a National Book Award, etc., she is remembered in the public consciousness as the battler against DDT and big Ag Industry, rather than the woman who offered a deep wisdom for living in the world. I see this as a sign post in the anti of environmentalism today. I plan to research every instance of mention of Carson within Science magazine, and see if any mention her other work and if so how.

Dear Dolly Parton