Writing is a struggle against silence

It seems like I have been struggling. I can't say that it's against silence, per se, but it may be with the persistence of silence. It's persistence in the face of all my cognitive efforts to life myself out of it.
I have been stunned relatively silent by the Hurricane and the government's reaction to it. Sure there's been a few posted comments on a blogs, but no coherent thinking through if the issue. And that's probably because there is no rational, coherent thinking through that can be done. At least from my perspective. This event draws together so many things -- the persistence of poverty (in fact its growth) in "the richest country in the world". The impact of environmental degradation. The growing grim of corporatists, crony capitalism on the government and its seeming intractability. Likewise there's the intractability of many of our societal assumptions -- the frames or meta-assumptions about "what happened" and "what there is to do". Like declaring a "war on weather" -- a city drowns and they put generals and admirals in charge. Now as a practical matter, that's probably the best thing. The military "get it done" ethos seems to be the best match for the challenge at hand.
From an "anticipatory design science" perspective, there's a huge opportunity here. Of course that's a pretty universal statement. I'm just finishing Bucky's meister-werke "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth". It reiterated (pre-iterates?) a lot of what I'm already familiar with, but the presentation is so dense and so cogent. And I wonder why, after 35 years, more of this thinking isn't more in the mainstream. Why doesn't there seem to be a widespread inquiry into value that would unleash people into being design scientists -- the recognition of value as being maximized when effort is expended in the service of the common good. I suppose there are economic formalisms that relate comparable notions, but they're like so buried in jargon that they don't do much good. Of course Bucky's multi-hyphenated neologisms and stream of conscious free-association -- weaving together these grand notion in 75-word sentence/paragraphs -- has its own challenges in terms of accessibility.

42 versus 13

I read yesterday that 42 percent of the US population believes in Biblical creation. 42 percent -- that's a pretty stunning number to me. And maybe it should be stunning that I'm the one who's stunned. I guess if I polled my immediate circle of acquaintances, it would be very small. Maybe 1 or 2 percent, if I really pushed. And I think I know a fair number of people. This points to the fact that there are vast swaths of this country that are mostly fundamentalist. It's hard to get my mind around it.
Growing up Catholic, in a Parochial education system, from the very start it was clear that even then, from the Catholic liturgical perspective, that Genesis was an allegory. I seem sto remember the nuns and priests responding to questions about the old testament with a kind of wink-and-nudge that God is the source of all this, but the discoveries that scientists have made more or less flesh out the specifics. It was a sensible response, and I don't think that even to a child, it undermines God's authority. And I suppose that if I was educated that way, I pretty much assumed everyone had comparable views.
I think I first encountered the notion of creationism in the 70s. Even then, it just seemed silly and easily written off. Again, I didn't know anybody who shared those beliefs. I didn't know any Biblical literalists. It took me until my 20s when I first encountered somebody who was a Born-again fundamentalist with those kinds of beliefs. On this encounter, I was struck in disbelief; how could an adult function in the modern world with such beliefs? I'll admit to being as ignorant and closed-minded as I might accuse someone of that stripe -- I just couldn't entertain the thought, it was that foreign.
Today, though, the implications of this 42 percent figure are more dire. I always assumed that there was about 13 percent of the population who held genuine fundamentalists beliefs. I probably read that somewhere, I can't point to a source at the moment. But it fit -- I could see a population that is less than 15 percent fundamentalists; modern society could support that. But this 42 percent number -- I'm viscerally shocked by this. I become frightened at the implications of this. Because this is a motivated 42 percent, if this number is correct. From my perspective, the future prospects for a county with a belief system such as this is doomed to a new kind of fascistic dark ages. And that seems to be exactly what those who lead these people are intending.

Floating a Platform

September. Time to get serious.

In the aftermath of the catastrophe in the Southern US, I’m deeply concerned, as I am sure are all thinking people. Mostly I am quite discouraged that the current political power structure is structurally incapable of dealing with this crisis. Indeed, in alignment with its “starve the beast” mentality, it will do everything in its power to undermine the role of government in the recovery.

I read a post on Eschaton today that advocated rebuilding New Orleans as a true 21^st Century city. A Sun city. A green city. A designed city. Of course I gravitate to that idea. Nut is there any serious politician who would stand up and promote such as visionary notion? I think not. Moreover, there’s more than a hint of elitism in that notion as well – as if we on the sidelines, generally people not in that area or environment – start dictating what to do to the people who know and understand the region. I’m not for a moment going to pretend that I know or understand all the issues evolved in the Southern Gulf ecosystems, although I have learned a great deal about it in the past week.

So what is the “anticipatory design science” response to the Hurricane and its aftermath? Certainly it’s hard to say specifically, as the full impact is sorting itself out. Are there opportunities here to start to crack through the entrenched infrastructure, and to start bringing a designed, nuanced, for-all response? Certainly so, but I’m not optimistic. I’m looking at my own platform. Am I ready to stand up and grab some rein of power, wherever it might be? Not now, not really. I look at the state of the political game, and it seems such a no-win situation. Those who have power and who know how to get it, they’re the eternally aggressive, eternally paranoid and opportunistic types for whom new ideas are anathema, except for when it come to new ideas about how to exploit. That’s a tough nut to crack.

At the same time, many people, in small ways and large, are becoming capable of piecing together solutions that could address the multi-dimensional crises we face. Hopefully the internet-mediated response to this tragedy will provide a seed crystal to bring us a platform for smarter approaches.