by Usha Alexander

[This is the seventh in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. All the articles in this series can be read here.]

“Our plan B has always been grounded in our beliefs around the continued evolution of technology and engineered solutions to address and react to whatever the climate system and its outcomes present to us, whether that be in the form of rises in sea level, which we think you can address through different engineering accommodations along coastal areas, to changing agricultural production due to changes in weather patterns that may or may not be induced by climate change.” —Rex Tillerson, as CEO of ExxonMobil, to shareholders in 2015

***

For the past few years, I’ve been taking a fairly deep dive into attempting to understand the physical and ecological changes occurring on our planet and how these will affect human lives and civilization. As I’ve immersed myself in the science and the massive societal hurdles that stand in the way of an adequate response, I’m becoming aware that this exercise is changing me, too. I feel it inside my body, like a grey mass coalescing in my chest, sticking to everything, tugging against my heart and occluding my lungs. A couple of months ago, I decided to stop writing on this subject, to step away from these thoughts and concerns, because of their discomfiting darkness.

But I’ve discovered that walking away from this matter is no longer something I can just choose to do. For I now experience the world in a different way than I once did, as this grey mass clouds my vision and leaves its residue on everything I touch. I’ve come to see the changing Earth as the greatest single force shaping human affairs into the future, the backdrop against which the human story will play out and respond. 

Just as the temperate stability of the Holocene once enabled the shift from nomadism to settled farming and all of civilization, so the ongoing mass extinction of species and the rapidly warming climate will erode our present modes of life and maps of political order to make way for something new. Not just new, but very likely burdened by unprecedented collective hardship that stresses and tests our political systems, economies, infrastructures, and provisioning networks as never before. Some of these systems will fail. Without knowing how extremely or how quickly the planetary changes will occur, but knowing with some predictive capacity—unlike our Paleolithic ancestors—that an essential and irreversible change is underway, makes it difficult not to feel frightened and aggrieved for our future, even if I may not live to see the most startling changes. But then, what I’ve already witnessed has been startling enough. Read more »

Lorna Simpson. Unanswerable (detail) 2018.

Found photograph, and collage on paper.

More here, here, and here.

by Rafaël Newman

Arma virusque cano: Sing,
O Muse, through me, the wandering
Of something lowly, microscopic,
But found at both Poles, and each Tropic.
An opportunist virus, which
Is banished by mere soap (or bleach),
And yet has billions, masked, in arma,
Awaiting backup from Big Pharma!

Now, whether to the Orient
The creature traces its descent,
Or simply sprang across the barrier
Which cordons beast from human carrier,
And might have done so anywhere
That folk are fond of carnal fare –
Yet from the hellish depths have risen
Those who would make of chance a prison:
Who’ve seized upon a place of birth
In any random plot of earth
To build a fable of malfeasance,
Of trade wars, tariff hikes, and treasons;
Who’ve leveraged the lockdown here
To redirect Our gen’ral fear
Towards a Them there, over yonder:
The fascist’s faithful first responder.

To counter which, we’ve cried, “Unite!
We’ll pledge ourselves to righteous fight
Against the foe that would divide us:
That dreary retrograde King Midas!
An alchemist à contresens
Who makes of merry gold mere dross;
Whose Internationale’s inverted,
Whose harmonies are disconcerted!
We’ll scotch the pestilential scourge
With martial pomp, not fun’ral dirge,
And then, our forces massed together,
We’ll end the plague, and change the weather!” Read more »

by Sarah Firisen

This Christmas, I stayed in a Marriott in the town where my kids live. Like most people, my business and personal travel has mostly ground to a halt in the last 9 months. So I was pleasantly surprised by the check-in experience the hotel provided me to allow for social distancing. I’m a long-time Marriot member and have their app on my phone. Using it, I was able to check-in ahead of time, and when my room was ready, they sent me a mobile key. 

There are a few things to unpack here. Starwood’s, who were bought by Marriot in 2015, had been playing around with mobile keys for years. I remember staying in the W Hotel in London maybe 7 years ago when they first rolled them out with much fanfare. They were a total bust. After a couple of frustrating trips back and forth to the lobby for staff to try to fix mine, I gave up and took the key card. I’m a techie and constant loser of key cards, the concept of doing it on my phone was a powerful draw for me.   So, I tried again at a couple of different hotels over the years. I don’t think I ever got a mobile key to work consistently enough to not be incredibly frustrating. But this Christmas, the experience was seamless, because finally, it had to be. Read more »

by Philip Graham

In the early months of 1966, whenever a familiar look of boredom settled in my mother’s eyes at the thought of cooking, I’d suggest, “Why don’t we go out for pizza?”

