Genesis: The Tree of Life vs the Tree of Death?

In the book of Genesis, is the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" actually a "Tree of Death?" This idea has occurred to me in my reading (and appreciating) theologian Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers, in which he compares the Genesis creation story with the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish. In that story, the male god Marduk imposes order on a scarily disordered universe by slaughtering the primordial female “Sea-Dragon of Chaos” Tiamat, creating the world we know from parts of her body. Humans are created from the blood of another murdered god, to be servants to the ruling god Marduk. 

Wink points out that the authors of Genesis had to have been acutely aware of the then-prevailing Babylonian story of a world (and humans) created by acts of cosmic violence, establishing a world-view Wink calls the myth of redemptive violence – life seen as a perpetual violent struggle of absolute Good versus absolute Evil The Babylonians held an annual celebration of their story, featuring a re-enactment with the King playing the role of Marduk. And most scholars agree that the book of Genesis reached its final form not long after the Israelites’ Babylonian captivity. 

Amazingly, the authors of Genesis chose to tell a diametrically opposite creation story, rejecting the Babylonian story and judging every part of Creation (including humans) to be, simply, "good." Or, “very good!” Nothing in the initial Creation about violence or murder. My idea takes Wink's insight a little farther, considering those two special trees in Eden. Having a Tree of Life seems entirely compatible with that all-good, peaceable Creation, with “good order” simply baked-in. Its counterpart Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is, however, another Story. 

My thought is that the commandment not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil would have been understood Back Then as a veiled warning of the consequences of adopting the Babylonian myth of redemptive violence. Saying, in effect, “that way lie destruction and death.” 

One matter of translation that I think lends support to my interpretation (according to at least one supposedly scholarly source) is that “The primary Hebrew term for knowledge, yada, means to know by lived experience, not simply to have theoretical knowledge.” Based on this understanding, “gaining knowledge of . . .” can easily be seen as including the meaning “choosing to live by . . .” See: https://www.dbu.edu/naugle/summer-institute/_documents/handouts/general/what-is-knowledge-biblical-hebraic-epistemology.pdf 

Thus we see in the opposition of those two special trees a rejection of the Babylonian myth of redemptive violence in favor of a nonviolent way of Life. What we hear later in plainer language from Moses in Deuteronomy 30:19 – I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live. This theme, especially in the imagery of the vine & fig tree, comes up variously in later scriptures (yes, alongside even supposedly divine sanctions of violence) and reaches full fruition (sic) in the teaching of the Israelite Yeshua – a new/old commandment I think best summed up as You shall have no enemies! 

As Walter Wink persuasively argues, the myth of redemptive violence, not Christianity or Judaism or Islam, has become the dominant religion of our time. Just scan the morning news . . . . Here I want to call attention to two fairly recent occurrences, in both cases making me wonder, “How in the world could this possibly be?” But in opposite ways, one showing a supposedly Christian congregation under the spell of the violence myth, and the other explaining how a seemingly inevitable bloody war was avoided by a leader, Nelson Mandela, who chose to have no enemies. 

Armed church security fails to prevent three deaths 

See the details (and a photo from the church security camera) here: https://slowdowndirtytruth.blogspot.com/2019/12/armed-church-security-fails-to-prevent.html 

Serving tea to Nazis https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/serving-tea-to-nazis 

Note: In this essay I am focused only on the initial Creation and the two special trees, not attempting to explain or interpret anything else in the book of Genesis. Obviously, the authors (editors? compilers?) of Genesis were not concerned with consistency, and so included whatever at the time struck them as possibly relevant? So I think we are licensed to pick and choose which parts we think most significant. 

I have to ask of anyone reading this far, does my idea about the two trees seem plausible to you? And I also ask, if so, does it matter? I am happy to come across any evidence that humans anywhere have seriously imagined the possibility of a nonviolent way of life. And perhaps understanding this Story at the very origin of the Judeo-Christian tradition might help modern believers cast off the spell of the myth of redemptive violence?

