How should we react to imperfect knowledge? We are dealing with enigmas here and know the price of inaction is potentially very high. However, the cost of action is even higher, rather like a first date in high school.
Consider concepts of pain and truth: an embrace; a memory; a survival. Truth is undeniably valuable, but values not embodied by behavior don't exist. Consider life on the Sun. Life does indeed exist on the Sun, but it's so hot there that each generation lives only a billionth of a second.
Pain and truth. It causes us to suffer anxiety and depression, to take drugs: Celexa, Lorazepam, Lexapro and others that sound even more like porn-stars. I now prefer cabernet sauvignon, but can't get Medicare to cover it.
Pain and truth. Accepting responsibility together despite differences creates trust. It was too late for a lot of us, but on January 21st, 1977 --his first day in office-- Jimmy Carter promised unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft. That's the kind of True News that should be made into a national holiday --the kind of news that woke us from enchanted sleep and brought us together. Fake news and Fake enchanters do the opposite.
Consider Gilbert and Sullivan. The citizens awake and chorus, "Why, where be Oi, and what be Oi a-doin'?"
Gilbert and Sullivan,"Sorcerer"
And keep a suspicious eye out on the giant lily over Ft. Lauderdale.
Fake news is a real problem and action should be taken against it regardless of price.
ReplyDeletePain and Truth can indeed cause anxiety and distress, but also bring people together and make them assume responsability in life.
Gorgeous lily! Lovely video!
Thank you, Duta. There is great strength in the unity you describe.
DeleteI am very tired of hearing the ACTUAL fake news coming from one certain source and his minions. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteNow Jimmy Carter - there was a president (and a man) worthy of the name.
0_Jenny, he tried hard to bring unity and compassion to the presidency and largely succeeded. Happily Jimmy Carter is still with us at age 94.
DeleteStopping the proliferation of fake news... the REAL fake news, not the stuff the faker-in-chief likes to CALL fake... will be more difficult than stopping a horny rabbit from multiplying. Way too many people get their "news" from questionable online sources, and then they spread it to everybody they know, who spread it to everybody they know, ad infinitum. It's horrifying. I used to reply to the full-of-it emails people would sometimes send me, along with a link to the facts behind their so-called story. Didn't make any difference, so I stopped. People tend to believe what they want to believe, and if they can find a "news" story that corroborates what they already believe, no matter how ridiculous and untrue that may be, they're happy campers, who feel vindicated and supported in their beliefs.
ReplyDeleteYour paragraph about anxiety and depression and the failure of Medicare to cover our self-treatment with wine made me laugh, and I think that's the answer. We simply can't take what's happening too seriously. We have to find the humor, and we have to find reasons to laugh. This, too, will pass, dude. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. 2020, perhaps?
Dear Susan, I sure hope 2020 will be suggestive of good vision --for social and political visionaries everywhere. I make jokes about anti-anxiety med-names, but dealing with life has occasionally given me what Thurber called "the permanent jumps". I have used some of those drugs and can't disparage their effect. 15 years ago I had my heart rebuilt and last year I had cancer, both recreations made me nervous. Lorazepam is really good with cabernet, but few bartenders will bill insurance or take a copay. Oh I just love your whole comment.
DeleteHeavy stuff, Geo.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of Carter prompts this; his was the first inaugural I covered. As President and later in life, I interviewed him. He is an admirable man. I think some of his words as President were some of the most honorable, authentic and visionary.
I think he will be treated kindly by history, when words and speeches have as much influence as events and occurrences in the measure of a President and his or her integrity. Events can be lost in the flow of history, but a person's thoughts and character are reflected in their words.
BTW, fake or not, I kind of like the idea of a Giant Lilly over the coast.
Dear Tom, Indeed, I too trust history will treat Mr. Carter kindly, as he has treated others kindly. I'm especially appreciative for comment by one who conscientiously helped articulate history to the public.
DeleteTo my view, Jimmy Carter was the last genuinely moral president we've had, Barack Obama excepted. Clinton was a political opportunist and personal disaster, and the four Republicans who have served since then have enough blood and misery and death between them to lay a new foundation of Hell several times over. How America replaced that man with Reagan is something I will never understand.
