In the Beginning Was the Word
Tuesday morning, and I have nothing in particular to say. A few interesting stories are on the front page of the New York Times. None of that affects me, at least not yet. Up until quite recently, say the last one hundred years, nothing that occurred outside of your village had an impact on one’s life. The Mayans living in Chichen itza, a sophisticated society in the Yucatan Peninsula would not have known or if they had, cared, that King John and Philip II of France signed the treaty of Le Goulet confirming that John was ruler of parts of France in 1200 AD.
They absolutely did care when a nearby volcano erupted at some point in the 1200s putting an end to their civilization, their city, burying generations of accomplishment under a coating of ash.
Life can only be lived locally. It is most often just a distraction to have report that the median value of homes in California is around $500,000. Or that the attempt to repeal and replace the ACA by the Republican party has terminally failed. Yet there has been a sea change since the 20th century, a change that is accelerating. We are tightly connected globally by communications and logistics technologies, by important global institutions, most of which are publically owed corporations. There have been great empires before. None of them had means to project power, and human fallibility globally.
Still I hold to the ancient principle that action can only be taken locally. The words that we exchange between ourselves, ideally in face to face encounter, are the cement that holds together a shared civil way of life. Words are the precursor to actions. Words express our purposes, our sense of self, our anxieties, dreams, sense of beauty, the web of meaning that we inherited from others. By sharing words we hand off inherited civilization.
Presently I am in the midst of an exchange of ideas on the topic of Climate Change, global warming driven by human activity. The three or four participants know one another personally. I am considering keeping a hard copy of the exchange to store safely away for my grand children. Nature appears to increasingly turn against the way of life which we have adopted.
I will leave behind my witness to a discussion by four adults in the early 21st century—before the volcano. Words left behind. The hand-off.