Borders and Walls

 Which side am I on?

"Where I live, in Arizona within an hour of the US–Mexico border, offering any help [to a migrant crossing the border] may constitute a class 1 misdemeanor (or a felony) carrying a fine of up to $1,000 and possibly months in prison. Or: you can obey the law, do nothing, and take no risk. You decide. Not deciding isn’t an option." 

John Washington, The Case for Open Borders (pp. 10-11). 

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_of_Aaron_Bushnell

The Zone of Interest, which recently won the Best International Feature Film Oscar, Is About the Danger of Ignoring Atrocities – Including in Gaza. The commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp and his family live a comfortable life in a stately home with a beautiful garden, protected by a tall wall that also confines Jewish prisoners on the other side awaiting "processing." Director Jonathan Glazer: “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present – not to say, ‘Look what they did then’; rather, ‘Look what we do now.”

https://portside.org/2024-03-19/zone-interest-about-danger-ignoring-atrocities-including-gaza

 

The Iron Dome is global – and so is the resistance

by Naomi Klein

https://www.redpepper.org.uk/global-politics/palestine-middle-east/the-iron-dome-is-global-and-so-is-the-resistance/

Many thanks to Stephen Wing for alerting me to this scorcher of an essay. Pointing out that the Israeli anti-missile Iron Dome is yet another version of the kind of border wall attempting to protect rich countries' exploitation of the poorer peoples; and pointing out the growing global Resistance movement.

Check out Wing's "poet's-eye view of the state of the planet and human evolution: https://www.stephenwing.com/

One way to Resist: 

https://nwtrcc.org/media/newsletters/april-may-2024/

See also: "The Nuclear Explosion that Makes US Aid to Israel illegal."

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-nuclear-weapons/

Your thoughts, Please! Comments welcome, or email vineyzeke@gmail.com. – Jim Allen

"Should we continue to fight . . ." – continued

 The title of this post refers to my August 10 post on the Bomb, quoting the August 15, 1945 surrender statement of Japan's Emperor Hirohito: "The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization." I said then that I was "impelled" to share thoughts about the Bomb by the coincidence of the annual return of the awful August 6 and August 9 anniversaries, together with release of the hugely popular movie, Oppenheimer. Which I hadn't seen.

Now having seen the film, I have to say I just hope the millions who have seen it have understood and taken seriously the film's sudden switch from history to our likely future in its last-scene warning of the "total extinction" coming "should we continue to fight."

If you haven't seen the film, here is the spoiler: Oppenheimer is talking with Albert Einstein, asking him if he remembers their earlier conversation about the Manhattan Project physicists realizing that detonating an atomic bomb might start a chain reaction igniting the nitrogen in the atmosphere, thus causing a world-ending fire. Einstein says he remembers it well. Oppenheimer replies, "I think we did it." And instantly the screen switches to a graphic view of planet Earth and we see (and hear) every country on Earth consumed by the feared world-ending nuclear flames.

Actually, the world-ending graphic looks more like the result of nuclear missile exchanges than an atmospheric ignition. Does that matter? No. Oppenheimer had realized that demonstrating an atomic bomb had started another kind of chain reaction, nuclear proliferation – carrying a near-certain likelihood of eventually causing human extinction.

Here I want to point out that we humans started another "world-ending fire" in the late 1700s by beginning exploitation (ignition) of the flammable fossils coal, oil, and natural gas. This process too being a kind of chain reaction of industrial development. Which we now see is causing devastating climate change and threatening human extinction along with other life forms in The Sixth Extinction.

It happens that recently Paul Kingsnorth edited an "Essential Wendell Berry" anthology, choosing as title "The World-Ending Fire." He took the phrase from a 2006 Berry essay on "Faustian Economics" – "The world-ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning in our furnaces and engines, but if it will burn for a hundred more years, that will be fine. Surely it would be better to intend straightforwardly to contain the fire and eventually put it out? But once greed has been made a honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits, a contradiction in terms. This supposed eonomy has no plan for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It is monstrous by definition. And necessarily it must lead to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction."