She always agreed. Our pizzeria of choice was conveniently located on a one-block strip mall less than a mile away, between a pharmacy and a dry cleaner. Sometimes we’d do a two-fer and stop at the laundry first. My beleaguered mother was always pleased to eat a meal she didn’t have to cook, and pick up clothes she didn’t have to wash and dry. I’d learned long ago how to work my way around her moods. In this case I nurtured an ulterior motive.

The pizza never rose above standard New York-style fare, but I always talked it up—“Mmmm, so good!”—all because of the jukebox in the corner. More specifically, because of one record in that jukebox: the single, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds. The hit song didn’t draw me there, however; the B side did: “She Don’t Care about Time,” written by Gene Clark, the band’s most prolific songwriter. Inexplicably, it hadn’t been included on either of the Byrds’ two albums, and this pizza joint offered my only opportunity to hear it. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Eric J. Weiner

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves. — Steven Spielberg

All mentors teach, but not all teachers become mentors. Mentors nurture, guide, teach, support, protect, challenge, help, listen, defend, critique, and unselfishly share their knowledge, time, and skills with their protégés. The mentor is father, mother, friend, platonic lover, healer, advisor, advocate, confidant, translator, and intellectual broker. The mentor/protégé relationship is not equal nor does it trouble itself with questions of equity. But it is consensual in that the mentor and protégé must both want and agree to the normative demands of the relationship. This does not mean the protégé might not resist, question or challenge his/her mentor. On the contrary, conflict between a mentor and protégé is normal and necessary. But instead of walking away from the relationship because of the tensions and conflicts that might arise, the mentor and protégé work them out, lean into them and, as a consequence, become stronger and more deeply connected. The one hold that is barred from the mentor/protégé relationship is disrespect.[i] Without mutual respect the relationship cannot function as it should and will dissolve, often bitterly.

I have been fortunate to have several mentors throughout my life that have taken me under their care, generously shared their knowledge and time, courageously challenged me when I was wrongheaded, and opened themselves up to my endless inquiries. They showed considerable patience in the face of my tenacious ignorance, insecurity/arrogance, quickness to rage, and tendency toward theoretical abstraction, paralyzing hypocrisy, and self-righteous indignation. My mentors, in different ways, deeply affected who I am today, although I take full responsibility for the tragic flaws and continuing struggles with the aforementioned dispositions of character that still burden me and those closest to me. In the spirit of auld lang syne and from the tradition of Hip-Hop–to look back to pay it forward–I want to give a shout-out to each of my mentors, some of whom I still depend on to set me straight if/when I inevitably go off the rails: (in alphabetical order) Elizabeth “Libby” Fay, Henry Giroux, Jaime Grinberg, Donaldo Macedo, Cindy Onore, and Pat Shannon. Read more »

Photo taken from my window yesterday morning in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

by Bill Murray

In this column I write about international travel, especially travel to less understood parts of the world. This month, with such travel still a wee bit constrained, we start a two-part look back at Sri Lanka, April/May 1999:

There are certain things a guidebook ought to level with you about right up front, before gushing about the exotic culture, pristine sandy beaches and friendly people. Number one, page one, straight flat out:

YOU ARE FLYING INTO A COUNTRY THAT CAN’T KEEP THE ROAD TO ITS ONE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT PAVED, AND LINES THE ROAD IN AND OUT WITH BOYS WITH NO FACIAL HAIR HOLDING MACHINE GUNS.

Lurching into and out of potholes on the road from the airport to the beach, dim yellow headlights illuminated scrawny street dogs sneering from the road, teeth in road kill. Mirja and I took the diplomatic approach and decided, let’s see what it looks like in the morning.

•••••

The fishing fleet already trolled off the Negombo shore in the gray before dawn. The last tardy catamaran, sail full-billowed, flew out to join the rest. Read more »

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

In his victory speech President-elect Joe Biden declared that “this is the time to heal America,” urging citizens to “come together,” “give each other a chance,” and “stop treating opponents as enemies.” He added that partisanship “is not due to some mysterious force,” but is rather “a choice we make.” To be sure, that partisanship is a choice doesn’t mean it’s easily overcome. So, Biden offered a plan. He proposed that we “see each other again” and “listen to each other again.”

