thoughts upon thoughts (upon thoughts)

"You and I may have no relatives left in farming, and our memory of the farm, if we have any, may be faint, but the livestock judging is meaningful to us--husbandry is what we do, even if we call it education or health care or management.  Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success), but the older metaphor of farming (life is hard labor that is subject to weather and works of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood, especially those of was raised on holy scripture.  Young men and women leading cows around the show ring are relatives of Abraham and Job and the faithful father of the prodigal son.  They subscribe to the Love By Neighbor doctrine.  They knows about late-summer hail storms.  You could learn something from these people"

 -Garrison Keillor July 2009 National Geographic, "Garrison Keillor Goes to the Fair"


In the same issue: 
In regards to
Angkor Wat and the original Khmer empire:

--Which not only suggests that this Hindu empire was the victim of its own successes, as is the case with our USA Today, and for many of the same reasons; much of it having to do with technology; and some of it having to do with incredible atrocities which echo the  more recent transgressions of the Khmer Rouge; but also that they encountered some rough weather much in excess of that from which we currently suffer

. In thinking about our own countrywide drought which rivals that of 1953 and 1988, and of course in regards to "global warming,"--- it seems that this empire which borders on the largest lake in Southeast Asia, suffered incredible droughts which far surpassed anything that America has seen so far. At least as far as the Midwest is concerned.


Are these vagaries of weather or something else? It seems that a similar drought may have brought down the Mayan empire around the same time. To quote the article itself: "Sets of constricted growth rings showed that the trees had endured back to back mega droughts from 1362--1392 and from 1415-1440. During these periods the monsoon was weak or delayed, and in some years it failed completely. In other years, mega-monsoons lashed the region. To a tottering kingdom, extreme weather could have been the coupe de grace."

It does appear that the hubris of man makes him believe that he can create and control the weather.  As in Bill Kibble's "The End Of Nature."  Whether it is a matter of offending one or many gods, or of committing the sin of large carbon footprints which offends the Earth Goddess; whether one uses the paradigm of deity or science it all comes back to original sin of some kind or another. That is, if anything goes wrong on Mother Earth, it pretty much has to be our fault.  Being as we are the only species that is concerned about morality and ethics or even the future, that pretty much makes sense.  But is this in fact anti-nature or is it simply part of nature?  The artificial separation of man from nature is a man-made thought-creation. And an incredibly proud assumption.

It would be pretty hard in a scientific way to say that the forty-year droughts were the fault of the complex water control system devised by the Khmer Empire. Their Magificent Plumbing was simply overwhelmed by neglect and by weather and geography--such that even the largest lake in their back yard could not save them.

 So what are we complaining about?  And if we do have a 40+ year drought, while we might be able to say that we brought it on ourselves, it would appear that all slides agree that our failure is one of moral imagination rather than that of nerve or verve  Science and technology are just along for the ride.  I would say again that science is the product of culture and culture is merely a tool of immediate self-interest; and therefore true objective science is lost almost as soon as it is theoretically gained.  As such it is a minor player that has become, after being an unwitting captain of industry,  merely a hollow idol that we defend ferociously as our "god."  It would seem that science has merely been the engineer of our greatest destructive capacities--yet we cling to it and trust in it as if there was nothing else.

If nothing else, these two articles, regardless of the lack of specific editorial intent, are marvellously paired--for our benefit, if we have "ears to hear."