What can I contribute to the mountain of words after the Inauguration? I’ve lived in Washington now for nearly 25 years and I have never experienced anything quite like that and I found it difficult immediately to digest most of last week. For us fans of the plan---the L’Enfant plan that is—the entire day of ritual assembly and choreographed procession provided an extraordinary demonstration of the true role of a capital city…our beautiful capital city in particular.
Visitors from European capitals have since the 18th century dismissed Washington for one reason or another: embarrassingly grand, yet empty; pretentious yet provincial; all about commemorating the dead and doing nothing for the living…Its wide avenues often seem empty; its huge expanses of lawn seem comically anti-urban. But, the city is fulfilled when filled. And it was filled on Tuesday.
The ideals of the structure of the government and the relationship of the government to the people are inscribed in the very form of the city. In that sense, the drawings of the whole gang--Pierre Charles L’Enfant, Andrew Ellicott, the surveyor who completed L’Enfant’s plan, and Benjamin Banneker, the African American mathematician and technical assistant to Ellicott,--for the design of the new capital city are no less founding documents of the United states than the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights. They just happen to be written in a different language.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
--The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
The plan is the First Amendment manifest, and last week we had a series of events, from the peaceable assemblies of joy for music and inauguration, and peaceable assemblies of petition in the gatherings to mark the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. The city receives both generously. In fact, from the perspective of urban design and architecture, the First Amendment, often called the "free speech" amendment, can also be described as the “free space” amendment, in that its provisions encompass the physical conditions of assembly as the boundaries of expression, and the representation of ideas in the built environment.
“Representation” is the key word here: representation in the political sense as the hallmark of democracy, and representation in the cultural sense through the symbolic languages of architecture and city design. The Greek word polis and the Latin word civitas each carry the same double meaning: the body politic and the physical city. The profound connection between the political and the physical was framed millennia ago in the Athenian Oath, in which the citizens would vow to leave the City, not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was left to them. Is there any better mission statement for a truly sustainable city?
1.29.2009
1.19.2009
Be Patient
These are the days here in Washington. The helicopters started their slow circles on Friday night. The Metro is filling with pink cheeked novices. The storefronts are hung with red, white, and blue bunting, framing taffeta and sequins inside. A line of tough bicycles is parked, unlocked, outside of a cafe on Connecticut Avenue. A line of tough bicycle cops is inside. One keeps an eye on the wheels. Who would dare? You can't steal all of them, and woe to someone who steals just one and becomes the object of a high speed two wheeled posse. The military presence on the streets surely exceeds that in Baghdad. And tomorrow, we bundle up and take the long walk down the hill with a few of our neighbors just so we can say later, "we were there."
As amazing as it may be to committed transit geeks and urbanists, many of those coming into the city will never have taken a bus, or ridden a subway. The protocols are mysterious to them, the ticketing confusing, routes perplexing. Why does the train say Glenmont if it takes me to Metro Center? The eyes of the world will be on this beautiful city, so let's make a good impression. Jan Gehl's urban prime directive rings in my head: be sweet. And be patient.
As the Dylan song says, things are going to get interesting right about now...
As amazing as it may be to committed transit geeks and urbanists, many of those coming into the city will never have taken a bus, or ridden a subway. The protocols are mysterious to them, the ticketing confusing, routes perplexing. Why does the train say Glenmont if it takes me to Metro Center? The eyes of the world will be on this beautiful city, so let's make a good impression. Jan Gehl's urban prime directive rings in my head: be sweet. And be patient.
As the Dylan song says, things are going to get interesting right about now...
1.06.2009
Happy "Green" Year
Lake Superior State University is feeling pretty superior these days, making news with its annual list of banned words. (http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php) I yield to no one as a vocabulary snob, but like all year end lists, it’s too easy to inflict some collateral damage while shooting down words. Maverick? It’s a mad cow. First Dude? Yikes. And that “<3”? I don't even know what that is!