Looking at any story, I want to see if there are "good guys," individuals who choose not to continue fighting, instead trying to put a limit on "violence, waste war and destruction." In this story, I have to give Emperor Hirohito credit. The long-time Japanese governmental protocol for making important decisions was for a kind of super-cabinet called The Big Six to present a unanimous proposal to the Emperor, who would say Yes, or No. In August of 1945 the Big Six was deadlocked, three for surrender and three for continuing to fight. Hirohito broke the protocol, summoning the Big Six and telling them Japan was surrendering. That action saved many lives.

I also want to praise American general Jimmy Doolittle. During that August he commanded the US Eighth Air Force, only recently transferred from Europe to a base in Okinawa. When the Japanese started serious surrender negotiations on August 10, the US top command ordered a halt to bombing. That order was lifted on August 14, but it was so obvious to Doolittle that the war was over (Hirohito made his surrender speech at noon on the 15th), he refused to risk the lives of any of the men he commanded.

In contrast, as soon as the stop-bombing order was lifted on the 14th General Curtis LeMay sent 828 B-29 bombers and 186 fighters (most based on Tinian Island) to attack Japan one more time. Luckily, none of those planes or men were lost. Still, the contrast with Doolittle is significant. 

See also, if you haven't already, what I said in the August 10 post about the amazingly good guy who happened to be an American president – John F. Kennedy

Your thoughts, please? Anyway, as always, thanks for caring – Jim Allen

"Should we continue to fight . . . "

Because August 6 and August 9 have come around again. And I'm being urged to see the Oppenheimer film, and read this or that review of it. And because it all still really matters to me (and us?). I'm impelled to share and talk about three statements relevant to our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August of 1945: 

1. What the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, said in his August 15, 1945 speech announcing the Japanese surrender: The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed incalculable. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

2. What James F. Byrnes, President Harry Truman's personal representative in matters regarding the Manhattan Project (and later Secretary of State), said in June of 1945: We don't need the Bomb to force Japan to surrender, but possessing and demonstrating it will make the Russians more manageable in Europe.

3. What my Japanese girlfriend, Midori, said to me one evening in early August of 1957: I don't remember any bombing.

Hirohito's surrender speech is often taken as evidence that the Bomb was the crucial factor causing Japan to surrender. Saving the perhaps million American lives expected to be lost if we had to invade the Japanese home islands. For many Americans, that interpretation has been emotionally satisfying, making our use of the Bomb effective and justifiable. Even life-saving.

The reality, however, was US conventional air power had by the first of August already mostly destroyed 68 of Japan's largest cities, and the top Japanese command didn't see that the atomic weapons made that much difference. What got their attention was that on August 9 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria, northern Korea, and Sakhalin Island. While an American invasion of any of the Japanese home islands was months away, and the Japanese had been hoping to negotiate an acceptable peace settlement in that time period, Japanese intelligence was reporting the Russians would invade the northernmost home island, Hokkaido, within the next two weeks. The only way the Japanese could avert that catastrophe was to surrender to the Americans immediately.

Seen in this light, the Emperor's putting the blame on the Bomb is best understood as a face-saving measure, avoiding placing any blame on their military or the government. No conventional power could be expected to win against such "incalculable" nuclear power. 

But the statement's relevance today? It seems to me a remarkably prescient description of our present Situation in regard to nuclear weapons. Isn't it now generally accepted that should the nuclear-armed states continue to "fight" in the sense of maintaining, developing and threatening to use ever more lethal and even supposedly "usable" weapons (neither the US nor Russia being willing to pledge a "no first use" policy), the eventual result, by miscalculation or in desperation could be (and some say almost certainly "would be" the total extinction of human civilization?

