by MegaDude 4 Replies latest jw friends
I am going to challenge you today to revise your thinking, and to reconsider some fundamental assumptions. Assumptions so deeply embedded in our consciousness that we don’t even realize they are there...
speech by Michael Crichton
go to... http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/
click on
Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21 st Century
Hi Megadude,
Mustang gave me Crichton's book, "State of Fear." In it, Crichton uses a story line to unravel environmental issues, largely global warming. Unlike most authors, Crichton is a scientist. He made a thorough study of the topic and and honest effort to uncover the truth. He found in the end that science itself really does not know the answers, and that we may be wringing our hands over global warming all for nothing.
Thanks for the link. - Jim Whitney
I find it hard to decide who to believe when you see so many different opinions of stuff like this. It's sort of like religion, everyone has an opinion but no one has the facts to back it up.
Ken P.
In a sober moment, right now, eating a carrot, it occurs to me now that what stings the most is that people who can find even the least bit of scientific absense of data, fact, consensus, truth, take that as carte blanche to utterly disregard any idea that the consideration of more long term ways of living might be of use now, before such an absense of scientific consensus were to go away. It appears to me that it kills or hurts a number of people to consider the idea of thinking deep future, which subsequently instinctively causes me to ponder whether or not they voted bush or whether or not they are NRA, or whether or (carrot done, now a beer) not from an evolutionary standpoint they represent the Darwinian instincts to take what they need from those who might now only be anticipating a democratic distribution of resources: this is what my Darwinian instincts make me wonder on an instinctual level. I do sympathize with the sensation that the media has jumped onto some kind of Gore-wagon. I don't like hype and cathexis and I can see how some are convinced that the simple concept of 'thinking about how one's consumption requires X resouces and produces Y waste' has turned into some kind of self-flagellating child-sacrificing jihad fatwa upon the last beleaguered bastions of rationality. If perchance anyone has dealt with Greek tragedy, one of the cornerstones of Western modes of performing "truth," one may have come across the idea that true knowledge is epimethean, epitaphic, hindsight, tragic, and de facto useless except for warning the next character, telling the story, foregrounding how history repeats itself. Premonition, promethean foresight, is what can get someone off the track that leads to tragedy. Those who demand a scientific consensus for even considering the utilities of changing certain aspects of lifestyle are, at least in the rubric of Greek tragedy, falling into the trap of Oedipus, and do not have the self-knowledge to evade the fall. However, in the Darwinian sense, it is entirely possible that those who cannot consider this idea of taking stock are the ones who will take stock in a far more physical way. (beer) This is what occurs to me after having run into human nature a few times.
Mega-Dude...I'm a huge Michael Crichton fan!!! He's one of the greatest writers of our time. Interesting that he studied to be a dr at Harvard, then went into make-believe land (Hollywood). I am trying to find his drs. degree in Climatic Science.....
I don't advocate the "chicken little" response, just responsible management of the planet we live on.
Swalker