You know what’s coming: it’s the “green” ban. Mea culpa, mea culpa...I have used “green” as a verb, as synecdoche, as unopened baggage, as righteous medal of honor, as code word, as insider jargon, with and without “ “’s, as otiose shorthand to avoid having to think of a deeper, more effective phrase. It’s the same problem with “carbon footprint.” Still, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater...it’s just gray water and we can filter it and use it again after all. The baby, though, is the whole sustainability paradigm (oops, that one was probably banned in the last decade) and it’s still a little helpless, mewling, and incoherent. Our infant paradigm has ill-defined boundaries and lacks discipline. It has no clear sense of what belongs to it. It makes noises at inopportune times. It demands our attention and won’t let it go. Our little one is green in so many ways.
I worry that parts of the design community will fold up “green” and file it in the archives with “modernism”, “post-modernism”, “deconstrucivism”, “twigs in space”, “blob-itecture”, “neo-neo-classicism”, and all the other instantly consumed trends of the last decades. Not that the entire design and construction community appears to be interested in green; somebody provided design services to Dubai for the indoor ski slope. This isn’t fashion; it’s the opposite of fashion. This the necessary return to first principles in urban and building design.
Words have enormous power. By naming trends, groups, movements, we divide the “in” from the “out” and in so doing we make jargon. Naming something, whether music or architectural practices, “alternative” marginalizes that production and sets it in opposition to convention. Naming something “green” unfortunately does the exact same thing. The need for the appellation means that green is not mainstream. If only it were true that “green architecture” were just a synonym for “good architecture.” I was just talking to a friend of mine, an architect from London, who commented on this very issue. He confessed to blanch a bit each time he described his practice as “green”, or saw his firm described as such in the media. Not that he doesn’t fully believe that this is the way to build, but he recognizes that he’s been sorted into a category which attracts and repels in unpredictable measure.
For years I was deeply involved with a group called Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. It is still active and doing remarkable work, most of it centered around the Bay Area on the west coast. http://www.adpsr.org/Home.htm Even when I held office in the group I had the perverse desire that it, along with all of the AIA Committees on the Environment, would one day become obsolete as ALL architects, designers, and planners should be for social responsibility. There is no other task for the design professions. Call it green, call it sustainable development, call it environmental justice, call it public health, call it national security, call it economic stimulus...call it whatever you want, just don't ban the word.
You know what’s coming: it’s the “green” ban. Mea culpa, mea culpa...I have used “green” as a verb, as synecdoche, as unopened baggage, as righteous medal of honor, as code word, as insider jargon, with and without “ “’s, as otiose shorthand to avoid having to think of a deeper, more effective phrase. It’s the same problem with “carbon footprint.” Still, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater...it’s just gray water and we can filter it and use it again after all. The baby, though, is the whole sustainability paradigm (oops, that one was probably banned in the last decade) and it’s still a little helpless, mewling, and incoherent. Our infant paradigm has ill-defined boundaries and lacks discipline. It has no clear sense of what belongs to it. It makes noises at inopportune times. It demands our attention and won’t let it go. Our little one is green in so many ways.
I worry that parts of the design community will fold up “green” and file it in the archives with “modernism”, “post-modernism”, “deconstrucivism”, “twigs in space”, “blob-itecture”, “neo-neo-classicism”, and all the other instantly consumed trends of the last decades. Not that the entire design and construction community appears to be interested in green; somebody provided design services to Dubai for the indoor ski slope. This isn’t fashion; it’s the opposite of fashion. This the necessary return to first principles in urban and building design.
Words have enormous power. By naming trends, groups, movements, we divide the “in” from the “out” and in so doing we make jargon. Naming something, whether music or architectural practices, “alternative” marginalizes that production and sets it in opposition to convention. Naming something “green” unfortunately does the exact same thing. The need for the appellation means that green is not mainstream. If only it were true that “green architecture” were just a synonym for “good architecture.” I was just talking to a friend of mine, an architect from London, who commented on this very issue. He confessed to blanch a bit each time he described his practice as “green”, or saw his firm described as such in the media. Not that he doesn’t fully believe that this is the way to build, but he recognizes that he’s been sorted into a category which attracts and repels in unpredictable measure.
