Sunshine!  Much needed rain is followed by a morning of sunlight.  Often I take Nature for granted.  Somehow it doesn’t come to mind that the most basic needs and pleasures of my life directly depends on the soil, upon moisture and light in proper measure.  No application of technology can possibly counter the inexorable effect of extreme protracted drought, which is now the case in the west, in California.  Our predictive weather modeling yet leaves us helpless to deter a deluge such as recently devastated communities living in close proximity to the rivers and creeks in the Appalachians in eastern Kentucky.  To rebuild would be to entertain prospect of the same outcome at any future time…

I struggle to find words.  This is my life, our common life, — the world such as it is.  The question before us remains the same as has confronted every generation that has preceded us:  What shall we now do?

I am reading with enthusiasm the great work by José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt Of the Masses.  Ortega’s thesis: the population explosion beginning with the early 1900s, a result of the coincidence of the practice of the scientific method and the resultant technical benefits of the industrial age, has produced a mass of humanity precariously educated to function in highly technical society, ill educated (culturally ignorant) unaware of the enormous effort of past generations necessary to achieve the level of personal security, and of present day affluence.  Additionally the mass of European humanity having come to maturity under the aegis of liberal democracy, believes itself entitled to unlimited freedom of expression and action, with no limits upon its aspiration.  Little if any sense of limit — either of physical constraint, or of a social constraint imposed by a aristocratic class.  Everyone believes him/herself entitled.

In my own words this is how I read Ortega y Gasset.  In his own words

…through the course of twelve centuries  Europe does not succeed in reaching a total population greater than 180 million inhabitants.  Now, from 1800 to 1914–little more than a century–the population of Europe mounts from 180 to 460 millions… In three generations it produces a gigantic mass of humanity which, launched like a torrent over the historic area, has inundated it.  p. 50

We find ourselves face to face with the fact that, by submitting the sea of humanity to the treatment of two principles, liberal democracy, and technical knowledge, in a single century the species in Europe has been triplicated.   p. 52

Such an overwhelming fact forces us… to draw these conclusions: Liberal democracy based upon technical knowledge is the highest type of public life hitherto known;  secondly, that type of life may not be the best imaginable, but the one we imagine as superior to it must preserve the essence of those two principles; and thirdly, that to return to any forms of existence inferior to that of the 19th century is suicidal.  p. 52

It bears mention that the present population of Europe is estimated at 748.5 million people.

The third excerpt from Ortega sets the agenda before us.  How can we preserve the essence of liberal democracy, and the efficiencies of technology, while conserving our only home, this planet from the deleterious effect of “development?”  The last phrase quoted from Ortega is also an option, a choice that is materially before us.  We, humanity can commit suicide.

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How can I not mention the passing of Olivia Newton-John, a vocalist, composer, and actress who helped us to recognize ourselves in the mirror of her art?  Here is the obituary as published in The Guardian.  CLICK HERE

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*The terms “red pill” and “blue pill” refer to a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in contented ignorance with the blue pill. The terms refer to a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix.  – wikipedia