Diamonds in the Sewer

Monday, March 05, 2007

If Gore is Wrong and Bush is wrong, who is right?

1. I was really worried ten-fifteen years ago but in retrospect we as the human race have made it out of the post-WW2 way of thinking and into a new world. I'm really excited and eager to see what's coming. I think Stewart Brand http://sb.longnow.org/Home.html has a bead on the world our children will make for us. http://www.longnow.org/

2. Don't forget the "golden oldies" phenomenon. When you read about the saved past you're reading a "best of" collection. Don't be lazy about it and neglect the step of looking at information collected at the time. The radio stations played lots of songs that are best forgotten. A lot of what was going on were false starts, wrong turns, blind tunnels, and bad ideas. Of all the homeschooling tools that I value the historical documents themselves -- the uncorrected past -- is what I treasure most that I got from my teachers, and what I value most having given to the people I've taught.

3. Don't forget the "happy amateur" phenomenon. Much of human advancement is done by people working for the pure delight of it, people who had nothing to gain by being right but who really, really cared about what they were seeing. A major advancement in paleontology was made by a man who looked at a bronze casting of a fossil mounted in the New York City subway station. I've passed that casting hundreds of times. The people who made it looked deeply. The man, woman, or child who has taken a spare moment to look -- has made history. There has been major world change made by hairy, stinky teens in their parent's garages.

4. You aren't changing your mind. You are making a brand new decision based on new information.

5. Don't forget the converse of #2. The past is fluid. What's important about what used to be is in constant flux. Moving through time is like walking through hilly ground -- what you can see from where you are, what's relevant and what's not -- will change. The raw events of the past do not change. What part of the past informs the future -- changes. By changing your future you can take a different -- better -- sample of your past with you. That much is in your power. That part is up to you.
There are a lot of hobbits on the march to destroy the ring of power, because a lot of people *get* that this kind of authority belongs in the hands of no one.