As the world moves, I find myself at age 88 of going out together. A kind last date, I have not prepared for, especially financially. You might hear from me again since the urge to write is so compelling.

My thought for today is about the difference between science and the humanities. Science strives for one coherent picture of the world and dislikes discontinuities. The humanities on the other side thrive on conflict, conversation. and clarifying differences, not in eliminating them.

it will be fatal, but then I’m 88 and can’t complain. I do hope to return to daily writing on the blog.

part of the reason for my silence has also been that in this chaotic time it’s very hard to have something to say that everyone has not already thought. I have two trends of thinking to share. The first is historical, political nations, and empires are always in motion. Democracy become oligarchies monarchies become democracy. It is important to realize that we have to navigate constant change and not try to prevent things from changing.

. Democracy become oligarchies monarchies become democracy. It is important to realize that we have to navigate constant change and not try to prevent things from changing.

The second thought is purely psychological. we tend to think that in thinking one part of the brain is talking to another part. I think this is mostly wrong. The thought that I have was out of my brain in the space and into the brain of another person who’s listening and the impact on that person returns back to the original thinker. The implication is it takes more than one person to be thoughtful a good example is when trying to recall a name with a friend and might say something like I think it begins with R. and the other person immediately says Robert, which is correct

Neither Trump nor Musk want to be president. It is only a means to what they do want.

Trump wants to turn the world into a real estate deal-making zone, so he wants to convert politics into a market where he can buy and sell and trade and get richer.

Musk wants to destroy the government that exists to free up the tax money that supports them so he can use that money to get to Mars and get a leadingplace in history.

The rest of us are left without a government. History suggests that it is time for a new constitutional convention, but in the context of climate change, it will be very hard to do.

I would say that this idea of being in an incomplete revolution is the defining situation of our time. We have our work cut out for us.

Doug

Many efforts, mostly small, toward recovery from the bad effects of climate change are emerging with vigor. Yet many regions and populations are still, and will remain in rapid and consequential decline. Two major efforts will be important: the development of people, and the development of food and its contexts. Viability under existing and evolving conditions will be hard to achieve.

When trying to implement the needed agricultural and social development, it is much easier for people to understand what is being asked of them if we lay out paths forward that are already prefigured in their long-standing desires, and goals that don't require new language and living arrangements.

People talk about what to do after climate events as if we can get from here to a better world in one phase spread out in time. That step is often called “energy transition.” All versions of this trend usually have the goal of the hope that the rest of the economy remains functioning as is, with no substantive change in the legal structure of society. This is not likely as the first step is likely to be toward a resurrection of the culture, tech, and society we are leaving behind and is the cause of the social and ecological collapse through the over-extraction of wealth from the people and the land.

I am proposing that we think of redevelopment post-climate as a two-phase project.

In the first phase, we go along with the way things seem to be going - reorganizing work in projects using industrial techniques and highly processed insecticides and fertilizers. We can expect - and hope - that these efforts, facing very difficult climate conditions of varying mixtures of heat, drought, rain, and flood. The proposal goes along with the way people are already expecting a plausible positive future they can align with.

This attempt to reestablish old methods will face strong emerging tsunamis of climate extremes. These well-meaning efforts will run out of energy, and deal with crop (and human) failure because of drought...

If climate destruction comes on too fast, people will scurry to find short-term make-do projects. I have called these lifeboat strategies: take enough to survive. Because these are going to be the immediate chosen path, it is important for local leaders to work on provisioning the lifeboats now. We have some examples of this process underway, with very interesting sidebars.

For example, it is important to see that Bhutan's shift of national accounting from GDP to GNH, gross national happiness, is fairly well understood internationally, though depth is uncertain. The key to GNH is the understanding that people are better off than they think they are and that the difference is a shift in perspective as to what constitutes quality of life.

more coming

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