The statements by Jimmy Byrnes and Midori put "should we continue to fight" in an even stronger light. WWII in the Pacific was a contest of empires, the 1941 attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor being their response to the US having placed a virtual embargo on oil and rubber reaching Japan from Southeast Asia. In August of 1945 we see the contest of empires continuing, but with Russia taking over the role that Japan had played. In a real sense, the global "fighting" of empires has been continuous over at least the last century and a half, only now and then breaking out in overt warfare.

The Manhattan Project to build the Bomb was begun early in WWII when our nuclear scientists informed President Roosevelt that Germany had begun Bomb research. When Germany surrendered in May of 1945, that left Japan as the possible target. And of course the Bomb was a factor in ending the war. But as the Byrnes statement shows, the US top leadership was well aware of the new contest of empires they were entering. And recognized the global strategic value of demonstrating for Josef Stalin's benefit that we had the Bomb and were willing to use it. At the time, however, recognizing that use of the Bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki would send a powerful message to the Soviet Union could not be said out loud in public. The Byrnes statement was a strictly in-house remark, not revealed until years later.  

What my girlfriend Midori said to me in early August of 1957 sheds more light on the real but ulterior, can't-be-said-out-loud intentions and purposes of top US leaders during the war. Our conversation took place in her tiny apartment in Yokosuka, Japan, a medium-size city hosting Yokosuka Naval Base, which had been a major Japanese naval base in WWII. It guards the entrance to Tokyo Bay and is only about 30 miles south of Tokyo. So the top Japanese command would probably have been able to see a mushroom cloud rising over Yokosuka. But the base was taken over by the US Navy at the end of the war and is still today the major US base in the western Pacific. I was there in 1957 courtesy of the US Navy, my ship stationed there that year. 

 Midori and I had been children during the war, but old enough to be aware and remember things that happened. Or didn't happen. That she didn't remember bombing was a stunner to me. The next morning I went up to the signal bridge of my ship to take a look at the base. I saw some new construction, but also many really old and obviously un-bombed buildings and facilities. I was back then a youthful Patriot, and it was difficult for me to accept the idea that my vaunted US Navy had never targeted such a strategically important base. Since then, however, I have done various searches from time to time, finding no evidence of any significant US attacks on Yokosuka Naval Base during the war.

What this has to mean is that early in the war the top command of the US forces – secretly – put the highest priority on preserving Yokosuka Naval Base, so that it would as soon as possible at the end of the war be available as our base, projecting US power over East Asia, then and now. Contest of empires, indeed!

The question (and/or threat), "should we continue to fight"  remains. The last serious proposal I know of to put an end to the contest of empires was President John F. Kennedy's call for an end to the US vs Russia Cold War, in his speech at American University in June of 1963, in which he declared, 

Let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attend to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. 

It seems such a reasonable, sensible proposal. But silenced by Kennedy's assassination just five months later. It's little known that Kennedy and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had been conducting a secret, back-channel conversation trying to find ways to reduce the risk of nuclear war. When he heard the news of Kennedy's death Khrushchev called the assassination "a heavy blow to all people who hold dear the cause of peace and Soviet-American cooperation."

If the Kennedy of the American University speech was in office today, what might he propose? Perhaps inviting the Russian Federation to join NATO? Or just abolish NATO? Think about it, eh?

I would much appreciate your sharing thoughts on any or all of this screed, either in comments here or by email to vineyzeke@gmail.com. Thanks for caring – Jim Allen

PS, just so you know – I have found one report that one of the Doolittle raid bombers in April of 1942 dropped one bomb on Yokosuka Naval Base on its way to Tokyo; doing little damage. Then near the end of the war, in July of 1945, the US Navy launched a dive-bomber attack on the battleship Nagato, which was parked (and out of diesel fuel) on the far eastern edge of the base, avoiding any damage to the base or the city. While Midori didn't remember bombing, she did experience strafing, the mention of that bringing tears to her eyes. I'm pretty sure that strafing was by US fighters trying to protect those dive bombers by suppressing anti-aircraft fire from the many AA emplacements in the hills surrounding the base. 

