There is as much wisdom
in pain
as there is in pleasure…

In pain I hear the captain’s command: “Take in the sails!…
The bold seafarer “man” must have mastered the art
of doing a thousand things with his sails;
otherwise he would be done
for in no time, — the ocean
would swallow him.

We must learn to live
with diminished
energies too.

As soon as pain gives its safety signal
the time has come to diminish them;
some great danger or other,
a storm is approaching,
and we are well advised to “inflate” ourselves
as little as possible…

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 4, Section 318 by Friedrich Nietzsche

Does not everyone of us know pain?  When remembering my earliest years I still recall episodes of childhood illness, visits to the doctor, colds, measles, sore throat, etc.  Truly little was to be done to make the pain vanish…  I waited, taking the rest which my parents enforced, until I felt better, the pain diminished, and then returning to normal play, to the return to school.

Nietzsche suggests this is true of peoples, of entire societies, and perhaps of a species.   Pain is a sign: time enough to take in the sails.

Over the past day or so, I’ve heard report that scientists have noted that this June was the hottest month on record.  According to CNN:

Earth’s temperature was off the charts last month as an extreme heat wave scorched the Southern US and Mexico and ocean warmth soared to alarming levels, a new report shows.

The analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that last month was the planet’s hottest June by a “substantial margin” above the previous record, which was set in 2019.

So how do things appear to you?  Are we taking in the sails, reducing our use of hydrocarbon fuels for transportation, for electricity generation?  If corporations, governments are not advancing policies with maximum haste to achieve carbon neutral ways of life, are we simply rejecting the evidence of drought, of violent, destructive weather events?  Or do we find ourselves paralyzed, constrained, — unable to risk, too bereft of inner strength to “go all in,” to place a bet on the survival of our species, and indeed of the earth?

I read an email exchange between two friends treating the extent to which we humans learn from the past, and the survival of our species.  One of the writers offered:

We are just too stupid to survive, like a turkey forgetting to pull its head out of a bucket of water before it drowns.

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We have time for a tune do we not?  This one seems apt for our condition:  Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie.  Freddie Mercury (Sept. 5, 1945 – Nov. 24, 1991)  David Bowie (Jan. 8, 1947 – Jan. 10, 2016)