Intellectual Indignation

Last night, I watched a program on PBS that made me rethink some of my progressive ideologies. Not change, mind you , but rethink.  Change may be in the offing, but not yet; not until I assess what I saw and, perhaps, watch it again. The program, Humanity from Space, gave me reason to think about my demands that we “fix” what we’ve been ruining for all these hundreds, no, thousands of years.

Humanity has made remarkable advances. Stunning stuff. Things that have changed the lives on this planet in spectacular ways. Especially human lives. What amazing changes have taken place just in the last 125 years. Cars. Air travel. Widespread electricity. Oil. Internal combustion engines. Wind turbines. Unbelievable.

It occurred to me, while watching the program, that every “solution” we have created to the problems facing humankind has come with its own set of problems. It has arrived with promise, but with exceptional challenges. And that made me think: when we cry for new solutions to energy, we don’t long express support and appreciation for wind energy before we start complaining (perhaps legitimately) that wind turbines kill migratory birds. We want to eliminate coal power plants, but the nuclear solution is worse. We want progress and we want to give every living human access to water, power, education, etc., but the demand those benefits create cause more pollution, waste, etc.  Humanity is too much. But it’s not enough.

We don’t give ourselves enough credit for our own solutions. Granted, some of them are horrible, but they are solutions. Rather than attack them, every one of them, I suggest we should express appreciation and then look for alternatives, not condemn the solutions and the people who created them.

I have grown to hate politics for the same reason.  Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.

I feel a swarm of intellectual indignation welling up in my throat. I may have to write it all out in the next day or two. Or maybe not.

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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3 Responses to Intellectual Indignation

  1. THE, I thought you might recognize that line.

  2. robin andrea says:

    We watched just a few minutes of that show last night. It was when it showing all the internet connectedness of the planet and how it took 17 hours (or something like that) for the Queen of England to send her first message to the President in 1858. Then, we turned it off. We as humans do come up with some great solutions, but seriously our 7 billion population makes us THE problem. Yeah, we’re inventive and cool and everything, but we are destroying the planet.

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