For years I was deeply involved with a group called Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. It is still active and doing remarkable work, most of it centered around the Bay Area on the west coast. http://www.adpsr.org/Home.htm Even when I held office in the group I had the perverse desire that it, along with all of the AIA Committees on the Environment, would one day become obsolete as ALL architects, designers, and planners should be for social responsibility. There is no other task for the design professions. Call it green, call it sustainable development, call it environmental justice, call it public health, call it national security, call it economic stimulus...call it whatever you want, just don't ban the word.
12.30.2008
Whine Festival
‘Tis the season to sweep out the old, and pledge to the new. It’s also a good time to vent, to do a little mental housecleaning. So, here are a few of my green peeves and wishes for their resolutions:
For the local TV anchors: Please resolve to stop conflating “mall” with “shopping.” I can’t count how many times chirpy unreflective anchor people would say “what’s the weather going to be like for everyone heading out to the mall for that last minute shopping?” One can shop in places other than the mall….downtown for example. I swore off Tysons Corner back when I had a car after suffering a Sartre-esque bout of existential nausea one Christmas. And that was it. Never went back. Never wanted to. Never needed to. Georgetown, innumerable stops on Connecticut Ave all the way up, Gallery Place, Columbia Heights, Eastern Market, all offer plenty of things, usual and unusual, for purchase. And it’s so much more interesting! When all else fails, order on-line.
Another one for the media: Please resolve to acquire a critically reflective editor to eliminate the "exquisite corpse" sequencing of stories. Best not to follow a story on how Americans are to blame for not buying enough cars with a traffic report showing a back up near the proverbial Occoquan. It begs for ironic commentary. Looks like we have plenty of cars. Maybe that’s why we’re not buying them? And don’t follow stories on the environment with a “human interest” story on an ice skating rink in southern California where people skate in bikinis. Those crazy Californians. Aren’t they something out west? It’s obscene. Where’s the FCC when you need it?
For planners and politicians: No more iatrogenic solutions to environmental problems! Adding lanes to highways does not cure traffic congestion, but causes it. Building houses one per 5 acre parcel does not preserve open space, but consumes it. Ethanol…well, just watch Frontline’s episode, Heat.
And for me? I have the usual set of resolutions involving weight maintenance, flossing, being a better person, et al., but I have a few new green ones to focus on. Pay better attention to where stuff—food, energy, clothes-- comes from. What regime am I inadvertently supporting with my purchase? Have I contributed to the removal of a mountaintop just to light my living room? Do I really need strawberries in the winter? Also, make regular use of those SmartBikes. They’re so convenient and so inexpensive and only burn calories (see weight maintenance above). Finally, keep the sarcasm and snarkiness to a socially acceptable level.
But, I still have a reservoir of snark to discharge before the end of the year, so here’s hoping we can enjoy 2009 without: bumper stickers supporting environmental causes; the passive voice; “complementary” not “complimentary;” shops with doors wide open and mechanical systems roaring; FUV’s with bumper stickers supporting environmental causes. Now that I got that out of my system…
The New Year really starts on January 20th. This Wednesday night is just an abstraction, watching a clock tick and toasting its continued ticking. The whine festival is over. It’s clean up time and we have a lot of wonderful, fulfilling, important work to do. See you next year.
For the local TV anchors: Please resolve to stop conflating “mall” with “shopping.” I can’t count how many times chirpy unreflective anchor people would say “what’s the weather going to be like for everyone heading out to the mall for that last minute shopping?” One can shop in places other than the mall….downtown for example. I swore off Tysons Corner back when I had a car after suffering a Sartre-esque bout of existential nausea one Christmas. And that was it. Never went back. Never wanted to. Never needed to. Georgetown, innumerable stops on Connecticut Ave all the way up, Gallery Place, Columbia Heights, Eastern Market, all offer plenty of things, usual and unusual, for purchase. And it’s so much more interesting! When all else fails, order on-line.
