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April 20, 2010

We are just motes in God's eye

"The eruption in Iceland puts more than our knowledge in perspective.  It also shatters our bizarre contemporary faith in our power to fix the universe – the belief, shouted from the rooftops and repeated ad nauseam, that picking up litter or riding a bike or spending $100 trillion can "save the earth."€ -- Perspective « vulgar morality

Posted by Vanderleun at April 20, 2010 11:30 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

You know, if there really is such a Gaian being as a Mother Earth, she's pretty much always been of the Joan Crawford with the Wire Hangers variety of mom: the crazy bitch has always hated us and always will.

Posted by: Cameron Wood at April 20, 2010 12:27 PM

Not littering is a good civic virtue, but is pretty hollow for a religious crusade.

Which explains the various (Hah! Various?) responses to all of the environmental 'apocalypses' that have been predicted in the 44 years I have been alive.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at April 21, 2010 4:51 PM

Black swan events expose human ignorance. We think we know, until it becomes clear we don’t. Or rather, it becomes clear our knowledge is parochial, limited in time and space. The world works with an entirely different measure than the human scale.

Which makes Donald Rumsfeld one of the wisest men ever when he spoke of the limitations of knowing:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Humility - and wisdom - in a few short sentences.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at April 21, 2010 5:02 PM

And - to say one more thing - the Rumsfeld statement is the basis for faith.

A decision must be made, always a decision must be made.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at April 21, 2010 5:17 PM

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