79
8.6 Amaurotic Compromises
So, in spite of our total living dependency upon that integrity of biological peerage—which we are still, daily, discovering and re-defining—our perpetually fulminating paradox is our core blindness—amaurosis, to Others. Blindness, in turn, to
the reciprocity indebtedness which is far more interesting and obligate than all of
the avalanches of incoming scientific data combined. A fine case in point: While
archaeologist Harvey Weiss and team were able to publish astonishing findings
regarding the specific episode of “climate change” that evidently wiped out the
Akkadian Empire in or about the year 2200 BC, as evidenced from “the lifeless soil
of Tell Leilan” in Syria (as described by Elizabeth Kolbert).
31
We have now seen
COP24 come and go in Katowice, Poland—the 2018 United Nations 24th Climate
Change Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change.
32
And with its largely forgotten administrative, bureaucratic conclusions, we must ask: What status of collective good news, of calm and global
human demeanor in the face of self-destruction, can be lauded? As Thomas Jefferson
wrote, in one of his final letters before his death, to James Madison, “…the long
succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices, the general prostration of the
farming business… have kept agriculture in a state of abject depression…In such a
state of things, property has lost its character of being a resource for debts”.
33
Biomes change in character and nutrition; in the proportion of blunt and blended
chemicals; by nature of the fluctuations in humidity, pressure and that all flamboyant dew point that softens or hardens the life of invertebrates, and all those who
stake their claim upon them. And while social insects, gregarious dinoflagellates
within the tissue of corals, shy trees and the most industrious of other mammals,
such as the beaver, are primed to offer their humble manipulations of physical structure to the world in the interests of co-symbiosis, the variables of human evolution
invoke implacable strategies that succeed in terrorizing all others. This is a unique
combination of human nature(s) and their bio-heritage which, even to ourselves, at
this time in biological history, must strike as senseless.
31 Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Man, Nature, And Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert,
Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2006, pp. 94–95.
32 https://cop24.gov.pl/
33 Written from Monticello, February 17, 1826, in The Writings Of Thomas Jefferson, Collected
And Edited By Paul Leicester Ford, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, London, 1899, Volume X,
p.377.
8.6 Amaurotic Compromises
8.6 Amaurotic Compromises
So, in spite of our total living dependency upon that integrity of biological peerage—which we are still, daily, discovering and re-defining—our perpetually fulminating paradox is our core blindness—amaurosis, to Others. Blindness, in turn, to
the reciprocity indebtedness which is far more interesting and obligate than all of
the avalanches of incoming scientific data combined. A fine case in point: While
archaeologist Harvey Weiss and team were able to publish astonishing findings
regarding the specific episode of “climate change” that evidently wiped out the
Akkadian Empire in or about the year 2200 BC, as evidenced from “the lifeless soil
of Tell Leilan” in Syria (as described by Elizabeth Kolbert).
31
We have now seen
COP24 come and go in Katowice, Poland—the 2018 United Nations 24th Climate
Change Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change.
32
And with its largely forgotten administrative, bureaucratic conclusions, we must ask: What status of collective good news, of calm and global
human demeanor in the face of self-destruction, can be lauded? As Thomas Jefferson
wrote, in one of his final letters before his death, to James Madison, “…the long
succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices, the general prostration of the
farming business… have kept agriculture in a state of abject depression…In such a
state of things, property has lost its character of being a resource for debts”.
33
Biomes change in character and nutrition; in the proportion of blunt and blended
chemicals; by nature of the fluctuations in humidity, pressure and that all flamboyant dew point that softens or hardens the life of invertebrates, and all those who
stake their claim upon them. And while social insects, gregarious dinoflagellates
within the tissue of corals, shy trees and the most industrious of other mammals,
such as the beaver, are primed to offer their humble manipulations of physical structure to the world in the interests of co-symbiosis, the variables of human evolution
invoke implacable strategies that succeed in terrorizing all others. This is a unique
combination of human nature(s) and their bio-heritage which, even to ourselves, at
this time in biological history, must strike as senseless.
31 Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Man, Nature, And Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert,
Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2006, pp. 94–95.
32 https://cop24.gov.pl/
33 Written from Monticello, February 17, 1826, in The Writings Of Thomas Jefferson, Collected
And Edited By Paul Leicester Ford, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, London, 1899, Volume X,
p.377.
8.6 Amaurotic Compromises