ISN'T IT IRONIC?

 

(Borrowed from the New Yorker cartoon archives.)

Maybe November and December have this effect, all those dim days and long dark evenings, but it gets you to thinking, ruminating.  Bear with me.

 ~

 

 

Now, right now, in case you haven't noticed, but of course you did, we can access everything–everything– in the digital world.  We know so much!  It’s all there!  For the taking. And it's free!  Most of it, anyway. Look it up.  We can express ourselves.  I'm doing that right here, actually. 

 

But can we stop loudly expressing every single opinion we have on all of it?

 

There is exciting new data available about almost everything around us. Take early humans, for instance: the complexity of earlier ages are being examined with new tools, and found to be far more interesting than we used to imagine.  Neanderthals were not hulking dim-witted pre-humanoids after all.  They had some kind of social norms, rituals, behaviors we are still working to interpret.  There are even more types of humanoids.  Dates for the development of societies, growth of towns, building of houses, forms of governing, are being pushed further and further back in time, and on a regular basis.  Understanding of diseases (sure, even Covid), the microscopic, the atomic, the cosmos, are yielding more secrets than even we uncovered as recently as ten or twenty years ago.   We know more about animal behavior.  Some laws even reflect that new knowledge. I could go on.

It was always the plan

To put the world in your hand

Hahaha

        Lyrics from  "Welcome to the Internet" from the album "Inside" by Bo Burnham

But are we any smarter because of it?

 

What happens in this country is usually reflected in what is happening everywhere else on the planet.  No surprise.  We’re all in this together, after all. But, honestly, nothing  is looking especially great.  I used to think we were really “getting it” with regard to all kinds of issues, mitigating pollution, for example.  We’re all recycling, aren’t we?  Even though it’s actually aspirational recycling.  We hope it’s working but we aren’t anywhere near certain it really is.  It's disappointing.  Every May there are groups organized in every town around here to pick up the trash dropped in ditches along the road the previous year.  All too many bags are full.  So if we’re not doing so great, what about elsewhere?  Not great.  I’ve looked at a hillside at a beautiful Buddhist monastery overlooking the Mekong River in Cambodia that was serving as a dump, all the junk tossed over the wall and down the hill, out of sight, out of mind. Old tires and whatnot along major roads in Russia, all of which is shrugged at helplessly. This is especially pronounced in failed states like Bosnia and parts of Croatia where it seems stuff is tossed into the woods to spite...what? Who?  Others!  Projects are planned in Chile that threaten areas of great beauty.  Ive seen logs piled in giant heaps taken from the Amazon.(and that was way upriver, with a thousand miles still to go.)  Even in Australia I watched plastic bags stuck onto tree lilmbs, waving like flags as they blew in the wind. At home, meanwhile, we can all see the burnt forests in California, pictures of coal sludge threatening wetlands, land drying up, and...you know, it goes on.

 

With new information about animal behavior we have a growing understanding of migration patterns, the effects of forest fragmentation, reproduction, evolution.  But who needs to go further than this state?  Leg-hold traps are still being used here for trapping.  (You might wonder why anyone is still trapping animals anyway, given that no one–almost no one–wears fur these days. Is trapping now the province of taxidermists?  Makes you wonder.)  Coyotes can be hunted in any manner, at any time, day or night, 365 days a year, tossed in ditches.  Bears can still be hunted with hounds wearing radio collars–not exactly your bear hounding of the 1700’s or 1800’s anymore when the hunters could wear themselves out chasing their dogs on foot.  Not that that period was some Golden Age of Hounding.  So much for our wildlife here in Vermont.  

 

 Are we getting simultaneously more filled with data and, yet, stupider?

 

 Hard to know, frankly.

Could I interest you in everything?

All of the time

A bit of everything

All of the time

Apathy's a tragedy

And boredom is a crime

Anything and everything

All of the time

Lyrics from "Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham on the album "Inside."

 

 

I was listening to NPR/VPR the other day, and happened to catch a program where they were talking about the deep discouragement that environmental activists and researchers sometimes–sadly, often–feel.  It can get bad enough to cause burnout, depression.  Maybe I’m super susceptible to this kind of thing, but while I was listening I began to feel really sad, discouraged.  I felt that way for much of that day. But at night I decided to watch a NOVA show about black holes and another that followed about the origin of the universe.  I was captivated.  It was exciting.  Work of the past several years have revealed so much that hadn’t been known before. (Not that I understood it all.) But hey, I thought, everything is bigger than I had been feeling.  There was so much fascinating stuff to think about and ponder.  I felt much better.  

Is science supposed to save us, make everything right?  Hah!  Half the world doesn’t even believe in science.

I have no idea.  I haven't even mentioned the human component, but I could reference the fact that the many of the same anti-vaccers who don't want the government "messing with their bodies," or "telling them what to do," support laws that have the government messing with women's bodies (presumably other people's bodies!) creating laws prohibiting abortion. There is a certain irony about it all, you have to admit.

~

Instead— Let us celebrate the dark days of early winter! 

 

Winter is icumen in,

Lhude sing Goddamm,

Raineth drop and staineth slop.

And how the wind doth ramm!

Sing: Goddamm.

 

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us.

An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river, turneth liver,

Damm you; Sing; Goddamm.

 

Goddamm, Goddamm, ‘tis why I am Goddamm.

So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.

 

Sing Goddamm, damm, sing goddamm

 

 

Ezra Pound

Or maybe it will snow.