In calling for the healing of our partisan divisions, Biden struck a popular note. Americans across the spectrum tend to agree that our politics has become dangerously toxic and uncivil. We say we want more compromise, civility, and cooperation in politics; however, it seems we demand that compromise come strictly from our political opponents. Oddly, lamenting partisan division is itself an expression of our animosity towards the other side. That is, the distance we see between ourselves and our political others is perceived as their distance from our ideas, their resistance and recalcitrance to our thoughts. Consequently, even though Republican and Democratic citizens generally are no more divided over central public policy issues than they were forty years ago, we are more partisan than ever in that we are more inclined to regard our partisan opponents as untrustworthy, dishonest, unpatriotic, and threatening.

In other words, partisan division is a matter of our negative feelings towards the other side, rather than disagreements over political ideas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, citizens’ political behavior – voting, donating, volunteering, and so on – is now more driven by animosity for the opposing party than by commitment to the ideals of our own.

This animosity is tied to a range of phenomena which have rendered our partisan identities central to our overall self-understandings. In the United States, liberalism and conservatism are distinct lifestyles, with partisan identity serving as the “hyper-identity” that organizes all of the other aspects of our lives, from our consumption habits to our religious affiliations and views about family and child-rearing. As we grow to see our partisan rivals as living strange lives that differ from our own, we come eventually to see their lives as alien and eventually degenerate. Seeing them in this way, we project on to them exaggerated vices, including close-mindedness, untrustworthiness, lack of patriotism, dishonesty, and general immortality. From there, we then infer a vast divide over democracy itself, with no common ground or basis for cooperation. What is shared government with those who appear to be moral aliens?

Biden’s recipe for political healing is thus fraught. Read more »

by Jonathan Kujawa

On December 22nd I started thinking about topics for this month’s 3QD essay. In a happy coincidence, someone posted to Twitter that Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887. We’ve touched on Ramanujan’s work here at 3QD, but it seemed like a sign that we should dive a little deeper [0].

The story of Ramanujan is now famous, especially after the award-winning film “The Man Who Knew Infinity” [1]. He was born in southern India into a poor family. His talent in mathematics was noticed at an early age, but it wasn’t until he got hold of a copy of G. S. Carr’s “Synopsis of Pure and Applied Mathematics” at the age of fifteen that his talent was really revealed. Carr’s book was meant to be a Cliff Notes to undergraduate mathematics for students cramming for Cambridge University exams. It gave little to no explanations — just a thousand pages of raw, uncut mathematical formulae stated as gospel. Using Carr’s book, Ramanujan taught himself mathematics.

Ramanujan became consumed with his own mathematical explorations. So much so that he neglected his college studies and failed out after the first year. He continued to do math and live in poverty until his mother arranged for him to marry S. Janaki in 1909. Feeling the responsibility of marriage, Ramanujan eventually found employment as a clerk in the Madras Port Trust Office and in 1913, thanks to the encouragement of other mathematicians in India, finally sent a letter containing some of his results to several famous mathematicians in the UK.

Faithful 3QD readers might recognize the first of the following formulas from Ramanujan’s letter:

In one of my first essays for 3QD I talked about how you can make sense of infinite sums and how, properly interpreted, it is reasonable to think of the sum of all the counting numbers as equal to -1/12. Read more »

Elfriede Abbe. The Geese and The Cranes. c1980.

Wood engraving.

More here, here, and here.

by David Kordahl

Last month I worked on a modern sort of archaeological dig, going through the equipment in a college physics lab to see what sorts of devices were on hand. It reminded me of being a little kid, when I would tiptoe around my dad’s religious paraphernalia (he was a Lutheran pastor), not really knowing what everything was for, but being sure that each item had a definite purpose. My job in the lab was to construct setups for a modern physics course, demos for students to learn a few things about the empirical basis of special relativity and quantum theory, to cut through the layers of interpretative bullshit. Encountering unfamiliar items, I would rummage around for their service manuals, pushing aside brittle O-rings and chipped pipettes, stacking old printouts, believing without proof that the lab’s former occupants had found some use for these treasures.