Another one for the media: Please resolve to acquire a critically reflective editor to eliminate the "exquisite corpse" sequencing of stories. Best not to follow a story on how Americans are to blame for not buying enough cars with a traffic report showing a back up near the proverbial Occoquan. It begs for ironic commentary. Looks like we have plenty of cars. Maybe that’s why we’re not buying them? And don’t follow stories on the environment with a “human interest” story on an ice skating rink in southern California where people skate in bikinis. Those crazy Californians. Aren’t they something out west? It’s obscene. Where’s the FCC when you need it?
For planners and politicians: No more iatrogenic solutions to environmental problems! Adding lanes to highways does not cure traffic congestion, but causes it. Building houses one per 5 acre parcel does not preserve open space, but consumes it. Ethanol…well, just watch Frontline’s episode, Heat.
And for me? I have the usual set of resolutions involving weight maintenance, flossing, being a better person, et al., but I have a few new green ones to focus on. Pay better attention to where stuff—food, energy, clothes-- comes from. What regime am I inadvertently supporting with my purchase? Have I contributed to the removal of a mountaintop just to light my living room? Do I really need strawberries in the winter? Also, make regular use of those SmartBikes. They’re so convenient and so inexpensive and only burn calories (see weight maintenance above). Finally, keep the sarcasm and snarkiness to a socially acceptable level.
But, I still have a reservoir of snark to discharge before the end of the year, so here’s hoping we can enjoy 2009 without: bumper stickers supporting environmental causes; the passive voice; “complementary” not “complimentary;” shops with doors wide open and mechanical systems roaring; FUV’s with bumper stickers supporting environmental causes. Now that I got that out of my system…
The New Year really starts on January 20th. This Wednesday night is just an abstraction, watching a clock tick and toasting its continued ticking. The whine festival is over. It’s clean up time and we have a lot of wonderful, fulfilling, important work to do. See you next year.
penultimate post of 2008
Before I post my year-end whine festival, I have to encourage everyone to see a recent episode of Frontline. I’m a big fan of that series on PBS (even if the narrator’s mellifluous voice makes me drowsy every time) and I finally got around to watching Heat, which we had recorded from its October airtime. It did not disappoint. At 2 hours it seems like a long haul but it was an extremely thorough look at the full range of causes of climate change. It drilled down deep—in a geothermal way, not a Giuliani way—into complexities that are rarely addressed, including even the carbon footprint of cement production weighed against the benefit of construction of nuclear power plants. There was a clip from an astonishingly prescient film made in the 1950’s with two scientists warning of the clear evidence of human generated carbon and its impact on climate change. Somehow the satisfaction of wielding the world’s largest “I told you so” doesn’t quite compensate for being dismissed for half a century. You can download the whole thing and follow all sorts of useful links at:
12.23.2008
The heartbreak of TIA
The sun is in the gallery. This is not in itself a surprise. We knew empirically that the sun would come in when we uncovered the windows, given that the space is on the south side of the building. Besides, if we doubted our own perception, the software proved it. If Ecotect says the sun will do this in December and that in June, then it must be true. We now trust our instruments, our technology, more than our own perceptions. But the sun is really in the gallery...and really bright on these first days of winter when it can’t muster enough energy to get very high in the sky. Thus the end wall touch screen is washed out in the morning, and entry wall is washed out in the late afternoon. At midday the future looks so bright, you could wear shades. Now we’re trying to figure out what to do to mitigate the problem...what a nuisance.
Stop that (slap)...it’s neither problem nor nuisance! That was just a rhetorical set up. It is what it is: the change of seasons gradually requesting of us humans a little bit of accommodation. When we realized that our exhibition content gave us the freedom to uncover the windows, we also accepted the responsibility to attend to the constantly changing consequences. This is the existential heart of the sustainability contract: with freedom comes an equal measure of responsibility. It’s two for one, a package deal, BOGO. It’s easy to forget that contract, because the terms of collection can be very subtle. You are free to set your thermostat wherever you like...but don’t forget the responsibility you share for climate change. You are free to live wherever you like...but remember that you are responsible for all consequences in equal measure to your freedom. You are free to open up your gallery to the southern light and warmth, but don’t forget that there will be consequences for legibility, interactive operability, widely differing experiences of the exhibition. And oh yes, there will be constant tinkering.