Taking a Stand, Getting Together, and Then . . . ?

 

Standing against vs standing with

It’s 1955. I’m 19 years old, just enlisted in the US Navy and going through the initial boot camp training. On a Sunday morning I’m in the barracks laundry room and hear a commotion outside, where the clotheslines are. So I step outside to see what's going on. A Black sailor is hanging up his laundry. A bunch of white guys are leaning out of their second-story windows, yelling the usual racist insults at the Black guy. I don’t like that and decide to try to do something about it. So I walk out there, stand next to the Black guy and look up at the white guys. I had played quarterback in high school and had learned “command voice.” So I decide to use it. I yell at the white guys, “Shut the fuck up!”

Then, looking up at those outraged white faces, I begin to think that might not have been a very smart thing to do.  But, to my surprise, they begin quieting down and pulling back out of the windows. So I turn to the Black guy – and he's gone! I hear the door slam behind him as he leaves the scene. 

At the time, I thought I had done the right thing. I had taken a stand against racism. And I wondered what was going on with the Black guy. Did he not appreciate what I had done to defend him? 

Later, I rethought the matter and decided that maybe to the Black guy what I had done was just another example of white supremacy, my assuming that it was up to the white guy to take charge of the situation. 

Years later, in 1986, I joined (was allowed to join) the predominantly-Black Alabama New South Coalition, and even had the honor of serving a term on its board of directors, when at meetings I would be the only white person in the room. And, from time to time I would find an opportunity to ask one of those new friends what they thought of my story and my “white supremacy” interpretation.  Their response was always a very realistic “Yes, but what you don’t seem to realize is that guy might well have saved your life. He saw what you did was just going to escalate the confrontation, and the thing to do was just get the hell out of there.” 

So now, at long last I realize what I should have done was not “take a stand against . . . ” but ignore the white guys and take a stand with the Black guy, strike up a conversation, introduce myself, shake his hand, etc. When we talk about "taking a stand against" something, or "taking a stand for" something, those somethings are abstractions. Racism. Inequality. Democracy. Justice. Sure, those are important issues. But let's realize how easy it is to go wrong as we try to translate those abstractions into specific and practical actions.

We don't "take a stand with" a something, but with a someone. That difference matters.

Getting together

Now it’s 1978 and my wife Cynthia has just been diagnosed with serious breast cancer. We hear that a new cancer support group is being organized out of East Alabama Medical Center, and Cyn decides she wants to join. The group calls itself “TOUCH.” An acronym for “Today Our Understanding of Cancer is Hope.” Advisors helping the group get organized had mentioned research showing cancer was such a scary thing that cancer patients in hospitals did not get physically touched by nurses, doctors or other staff nearly as often as other patients. So the group said, “We will not be untouchables.” 

Further, one of the professional advisors was a licensed massage therapist who also happened to be dean of the school of nursing at Auburn University. She explained how important physical – and loving – touch was for healthy human physical and emotional development and relationships. Starting of course with infants but remaining important into old age. And she demonstrated loving massage techniques for the group. So the Touch group – 20 to 30 people of all kinds, most having never met before – became a very touchy-feely all-of-us-together thing, with lots of formalized and impromptu hugging and hand-holding. 

That was a totally new and sometimes difficult learning experience for me, the living-in-my-head wanna-be intellectual that I was back then. The all-of-us-together aspect was deepened for me by seeing how the group adapted to having members with different needs and purposes. Some were there needing help to cope with active cancers. That was Cyn's need. But some were in remission, there to tell their stories and help others by visiting newly-diagnosed cancer patients (with permission from doctors and families) to show “today our understanding of cancer is hope.” The motto the Touch group adopted was “No one so healthy or strong that they don’t ever need help; and no one so weak or needy that they can’t ever give help to others.”

Cynthia didn't survive her cancer. But I'm sure to a great extent her TOUCH experience, along with other related counseling programs, helped her live twice the median life expectancy of patients with her diagnosis. She was active and had good quality of life up until just a month or two before she died in September of 1984. 

