81
tion. All such disciplines tend toward an equilibrium. But, alas, only in the human
imagination. Invalid proofs work their way through passages of thought and
rethinking, until they become valid. Mirages eventually disappear. Morality can be
turned into the embrace of weapon-bearing arms, as faithful Christians learned during the massive bloodshed accompanying the Crusades. And even Beethoven’s
fourth movement of his ninth symphony “Ode to Joy” would have its veritable
renaissance of performances under the Nazi regime.
36
Every human enterprise is material for a paradox, from fiction, abstraction,
movement, perception, and love/hate, to all those objects, sequences, processes, and
conclusions abetting discernment, analysis, calculation, tabulation, inference,
extrapolation, judgment, hope, and faith. Of the hundreds of many formal paradoxes, not one escapes the ceaseless trench of human involvement. This is not a
problem, but a reality to accept and then deal with. Our species has never surrendered to any paradox. And it would be impossible to avoid them. At the same time,
simply ignoring that which is terminally ill by our hands is no substitute for working
through complex problems that seem unique to humankind.
Alternatively, we might—as Sir Thomas More hoped—live in a state of fairness
beyond all notions of class and distinction. This may be interpreted within Utopian
tradition, or in a manner akin to what ecologist Aldo Leopold famously described
when he characterized his “land ethic”: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve
the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends
otherwise” (Fig. 8.4).
37
Hence, as Aristotle declared in his Politics, a government of the many, not the
few, should be most persuasive to rational thought, the agora a teeming gamut of
overtly volitional, rational discourse.
Without venturing, at this stage, into the paradoxical nature of all politics (etymologically, the citizen of a city), there is the independent observer status of mind
versus brain that also stymies a firm conceptual grasp of what we’re even talking
36 See Beethoven’s Ninth – A Political History, by Esteban Buch, Translated by Richard Mille, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 2003, Chapter Ten. That Beethoven was, after all, vulnerable; a human being, member of a population, is borne out by one particularly curious piece of
memorabilia: a handwritten “shopping list” given to his servant and “comprising six items including a mousetrap and a metronome.” See “Inlibris at the 2020 Ludwigsburg Antiquarian Book Fair
and the California International Antiquarian Book Fair,” https://www.google.com/search?q=Inlibr
is+at+the+2020+Ludwigsburg+Antiquarian+Book+Fair+and+the+California+International+Anti
quarian+Book+Fair,%E2%80%9D&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEw
jD5Oe5lZrnAhUDPH0KHX8aAmYQ_AUIDCgA&biw=1439&bih=821&dpr=2,
Accessed
January 23, 2020.
37 See “Understanding the Land Ethic,” by Jennifer Kobylecky, May 29, 2015, The Aldo Leopold
Foundation, https://www.aldoleopold.org/post/understanding-land-ethic/Accessed January 23,
2019; See also, A Sand County Almanac Illustrated, by Aldo Leopold, Photographs by Tom Algire,
Tamarack Press, Madison, Wisconsin, A special edition for the benefit of the Leopold Fund, 1978;
See also, Leopold Archives: https://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/aldoleopold/.
8.7 Anthropical Sub-texts
tion. All such disciplines tend toward an equilibrium. But, alas, only in the human
imagination. Invalid proofs work their way through passages of thought and
rethinking, until they become valid. Mirages eventually disappear. Morality can be
turned into the embrace of weapon-bearing arms, as faithful Christians learned during the massive bloodshed accompanying the Crusades. And even Beethoven’s
fourth movement of his ninth symphony “Ode to Joy” would have its veritable
renaissance of performances under the Nazi regime.
36
Every human enterprise is material for a paradox, from fiction, abstraction,
movement, perception, and love/hate, to all those objects, sequences, processes, and
conclusions abetting discernment, analysis, calculation, tabulation, inference,
extrapolation, judgment, hope, and faith. Of the hundreds of many formal paradoxes, not one escapes the ceaseless trench of human involvement. This is not a
problem, but a reality to accept and then deal with. Our species has never surrendered to any paradox. And it would be impossible to avoid them. At the same time,
simply ignoring that which is terminally ill by our hands is no substitute for working
through complex problems that seem unique to humankind.
Alternatively, we might—as Sir Thomas More hoped—live in a state of fairness
beyond all notions of class and distinction. This may be interpreted within Utopian
tradition, or in a manner akin to what ecologist Aldo Leopold famously described
when he characterized his “land ethic”: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve
the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends
otherwise” (Fig. 8.4).
37
Hence, as Aristotle declared in his Politics, a government of the many, not the
few, should be most persuasive to rational thought, the agora a teeming gamut of
overtly volitional, rational discourse.
Without venturing, at this stage, into the paradoxical nature of all politics (etymologically, the citizen of a city), there is the independent observer status of mind
versus brain that also stymies a firm conceptual grasp of what we’re even talking
36 See Beethoven’s Ninth – A Political History, by Esteban Buch, Translated by Richard Mille, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 2003, Chapter Ten. That Beethoven was, after all, vulnerable; a human being, member of a population, is borne out by one particularly curious piece of
memorabilia: a handwritten “shopping list” given to his servant and “comprising six items including a mousetrap and a metronome.” See “Inlibris at the 2020 Ludwigsburg Antiquarian Book Fair
and the California International Antiquarian Book Fair,” https://www.google.com/search?q=Inlibr
is+at+the+2020+Ludwigsburg+Antiquarian+Book+Fair+and+the+California+International+Anti
quarian+Book+Fair,%E2%80%9D&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEw
jD5Oe5lZrnAhUDPH0KHX8aAmYQ_AUIDCgA&biw=1439&bih=821&dpr=2,
Accessed
January 23, 2020.
37 See “Understanding the Land Ethic,” by Jennifer Kobylecky, May 29, 2015, The Aldo Leopold
Foundation, https://www.aldoleopold.org/post/understanding-land-ethic/Accessed January 23,
2019; See also, A Sand County Almanac Illustrated, by Aldo Leopold, Photographs by Tom Algire,
Tamarack Press, Madison, Wisconsin, A special edition for the benefit of the Leopold Fund, 1978;
See also, Leopold Archives: https://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/aldoleopold/.
8.7 Anthropical Sub-texts