We considered all sorts of strategies early on and decided to wait and see what would happen. It’s not like we didn’t know—aforementioned Ecotect, and empiricism—but we couldn’t entirely predict how it would really be. We had no cultural memory of a year in light for that space in the building, so each day is a new experience. And yesterday, the first day of winter, it seemed about time to implement one of the shading strategies. We’ll be putting scrims on the windows in the first and last bay and then revisit the issue around the vernal equinox.
There’s something wonderful about thinking in these big seasonal chunks, these ancient milestones of solar time that lie deep under every calendar and cultural ritual on the planet. The winter solstice, Saturnalia, Christmas, Hanukah, et al., all cling to this dark time that so worried our primitive ancestors. It’s getting dark...too dark to see. Didn’t this happen last year? But the sun came back, and everything was okay. What did we do last year to make that happen? Well, we better do it again. The answer to that question is the origin of myth, ritual, and the whole package of communicating, appeasing, and cajoling the forces greater than ourselves.
There are plenty of smaller rituals that our parents and grandparents used to practice seasonally and they weren’t all aimed at the gods. Shuttering and un-shuttering windows, putting up and taking down awnings, planting and harvesting the garden, even spring and fall cleaning—all these are rituals of adjustment to the seasons. How few of these do we do now? Why? It’s not as if the solar system itself shifted to a low maintenance schedule. No, it’s us. We think we don’t have to, that all of those activities are somehow old fashioned. Our buildings now are often smarter than we are. They adjust the lights or heat on some mysterious electronic schedule in secret communication with the atomic clock. A smart thermostat never lets you shiver. The truth is we are suffering, individually and collectively, from TIA: Technology Induced Amnesia.
A heartbreaking chronic condition, TIA manifests itself in a spectrum of symptoms which vary from patient to patient. Like obesity and happiness, TIA is a social contagion, spreading rapidly through networks. Onset of TIA is marked by involuntary reaching for calculators to perform operations involving fractions and percentages. Later, spelling ability vanishes along with memory for phone numbers. More insidious are the subtle losses which can easily remain hidden from others: affixing shutters to building exteriors and forgetting the hinges; opening windows when the heat comes on too strong; driving to get a quart of milk. Fortunately, there is treatment for TIA and it requires nothing more than renewing the existential contract with the environment. The math and spelling problems, unfortunately, appear to be irruversable.
Stop that (slap)...it’s neither problem nor nuisance! That was just a rhetorical set up. It is what it is: the change of seasons gradually requesting of us humans a little bit of accommodation. When we realized that our exhibition content gave us the freedom to uncover the windows, we also accepted the responsibility to attend to the constantly changing consequences. This is the existential heart of the sustainability contract: with freedom comes an equal measure of responsibility. It’s two for one, a package deal, BOGO. It’s easy to forget that contract, because the terms of collection can be very subtle. You are free to set your thermostat wherever you like...but don’t forget the responsibility you share for climate change. You are free to live wherever you like...but remember that you are responsible for all consequences in equal measure to your freedom. You are free to open up your gallery to the southern light and warmth, but don’t forget that there will be consequences for legibility, interactive operability, widely differing experiences of the exhibition. And oh yes, there will be constant tinkering.
We considered all sorts of strategies early on and decided to wait and see what would happen. It’s not like we didn’t know—aforementioned Ecotect, and empiricism—but we couldn’t entirely predict how it would really be. We had no cultural memory of a year in light for that space in the building, so each day is a new experience. And yesterday, the first day of winter, it seemed about time to implement one of the shading strategies. We’ll be putting scrims on the windows in the first and last bay and then revisit the issue around the vernal equinox.