Where are we going?

Now it’s fall 2022 and we have gone through two and a half years of pandemic (no, Joe, it isn't over yet) that has largely prevented us from fully practicing these touchy-feeling ways of being and doing that make us better in-this-together humans. I love our computers and the way Zoom has enabled us at least to see and talk with each other. But its virtual "touch" it's not as good as in-person contact. For one thing,  it doesn't seem to allow full eye contact (at least in the group Zooms I have participated in). We rely, consciously or unconsciously, on seeing other people's eye movements when we are speaking with them to judge their responses. Are they "rolling their eyes?" for example. We humans are the only mammals that have the sclera, the "whites of their eyes," that enable that kind of communication.

I am especially worried about “virtual solutions” to the pandemic problem that could or are even intended to stay in effect long after a pandemic threat might be ended. Keeping us separated, isolated, our primary connection being to a computer system. Naomi Klein has explained this well: 

Something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the “Screen New Deal.” Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent — and highly profitable — no-touch future.Silicon Valley had this pre-existing agenda before Covid that imagined replacing so many of our personal bodily experiences by inserting technology in the middle of them. So for the few spaces where tech is not already mediating our relationships, there was a plan – to replace in-person teaching with virtual learning, for instance, and in-person medicine with telehealth and in-person delivery with robots. All of this has been rebranded, post-Covid, as a touchless technology, as a way of replacing what has been diagnosed as the problem, which is the problem of touch. On a personal level, what we miss most is touch. . . . How are we going to live with this thing? Are we going to accept pre-Covid “normal,” only much diminished, without the relationships that sustain us?
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/andrew-cuomo-eric-schmidt-coronavirus-tech-shock-doctrine/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/13/naomi-klein-we-must-not-return-to-the-pre-covid-status-quo-only-worse

For example – Here’s the abstract description of a Microsoft patent that shows how far (so far) the technology wizards imagine taking the computerization of our bodies and lives.

Abstract – CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEM USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA
Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606

The “body activity” that could be monitored is said to include “radiation emitted from the human body, brain activities, body fluid flow, blood flow, organ activity, body movement such as eye movement, facial movement, and muscle movement, as well as any other activities that can be sensed and represented by images, waves, signals, texts, numbers, degrees, or any other information or data.” https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-09-23/bill-gates-global-agenda-and-how-we-can-resist-his-war-on-life/

To be continued?

Here I want to refer you to my 2019 post: The human "precision grip" and the Fourth of July, with the paired photos, the adorable baby (my great-great granddaughter Hope) using her precision grip to pull the blanket aside and look me in the eye, inviting a smile or a hug,  alongside the 1970 CBS TV Earth Day special opening screen, a human hand gripping our "blue planet" as though to choke the life out of it. The caption being A Question of Survival. 

So the story is about how in our early evolution we acquired physical traits (such as the precision grip) and the brain-smarts to develop technologies giving us a huge evolutionary advantage. Starting with being able to kill at a distance (which we've gotten way too good at). But the brain-smarts also included recognition that togetherness was crucial to our survival. A lone individual, no matter how rugged, didn't stand much of a chance against that saber-tooth tiger. 

Indeed, we are super-social animals. And our cooperative working-togetherness has certainly helped us develop the technological marvels we now enjoy (?). However. On the social/political togetherness side we are too much stuck with our early- learned tribal instincts, creating political/social/religious/cultural factions fighting each other. Every issue becomes an Us vs Them fight, with both sides more interested in "winning" the argument than in working together to find practical solutions to actual problems. 

In this Situation, climate change and ecological devastation (ecocide) keep on keeping on, and all the while the tech wizards keep on with their plans of a total computerized takeover of our lives. Which I'm afraid is beginning to seem inevitable. 

What can we do? For now, I just want to suggest looking at two organizations I think model healthier ways of being and  doing.