In bed one night after a long day with the machines, it occurred to me that these educational toys might share some common purpose with the portable communion kits and illustrated Bibles of my childhood. In each case, the devices were technologies designed to strengthen belief in a distinct mask for the world of observed phenomena. And in each case, strengthened beliefs hold for believers the promise of new ways to navigate the world, ways that non-believers can neither appreciate nor access.

This is not to deny the obvious differences between a communion kit and a current amplifier. One obvious feature of technology is that it’s mostly belief-proof. Almost no one understands all the devices that they use, and many users hold views that explicitly contradict the theories used to construct the devices on which they rely. (Teaching high school science, I met smartphone savants who were supremely confident in the irrelevance of physics to their lives.) Yet the fact that I now entertained the possibility that my lab setups had anything to do with religious conversion already proved that I’d strayed pretty far from my early days. Read more »

by Tim Sommers

The Medieval Arabic philosopher Ibn Sina – Avicenna to Europeans – was rivaled in renown as a thinker in the Islamic world only by Al Farabi and hailed as “the leading eminent scholar” (ash-Shaykh ar-Ra¯sı ) of Islam. He worked in virtually every area of philosophy and science and influenced subsequent Jewish and Christian philosophers almost as much as Muslim ones. But he is probably known best for a single image, a heuristic more than a thought-experiment, “the falling person”.

“We say: The one among us must imagine himself as though he is created all at once and created perfect, but that his sight has been veiled from observing external things, and that he is created falling in the air or the void in a manner where he would not encounter air resistance, requiring him to feel, and that his limbs are separated from each other so that they neither meet nor touch. He must then reflect as to whether he will affirm the existence of his self. He will not doubt his affirming his self-existing, but with this he will not affirm any limb from among his organs, no internal organ, whether heart or brain, and no external thing. Rather, he would be affirming his self without affirming for it length, breadth and depth. And if in this state he were able to imagine a hand or some other organ, he would not imagine it as part of his self or a condition for its existence.”

Ibn Sina’s ultimate aim was to prove the existence of the soul. Let’s leave that more complicated task aside and stick to the question of what “the falling person” might tell us just about the existence of a self.

Ibn Sina, by all accounts, didn’t count “the falling person” as proof of the reality of the soul or self. He taught his students a whole chain of sophisticated arguments for that purpose. He described “the falling person” more as “alerting” or “reminding” us of the self. It’s not quite a thought-experiment. It’s not about how you would react. It’s not a puzzle with a solution. It’s a question. And the question is, if you were without a past and shut off from any input external or internal, would you have or be a self? Or, maybe, would a self still be there? Would you, could you, think, I am here? Or I am me. Or I am something.

What would this bare self’s awareness of its self be like?

I picture a hum.

Just to the right of where I sit now there’s a freezer on the other side of a closed door. But I can still hear the hum. It only comes into my awareness when there’s dead silence and my mind goes blank for a moment. But it’s always there. The kind of self that “the falling person” might have, I picture as that hum. No content just…there. But is it really there? Couldn’t the falling man think? Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by David Oates

We are entering the aftermath. Two of the most epic and wrenching struggles in American history are finally playing out to their conclusions. At last we see a conclusive democratic rejection of a presidency built on systematic lying and racism. At the same time we look just weeks or months ahead for vaccines that will liberate us from our deadly yearlong pandemic.

Of course the two catastrophes are entwined, most wrenchingly in the excess numbers of Americans who died not just because of the disease, but by the incompetence and malfeasance of the president’s handling of it. According to a summary by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (October 2020), “If the coronavirus death rate in the United States were similar to that of Australia, it would have had 187,661 fewer COVID-19 deaths . . . and, compared with Canada, it would have had 117,622 fewer deaths.” And another hundred thousand US deaths have accumulated since October. So amplify those numbers accordingly, please, as this president’s personal death-toll on the nation.

Our collective house in disorder, occupied by thugs and dying by the thousands. All coming, at last, to an end! An end to constant alarm and worry. An end to the adrenaline-rush of hyperalertness, the daily fight-or-flight. The four-year emergency. The cavalcade of death. The pageant of ignorance.

Who are we now? we might soon be asking ourselves, as we step out, one by one, from our psychological foxholes and almost-literal bunkers. Can we relax now? Can we pick up normal life again?

Can we? Will we?

The after-blight is beginning. How shall we then live, in the aftermath of so much sustained stress and fear and misery? Read more »