There’s something wonderful about thinking in these big seasonal chunks, these ancient milestones of solar time that lie deep under every calendar and cultural ritual on the planet. The winter solstice, Saturnalia, Christmas, Hanukah, et al., all cling to this dark time that so worried our primitive ancestors. It’s getting dark...too dark to see. Didn’t this happen last year? But the sun came back, and everything was okay. What did we do last year to make that happen? Well, we better do it again. The answer to that question is the origin of myth, ritual, and the whole package of communicating, appeasing, and cajoling the forces greater than ourselves.
There are plenty of smaller rituals that our parents and grandparents used to practice seasonally and they weren’t all aimed at the gods. Shuttering and un-shuttering windows, putting up and taking down awnings, planting and harvesting the garden, even spring and fall cleaning—all these are rituals of adjustment to the seasons. How few of these do we do now? Why? It’s not as if the solar system itself shifted to a low maintenance schedule. No, it’s us. We think we don’t have to, that all of those activities are somehow old fashioned. Our buildings now are often smarter than we are. They adjust the lights or heat on some mysterious electronic schedule in secret communication with the atomic clock. A smart thermostat never lets you shiver. The truth is we are suffering, individually and collectively, from TIA: Technology Induced Amnesia.
A heartbreaking chronic condition, TIA manifests itself in a spectrum of symptoms which vary from patient to patient. Like obesity and happiness, TIA is a social contagion, spreading rapidly through networks. Onset of TIA is marked by involuntary reaching for calculators to perform operations involving fractions and percentages. Later, spelling ability vanishes along with memory for phone numbers. More insidious are the subtle losses which can easily remain hidden from others: affixing shutters to building exteriors and forgetting the hinges; opening windows when the heat comes on too strong; driving to get a quart of milk. Fortunately, there is treatment for TIA and it requires nothing more than renewing the existential contract with the environment. The math and spelling problems, unfortunately, appear to be irruversable.
12.18.2008
Is it just me, or is it getting warm in here?
I so wanted the Eagles to lose on Monday night. It was 3rd and goal, looking bleak for Cleveland, and I said aloud, “McNabb is going to turn it over.” And he did! If I were a primitive person, I would think that my wishing, my energy, had made it happen. I would perhaps be frightened by my own powers, yet I would immediately try again considering my feelings for the Eagles. Each correct or near correct prediction would reinforce my sense of my own power, and each miss would make me doubt my mojo. No amount of wishing, in fact, could make the Eagles lose, but that inconvenient fact didn't stop me. Although we like to think we are not primitive peoples, in many ways we are. Temporal proximity can always be reframed as causality. And causality can strain credibility, especially when the distance in time and space between the action and the result gets distended. So, I offer three simple examples from the irrefutably clear to unavoidably complex.
Clear cause and effect: throw your shoes at a world leader, become a hero...and be hustled away in your stocking feet. Did he have a back-up pair? Did he have an accomplice? Action yields reaction...and then a chain of reactions unanticipated by the Lone Shoe Thrower.
Reasonably clear cause and effect: smoke, develop cancer. Smoking’s relationship to cancer is official scientific truth, even though there are people who don’t smoke who do get lung cancer and people who do smoke but don’t. But it took a long time for the link to be established, and even longer for it to be accepted. On one side stood scientific reasoning, on the other wishful thinking; the former is no match for the latter, but the human mind has an almost infinite capacity for cognitive dissonances.
Unavoidably complex cause and effect: belch CO2 into the atmosphere, change the climate. But, like the stubborn, chemically-addicted smoker, we offer a collective shrug and mutter something about Chicken Little. If the local weatherperson says there is a 100% chance of rain tomorrow, most of us take an umbrella. We believe that the swirling colors and big blue arrows on the map carry some precious information about our future. We can actually see it coming...oooh, it’s already in Cumberland! It’s easier to believe small science than big science. It’s easier to act on something that has immediate and minor consequences than on something with diffuse and distended consequences.
