Wakening this morning, Tuesday, in a mental fog. I managed to stand erect, moving toward the kitchen, wondering how long until the thick malaise of mind would clear. Is this normal for a person my age, a diabetic of too many years…? What is normal? Is it the average, the median? There is no norm, just a word, a constructed definition.

I measure myself by an idea which I have made up, by my own fairy tale.

How silly. How is that different than to pick up a piece of scrap molding, and after sawing off a piece, a random length, I proclaim earnestly: “Henceforth this shall be one foot in length!” That’s silly as my grandson might say.

It is a good thing that I am not the ruler of a country, or the president of this one. I’d be tempted to enforce my silliness upon all of you.

The atmosphere of Starbucks helps to dispel the fog. Agreeable music suffuses the space, as well as the cheerful welcoming voices of the baristas taking and filling orders. As often happens, a friend stops by my table for some conversation. Perhaps he desires to dispel his own quotient of mental fog before getting on with his day.

I mostly listen to his observation of life. He thinks that climate catastrophe is BS. Though he’d call it “climate change.” My choice of words, my language is the tip-off of my view of the matter. My friend wants to see himself, and all of humanity as individuals, responsible for our choices, exposed to consequences which we deserve, which are cosmically inconsequential, irrelevant to the massive thermal exchange between the earth and the atmosphere which constitute what we mean, when we say “climate.”

I view things differently, very differently. I see myself, and all of humanity essentially as actors following a script, the inscription of cause and effect; our acts ripple out with consequence for the massive thermal exchange, climate.

We’d have to talk together for quite some time before reaching the common ground between us, the granite bedrock of common human experience. There is a bedrock, I believe that there is, and we’d find it with enough time and patience.

I recall the proof of the external world offered by G. E. Moore, a 20th century philosopher.

Moore famously put the point into dramatic relief with his 1939 essay Proof of an External World, in which he gave a common sense argument. against skepticism by raising his right hand and saying “here is one hand,” and then raising his left and saying “and here is another”.

Here are some quotations that spoke to me, that I judged as worth remembering. I wrote them down some ten years ago, so that I could revisit the thoughts in my future.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are. When we describe what we see…we describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. – Steven Covey

Nothing can be accomplished by denying that man is an essentially troubled being, except to make more trouble. – William Barrett

Don’t think, but look. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Unless we are running we cannot catch a wild ass. But the wild ass will outrun us every time. Our only hope is that we when step up our speed, we will see that we are running like a wild ass. It is our self that we run from. – James Carse

We know only two things: This heart within me I can feel and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge and the rest is construction. – Albert Camus