Agraria (agrariacenter.org), located in Yellow Springs, Ohio, "is a Center for Regenerative Practice, reflecting our belief that regeneration applies to not only healthy agricultural practices but is a mindset to underlie all we do, from the environmental, economic, psychological, and social realms to human health and well-being. We work to help build vibrant, just, and resilient communities, starting where we are."

Braver Angels (braverangels.org) "is a national movement to bridge the partisan divide, bringing conservatives and progressives together on equal terms to understand our differences, find common ground where it exists, and help the country we all love find a better way."

Your thoughts, please? This section of this post is titled To be continued? So now it's your turn, let us hear, please and thank you.   

When will the future happen?

NOW 

Stephen Hawking informs us 

nothing existed before the Big Bang. 

I have not heard whether he believed 

“nothing” existed after the Bang. 

In my own life as a space-time traveler 

exploring this one blue world, 

I once upon a time found myself

at a happily noisy cocktail party 

in a neighborhood of North America 

the natives called “Coconut Grove, Florida.” 

It was a lovely summer evening, they said 

it happened to be the 15th day of June 

in their year 1965. But I knew better, 

I heard the Voices clearly calmly saying 

 Everything that has ever happened, 

 or ever could happen, 

 is happening right here, right now. 

Fellow travelers, here is your take-home message 

take it to heart and share with all – 

 Be cheerful, fear not, and be assured 

 there is no such thing as nothing. 

We breathe the world in 

the world breathes us out 

and nothing is lost. 

Take a deep breath, smiling, 

now. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . 

You may be wondering, what is this weird “poem” doing in the Slowdown blog? Well, I’ve recently been participating with others in zoomed discussion of a book, What We Owe the Future, by William MacAskill. I don’t like the book (see https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo) but it does raise interesting and important questions about the future of humans, and our possible extinction, coming either very soon or in some eventual future. But MacAskill also invites us to consider what he calls “the best possible future” – Civilisation is full of beings with long, blissful, and flourishing lives, full of artistic and scientific accomplishment, expanded across the cosmos. An absurd vision, total fantasy. So I decided to post my own take on the future – as expressed recently in this something like a poem. Also absurd, but in another sense and I think closer to our here-and-now reality.

I saw Stephen Hawking’s “nothing before the bang” statement in an internet headline not long before he died, and pondering that led to this poem, my most direct presentation of a very fuzzy intuition of the essential connectedness of everything I recall entertaining as early as my first two years of college when my roommate was a physics grad student and I took a comparative religions course. The particular formulation of that intuition, Everything that has ever happened occurred to me at that Coconut Grove cocktail party, and the Hawking thing/no thing gave me a way to work it into something like a poem. 

Can a poem proclaiming such absurdities as “there is no such thing as nothing” be taken seriously? Well, so many of the findings of modern sciences, especially physics, seem to lead us into the realm of absurdity – which seems to be the realm of ultimate reality. Consider the case of quantum entanglement. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.” Maybe there is no such thing as “distance?” In a recent Krista Tippet On Being interview, Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek says “Relativity teaches us to think of spacetime as a whole and that it’s very unnatural to divide them. So it leads, I think, very much to the world-view that the world — that is, spacetime — simply is. It does not happen. It already encompasses all times.” 

I’m happy to report also finding affirmation of “essential connectedness” by my favorite theologian, Walter Wink. In a chapter of his autobiography (My Struggle to Become Human) titled “The New Physics,” he characterizes the Big Bang as the “Big Breath:” 

“We are all one matter. Our bodies are virtually all water, and every drop of water in our bodies has been in every spring, every river, every lake, and every ocean during the last 4.5 billion years on earth. Each breath we breathe contains a quadrillion atoms, and more than a million of these atoms have been breathed personally sometime by each and every person on earth. We are all one breath. We are all one body, for good or ill. Likewise, attraction is characteristic of everything, from gravity to love. We are all one embrace. If ever a creature should feel at home in our universe, it is human beings.” 