ReplyDeleteDear BrightenedBoy, We've straddled two centuries, enough to see the path to equity, peace and general compassion is not a level one. It's rife with dips and grades, steep ones. I too was puzzled by Reagan's election --he had served as governor in my state and I disagreed with his treatment of civil dissent (I disliked having a rifle trained on me in Berkeley). But I remember the three times I met him and was impressed by his courtesy. Later I was impressed with his address at the Brandenburg Gate ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."). Dips and Grades. Now we got a president who wants to build a southern border wall at the expense of Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act. There's just no comparison.
DeleteFake and fakers. there is nothing new under the sun Eccl. 1:9
ReplyDeleteDear Susan, Ecclesiastes' investigation of life and meaning has long-been a favorite piece of writing for me. I welcome its wisdom --time and space are reconstructed in harmony with each passing moment. When we feel the moment within ourselves, we proceed toward truth.
DeleteOh, that addition of a bit of Gilbert & Sullivan was tasty, Geo. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteOh Bruce, there are times in life when one wonders where one really is and what one's really doing --as a citizen and a human-- and they are addressed nicely in that song.
DeleteI've postponed/avoided commenting on this one Geo. Carter was the first glimmer of hope for me as an adult. Kennedy, in '63, was still to early for me to vote. Obama, decades later, was an enigma to me from the beginning. What if, eh? Is that what we are left with, near end of life, is what if's?? Or, is it logical, and we've been expecting the wrong things. I've tried to reconcile myself to tell my kids, who expect far too much wisdom from me, that I don't know. I don't know how their life will play out. I give them my best guesses, passports, plans, etc, but who the fuck knows what will happen. Remember when Carter, the Bob Dylan fan, was elected? Who would have guessed our current state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteAlways, your friend, Mike
Dear Mike, I've delayed posting past this entry out of indolence but also from a desire to see what others think. I think you have dispersed that enchantment as I wake to wonder "where be I, and what be I a-doin'?" When my children --now ranging from mid-30s to late-40s-- asked what I thought of political enigmas, I'd say, "well, this aint my first radio." They asked if I meant "rodeo". No, I mean I listened to the radio in my parents' bedroom-- Amos and Andy, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly. The McGees had these wonderful neighbors that provided all sorts of fun, but what always made me laugh most was when McGee would open the closet and set off the weekly huge avalanche. Somehow, McGee would always find something useful in the resulting mess. Even though there were rodeos here when I was a kid, I was never interested. Radio? Radio was (still is) an important part of my education. I still collect and rebuild them. It would appear politicians have favored rodeos.
DeleteHi, Geo! I'm back from a trip again, just a week long visit to the Las Vegas area. Terry is hot to move there. I have a brother-in-law who collects and rebuilds radios. He has quite a passion for it. I think the fortnight lily is the loveliest fake news I've seen lately. I see the deliberate assaults on truth and the mainstream media as dire threats to our democracy. Carter will be treated much kinder by history than the White House's current occupant who is becoming scarier and scarier. I greatly admire Carter as a person and as a man who lives his faith. "...but values not embodied by behavior don't exist." ~ So very true, and that fact makes me cringe (or worse) when Trump talks about believing in God and doubly so the "Christians" who support him. I enjoy all the red wines and some white ~ much more satisfying than the Lexapro generic I must take for the rest of my life. I've never heard of the possibility of life on the sun, so perhaps one of your enigmas is going right over my head. I hope you are feeling better and stronger.
ReplyDeleteDear Louise, I am so happy to hear from you and very glad you enjoyed Las Vegas. My sister, Minnie, recreates there sometimes and our brother Frank made his home in Reno 40 years ago. Nevada is truly a credit to the geological dreamland that is America. I must confess that I excluded my personal SSRI from mention because Zoloft is an unglamorous name --maybe more suggestive of an intractable Russian General than anything more pleasant. But, it keeps my jumps in check. Rational people have been taking a lot of blows from administration lately and your take on "the current occupant" is quite on the mark. Thanks for your great comment!
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