To rebuild the party, we need to rebuild Art, Knowledge and Science. APOD reminded me of all of this today
light from this powerful stellar explosion first reached the Earth when woolly mammoths roamed free..
image was captured last month from Forca Canapine, Italy.
[Ed: Single text block reformatted into paragraphs for readability]
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260107.html
For me, this striking image (made by an Italian) showing the deep immensity of space, immediately brought to mind Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain. The whole APOD image and write up flooded me with hope. Least this is all seeming wayyyy too wooey — raising the question WTF is being posted in the pragmatic Way Forward — am posting here because I think that it is fundamental to recall WHY it is that we need to rebuild, WHAT it is that we actually wish to rebuild.
The image points to the importance of Art, of Knowledge, of Science, of Wonder in creating a World in which we wish to live. To my thought, to focus minutely upon such things as 'we lost because ...' can distract from why people should give a *hit about our party in the first place.
It was the vaguely skull shaped and deeply convoluted image that brought Broca's Brain to mind. It is a wonderful read. The title refers to Paul Broca the French physician who identified a portion of the brain (now called Broca's Area) important in speech. Broca’s own brain is preserved in a jar of formalin in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
When visiting the museum, Sagan asked himself how much of the man known as Paul Broca can still be found in this jar. The book is a collection of more or less related essays which, one way or another, tries to answer that question.
Many will be familiar with some of the quotations from this book. Perhaps the most widely known is “I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
He also made many other observations in the work. Two of my favourites being:
“Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body’s warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage”
“Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public…But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking”
We need to regain the ability to think critically. In particular we need to work to help society to regain that ability.
Thus endeth the sermonizing and to confess that the name of the nebula also brought to mind FSM — the Flying Spaghetti Monster
We need to keep moving forward, and we need to remember WHY.
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Dear FalloutShelter,
When I was young backyard fallout shelters were all the rage. Your UN makes me wonder if we might be of the same generation?
"Don't give up the ship" are the famous last words of the Captain of frigate USS Chesapeake said after he was mortally wounded in battle with frigate HMS Shannon on June 1, 1813. I’ll not digress to discuss the very complex story of what happened next (Chesapeake did strike her colors not all that long afterwards, and it was the onboard US Marines, not the sailors, who, in fact, fought on).
I know more than a middling of history. So, I totally agree with you that things are dark now. I know that I will not live to see things get better. I doubt that anyone born in the past century will.
I first began a serious look at Fascism when I (convinced my mother) to join Book of The Month in order to get The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer (a journalist who was in Berlin during the rise of Hitler). I still have more than 10 feet of my bookshelf space devoted to Totalitarianism in general, to Naziism in particular. I own all of Hitler's and Mussolini's books. Have many of the propaganda works prepared by Goebbels.
As soon as the second Bu$h term, I seriously began to worry our nation was headed there again.
After all, Fascists very nearly deposed FDR in 1933 to replace him with a Fascist regime. The only thing which saved this from happening (known to historians as “The Business Plot”—as wealthy industrialists—Ford, Irénée du Pont , Prescott Bush (yep, father/GF of our two Bu$hes), the presidents of GM, Montgomery Ward, Remington Arms, Singer Sewing Machines … et al) — were behind it) was that the person they chose to put in FDR’s place was retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler. Instead of becoming their figurehead, he blew the whistle on the plot.
There were Congressional hearings. These were mostly aimed at covering it all up. There is way too much history to discuss here now. It can all be found (for the nonce) online. Who knows when this information will disappear down the “Memory Hole” as described in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
What I am trying to, in my usual over convoluted way, to say is to take inspiration from “Don’t give up the ship!”
If no one tries to keep the Light of Democracy, the Light of Learning alight, the Endarkenment will simply last just that much longer. But, the world WILL see light again.
As you are an artist, you will recognize this Delacroix painting “Liberty Leading the People”—which, no, is not a painting of the 1789 French Revolution. History (even of Art) is complex and not widely known
You cannot stand before this awesome painting in the Louver without having Hope for the Future
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