Momentous

LISTEN. We're burrowing deeper, in CoPhi today, into Why Grow Up and its discussion of Hannah Arendt's observation that "education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it... [and] where we decide whether we love our children enough... to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world." I wonder how many of us working academics regularly remind ourselves of that momentous mission statement. It definitely raises the stakes.

We're talking Energy in Environmental Ethics. Given the current relative percentages of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and energy derived from renewables, it does feel like "a momentous turning point in civilization"--if you can believe that we're really about to turn. 

Or will we falter, as Bill McKibben asked in his eponymous book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? It's increasingly easy to think so, but “let's be, for a while, true optimists, and operate on the assumption that human beings are not grossly defective. Let's assume we're capable of acting together to do remarkable things.” 

We've done so before... though never before have so many in positions of influence been so cavalier about believing things they know to be untrue. That's a profound corruption of the media and political environment we're going to have to solve. Meanwhile, the best and wisest parents will continue to teach their children that social justice and a better world of equal opportunity and universal inclusion are democratic ideals still worth seeking. They'll concede that life is hard but insist that it is not pointlessly absurd. It matters.

One thing that matters to me but is making life hard at the moment is the imminent return-to-ground of the Tennessee Philosophical Association (TPA) this coming weekend at Vandy. It's hard, that is, to find the time to really focus on preparing my comments for the session whose presenter proposes a sharp distinction between secularism and secularity. 

That sounds hair-splitting, but I hope to conclude that it's just a verbally confusing but still fundamentally sound insight. Unlike many of my peers, I don't like to be contrary and disagreeable at philosophy conferences. I like instead to listen, ponder, and discover common ground, and then declare victoriously, "Look at what we found!" I like, in other words, to CoPhilosophize in the spirit of attentive collaboration and constructive, respectful, mutual criticism. That's where the wisdom comes from, and that's when philosophy is a delight. 

That's also the spirit required, if we're all to meet the "momentous turning point in civilization" dead ahead. We can use the practice.