In the Nick of Time

Yesterday, from the Denver Post, disgust and frustration.  Today, from last month's issue of Orion, perspective, and hope:

"With one frame for each year of the Earth's 4.6-biollion-year history--there are twenty-four frames in a second--a film of that history would run for six years, all day, all night, every day of the week....   And in the last three seconds of the last night of the last month of the last year would arrive and pass the great events of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.  That's it.  Three seconds out of six years.

Such perspective nurtures sanity.  So does this:  99.9 percent of all species that have evern evolved on this planet are gone forever.

Civilization is not a given.  Extinction is.

[...]

Here's what I know:  I know that when you find yourself free of the poisons that too much angst can cultivate, then something marvelous happens.  You can sense how very old the planet is, how very old life and death are, and you can keep going on, you can keep doing the work you do in this universe, feeling despair when you feel despair, feelilng--amazing--joy when you can feel joy."

--From "The Consolations of Extinction" by Christopher Cokinos

 

Breathe.  All is Eternal.  And everything in life is only for now.  Breathe

 

"Extrapolating from the records being accessed, I realized that the initial estimate of a hundred thousand organizations was off by at least a factor of ten.  I now believe there are over one million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice.  Maybe two.

[...]

What does meet the eye is compelling:  tens of millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world."

--from "To Remake the World" by Paul Hawken

Breathe.  You are not separate, not alone, but a part of everything.  All is divine. 

Breathe.

Classroom Notes

 

Notes from the classroom:  A humanist lost in an engineer's world.

***

Me:  "Okay.  So we've just finished watching two documentaries on global climate change.  One, An Inconvenient Truth, makes compelling claims that suggest global warming is an impending or ongoing crisis of severe proportions.  The other, Global Warming:  Hype or Hazard? suggests that, while we may all agree the climate is warming and that we are contributing to that warming, climatologists don't understand enough about the phenomena to support policies like Kyoto, and certainly don't know enough to call this a crisis.  What do you all think?"

Student:  "Clearly the Al Gore movie is just left-wing propaganda.  He's just trying to get elected."

Me:  "So, you think he's just making all that stuff up to get elected?"

Student:  "Pretty much."

***

If I have to grade one more paper on how the special effects in Star Wars or The Matrix were groundbreaking, I'm gonna hurl.

***

Me:  "I want to encourage everyone to refrain from using the terms 'mankind' and 'man' in your writing.  Terms like 'humankind' and 'human' reflect a more mature and inclusive understanding of history and identity."

Students:  General outrage, from the women especially.  "I know that when someone writes man, they mean me, too!  That's ridiculous!  Left-wing propaganda."

That semester, I graded ten final papers which went out of their way to refer to "mankind."

***

Me:  "So!  Let's discuss what you all think are the more pressing environmental issues of the day.  What matters to you?  What is important?  How do we figure out what's really going on with these issues, and what our own responsibilities as citizens of the world are?"

Student #1:  "I think a lot about water quality, and the availability of all people to get to water.  And droughts and stuff."

Student #2:  "Overpopulation.  What does it mean for our food sources?  For natural resources?  So many people are having tons of kids."

Student #3, after a long pause:  "I'm worried about gun control fanatics.  Where I come from [Idaho], there are people trying to tell me I can't carry my rifle in the front seat of my truck.  What's up with that?"

 

What's up with that, indeed.