(And I’m especially happy to report that I wrote the “breathe in, breathe out” part of the poem well before I had come across Wink’s beautiful statement.) 

So I say be cheerful and fear not: Although our lives may seem insignificantly transient, those quantum-entangled particles making up our bodies are stardust, making our every here-and-now moment part of a vast cosmic drama. That happily noisy cocktail party I am so grateful for having been invited to. 

Now I have to add that the line “Nothing is lost” included itself in the first draft of this poem. But then was taken out, then put back in in further drafts. What is ultimate reality does not spare us our lived experience of losses – in my case most recently the death of a teenage granddaughter, killed in a freak, totally unlikely accident. Yet Claire’s amazing loveliness, expressed in so many beautiful ways in her lifetime, also still remains. Is still happening right here, right now. 

PS – I chose to make “Everything that has ever happened” the title of my Jim Allen: Selected Poems, 1972-2022 chapbook. Homemade one-off editions available (for free) only by snailmail, by request.

It's time to slow down – Calling for a nationwide 55 mph speed limit!

Photo by bsheasby/iStock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going 70 mph on I-85 in east Alabama, my wife Judy and I are listening to radio news – talk by a woman promoting the Biden administration's new infrastructure plan, including dealing with climate change. She says "We have our priorities set now!" She doesn't go into much detail as to what those priorities actually are. But I've recently heard that Biden will now open US coastal waters to wind farms. Well, over their entire lifecycle they would probably cause lower emissions than the fossils. But most of their environmental cost is up front, in the mining, manufacturing and installation. Further, apparently most new solar and wind power has been just added to the grid, not replacing fossil power. When we need to actually reduce emissions NOW. 

So, turning the radio off, I say to Judy, who is driving, "Just lowering the interstate speed limit to 55 would help a great deal."

She thinks about that and says "Are you saying I should slow down to 55?"

Well, yes!

Let's all slow down. Why should we wait for the government to tell us to do something we know we should be doing? But let's start a nationwide movement to get others on board, and at the same time to get the government to enact sensible speed limit laws. So pass the word, send this post link to others, talk it up!

For those of you too young to remember, the US has passed speed limit laws twice to save fuel (and emissions) in an emergency. The World War II "Victory speed limit" was 35 mph. During the oil crisis of the 70s we adopted a nationwide 55 mph limit, which stayed in effect until 1995. 

Of course slowing down is only a small step in the right direction. We need to think seriously about whether we really need to be on the road at all. Or whether we need to buy any of that stuff that all those trucks are delivering. 

None of the big environmental and climate change activist groups seem to have included speed limits in their programs. One of the few my google searchings turned up was the Sierra Club, just a response to a member who asked in March of 2019, "What is the most fuel-efficient speed to drive?" The response:

About 55 miles per hour is the optimum speed for most cars. Kick it up to 65 mph and you are 8 percent less efficient; at 80 mph you are 28 percent less efficient. Slowing down can also mean reducing your carbon footprint. In 2008, The New York Times estimated that when the 55-miles-per-hour speed limit was in effect, we were saving about 2.56 billion gallons of gasoline a year. Gas consumption has increased by 16.9 percent since 1995, when the limit was abolished, so if we reinstated the 55 mph rule, we could be saving about 3 billion gallons today, or more than 2 percent of the gasoline burned in motor vehicles. We’ve had an almost 17 percent hike in motor vehicle fuel consumption since 1995, thanks to the fact that we have added more than 70 million more vehicles to the fleet, while improving gas mileage a paltry 3.5 mpg. 

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ask-mr-green/can-lower-speed-limits-reduce-our-overall-carbon-footprint

Want a bumpersticker? Check out Cafepress.com, https://www.cafepress.com/mf/18886246/drive-55stop-global-warming_bumper-sticker?productId=284129812

One word of caution: If you find yourself on a busy multi-lane expressway with big trucks and cars going 70 to 80 mph, you might consider going with the flow. In heavy traffic of that kind, unequal speeds lead to a higher accident rate.