Wendell Berry, “Two Economies”: Some time ago, in conversation with Wes Jackson in which we were laboring to define the causes of the modern ruination of farmland, we finally got around to the money economy. I said that an economy based on energy would be more benign because it would be more comprehensive. Wes would not agree. “An energy economy still wouldn’t be comprehensive enough.” “Well,” I said, “then what kind of economy would be comprehensive enough?
I write to you from within a constrained world. Caring for my elderly, injured mother, thinking only of the next task, I make phone calls and listen for her stirring in the night. What do I have to do with the world of presidents and wars? I dimly recall the Strait of Hormuz as I fill my gas tank and worry about Medicare coverage. There was a spot on Stumphole Bridge Road where long ago (last week?
Now that offices have re-opened, it’s been a day of phone calls and a visit to a new doctor for mom. Note-taking, list-making, and plenty of stress. On the way to the doctor I thought, “I’m trusting the strong powers.” At which point I drove past a handmade roadside sign: “We are not alone.”
I’d appreciate prayers, etc., for my mom, Rachel, and me. Mom has been falling increasingly often, culminating in a serious fall yesterday that required an ER visit. Rachel and I have been staying with her since then. Mom needs to recover and we need to figure out how to get her more help.
Three years ago today I posted on carceral environmentalism and I still like that phrase.
I see UFOs are in the news again. I haven’t been paying much attention; I’m waiting for the episodes of Why Files that explains it all. I will only note in passing that I recently heard someone (maybe Neil Degrasse Tyson?) condescendingly point out (it had to to Neil Degrasse Tyson) that UFO sightings only happen in the English-speaking world. Poppycock. They’re described in the English-speaking world as UFOs because that is our cultural language.
Today in letting the machines talk to the machines: Copilot just helped me build a process that will convert a report from our new payroll system into a GL import file. It took me 90 minutes to build the tool and accompanying procedures. The process itself will require two minutes of work on the part of the end user–a huge time savings compared to doing this conversion manually. Now if I would have already been fluent in Power Query, I could have built it in even less time.
On Tuesday evening, Rachel and I were discussing the extent to which members of a certain personality cult are responsible for their actions. As we talked, Rachel said that the root of our disagreement was probably in a disagreement about free will; namely, she thinks people have more freedom of will than I do. At the time, I agreed. I thought about it more on Wednesday and I have a more satisfying framing for this.
Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld … I will be outlining a way of perceiving the world which, while it does not explain the appearance of strange images, renders them intelligible. It is a way which requires, first of all, not that we believe, but that we suspend disbelief, as in the enjoyment of a theatrical production; a way which asks us to foster what Keats called “negative capability–that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
"In an era where everything is bullshit and crime..."
This was an off-the-cuff remark I made today, but it resonated with the audience. Feel free to use it.
Then, do things that are neither bullshit nor crime. Fix things. Protect things. Consider the long term. Care about somebody.