Delight Springs

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Sally Brown's new philosophy

Back from the long Labor Day weekend, from the last regular season Sounds game, from Cheekwood, from biking the former railbed, and from practicing life in the empty nest, with more of Goldstein's Plato in CoPhi. Then in Environmental Ethics we'll consider Naomi Klein's contention that our aversion to long-term planning and our inability to so "no" have cut us off from past and future. Our entire present is a state of deep disconnect.

Plato's Ring of Gyges might be a tempting tool to use, to try and restore our lost connections. Would that end justify duplicitous means? What would Sally Brown say?*

Some scientists can't see the philosophical forest for the trees and thus become trapped in generational prejudice. They become philosophy jeerers, programmatically Ionian but without the enchantment. As for Goldstein, Russell's History was the source of her first philosophical enchantment.

Just say "no," says Klein, "to pipelines linked to expanded extraction," to coal, and to "demands to open up new carbon frontiers (like the oil trapped under melting Arctic ice)." Saying no the the Alberta tar sands was a nice, if belated, start. [SciAm]
*No!! I like it! "No!" That's a good philosophy.
"No!" "No!" "No!"

[SCHROEDER]
That's you new philosophy, huh?

[SALLY]
Yes. I mean-- "No!"
==
"On this date in 1847, Henry David Thoreau left Walden Pond..." He'd have said no to all that, and an emphatic yes to David Budbill's shining present.
...the crippling power of mind, the curse of thought,
and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find
this shining moment in the now. WA

5:45/6:25, 69/95, 7:06

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