It’s almost too obvious to bring in the old frog in boiling water story. (I personally harmed no frogs in the construction of this aphorism) The story is that a frog tossed into a pot of boiling water will leap back out immediately, but a frog put in a pot of tepid water will just sit there as the temperature is gradually raised (By whom? That’s not in the story, thus the awkward passive voice) until the frog finds itself, if frogs are sufficiently self-aware to find themselves, cooked. We are all individual frogs whether dialing up our daily caloric intake one cookie at a time or ratcheting up the acceptable price on some coveted item. It’s just a little more, a little bigger, a little warmer...what’s the harm? We’re also a nation of frogs, letting our city and town boundaries creep outward, adding one more lane, loosening one more little regulation. What’s the harm?
If we were frog-tossed into our future, the one we are blithely and blindly constructing for ourselves, like time travelers in a sci-fi film, we would return sobered. We would immediately regret the time and creativity squandered in pointless arguments about veracity and blame. We would suffer unprecedented anguish at what we had done. But ours is not the world of science fiction, only science. Tiny, incremental, inexorable change stalks the background of our sensible experience, and we just don’t believe that all of this will affect us. It must be somebody else’s problem. We continue our quotidian habits reassured that every day seems to be pretty much like the last one, as if wishing could keep change at bay. But that’s an idle wish, one that can not be realized. Example, a physical impossibility: I wish I were tall. Another example, any wish to change the past: I wish the Browns had beaten the Eagles. The one we need to avoid is to wish we had done something about climate change when we still had a chance. Hey, is it getting warm in here?
Clear cause and effect: throw your shoes at a world leader, become a hero...and be hustled away in your stocking feet. Did he have a back-up pair? Did he have an accomplice? Action yields reaction...and then a chain of reactions unanticipated by the Lone Shoe Thrower.
Reasonably clear cause and effect: smoke, develop cancer. Smoking’s relationship to cancer is official scientific truth, even though there are people who don’t smoke who do get lung cancer and people who do smoke but don’t. But it took a long time for the link to be established, and even longer for it to be accepted. On one side stood scientific reasoning, on the other wishful thinking; the former is no match for the latter, but the human mind has an almost infinite capacity for cognitive dissonances.
Unavoidably complex cause and effect: belch CO2 into the atmosphere, change the climate. But, like the stubborn, chemically-addicted smoker, we offer a collective shrug and mutter something about Chicken Little. If the local weatherperson says there is a 100% chance of rain tomorrow, most of us take an umbrella. We believe that the swirling colors and big blue arrows on the map carry some precious information about our future. We can actually see it coming...oooh, it’s already in Cumberland! It’s easier to believe small science than big science. It’s easier to act on something that has immediate and minor consequences than on something with diffuse and distended consequences.
It’s almost too obvious to bring in the old frog in boiling water story. (I personally harmed no frogs in the construction of this aphorism) The story is that a frog tossed into a pot of boiling water will leap back out immediately, but a frog put in a pot of tepid water will just sit there as the temperature is gradually raised (By whom? That’s not in the story, thus the awkward passive voice) until the frog finds itself, if frogs are sufficiently self-aware to find themselves, cooked. We are all individual frogs whether dialing up our daily caloric intake one cookie at a time or ratcheting up the acceptable price on some coveted item. It’s just a little more, a little bigger, a little warmer...what’s the harm? We’re also a nation of frogs, letting our city and town boundaries creep outward, adding one more lane, loosening one more little regulation. What’s the harm?
If we were frog-tossed into our future, the one we are blithely and blindly constructing for ourselves, like time travelers in a sci-fi film, we would return sobered. We would immediately regret the time and creativity squandered in pointless arguments about veracity and blame. We would suffer unprecedented anguish at what we had done. But ours is not the world of science fiction, only science. Tiny, incremental, inexorable change stalks the background of our sensible experience, and we just don’t believe that all of this will affect us. It must be somebody else’s problem. We continue our quotidian habits reassured that every day seems to be pretty much like the last one, as if wishing could keep change at bay. But that’s an idle wish, one that can not be realized. Example, a physical impossibility: I wish I were tall. Another example, any wish to change the past: I wish the Browns had beaten the Eagles. The one we need to avoid is to wish we had done something about climate change when we still had a chance. Hey, is it getting warm in here?
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