Finitude

I have a new word in my vocabulary. It comes from a book that attracted my attention when I escaped from being too involved with a project, walked some final letters to the post office - because there are still people without email - and crossed the street to my neighborhood independent bookstore. Book City combines a large range of magazines, new books and remaindered ones in a relatively small space. I tend to head toward remaindered, after looking at the new releases.

But this time a new one published in 2023 appeared to have my name on it. Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. by Oliver Burkeman. Its cover reads Embrace Your Limits, Change Your Life. My life needed a change. Being burned out as a retiree ought to be an oxymoron.

Four thousand weeks is what you get if you live to be 80 years old. I’m already beyond half way to 4700 weeks if I make it to 90. The introductory chapter is headed, In the Long Run, We’re all Dead. Time Management seems like a solution and I have read all the books for years. This one does take a different and salutary direction.

The author is quite witty and well read - he has lived through both Trump and the Pandemic nad like me, still here. Perhaps the kernel of what he says comes from - of all people, Martin Heidigger, who defeats all students of philosophy by being more obsessed with the subject of finitude than any other. An d there is the addition of the two strikes of being a member of the Nazi party for ten years, and being almost impossible to read. Burkeman though, helps us through Heidigger by pointing to the question, somewhat like Hamlet, :What does it mean to be”? He says the only real question is whether we are willing to confront that one or not. The answer is that we are mortal. We are born here, we live here, we die here. All we can do is live our one miraculous life - a gift that never depended on us.

I’ve also been reading a report this morning of the results of some consultations - with one group of people saying, “If only we could get back to the past when everything was the way we wish it were now, it would be so wonderful” - and another group saying, “What do we have to do to make the future exactly the way we want it to be - which will be so wonderful”. I tend to join the second group with all its worry and anxiety. But the truth dawns. The only life over which I/they have any control is the one I/they have right now. It’s not as if we can manage time. Our life is our time - with limits.. It’s not as though our choices don’t matter because clearly they have consequences. But to pretend that we can fully control the future by our actions or recover the past is crazy. Learning finitude is important before it’s too late - both for me and everyone else.

Morning Coffee

Reading what comes in via email reflects the world we live in precisely. First one. Several are responding to a letter and a report designed for the same audience. I wrote one them. The purpose of both is to ask for more money from the organization’s supporters and they differ in how to do it. The matter needs action and a further discussion will determine the direction. One view is that a more folksy and emotional approach works better. Another is that maybe we shouldn’t be too forward in asking for money since we will want to do it again later in the fall. Meanwhile the organization is surviving by drawing down its shrinking endowment. The meeting happens tomorrow night,

A second comes from the admirable George Monbiot of the Guardian. The newspaper’s online communications arrive for free and I generally support them occasionally. There is always an ask - and today’s suggestion is that it could start at as little as $2 a month or a one time donation. That’s a rather good way to put it. Is it time to send through the $25 that I occasionally give, with a reminder that I value this organization each month about the same as I do as one cup of my morning coffee. Can do both without sacrifice is a bit ridiculous? Monbiot’s article surrounding this appeal notes the same thing that I did in my previous post. The weight and seriousness of the climate emergency competes with lots of trivia about an affair of a British film producer with 10,000 recent new items - contrasted with five for a serious science report - trivia always wins. The media world is not the real world, but we believe it is. As he says, celebrity gossip is always more important than existential risk,

Third there’s Gas Busters. This is a group that wants to ban gas powered leaf blowers. Most people complain about the noise - and I join them there. I think much less about the air pollution they cause. The Toronto City Council voted to pursue a ban - not pass it even yet. At least that is better than doing nothing, but I am now asked to do more writing to City Councilors and staff. Anther item for the task list.

Then there is the organization of seniors working on climate action - now. They have a coming meeting that conflicts with one of my own. A report of a subcommittee focuses on the allocated number of members, and says that a person who recently volunteered will be excluded because of lack of experience with this spsecific organization. What if that person was one that turned up unexpectedly once in my world - who had just retired as chief geologist for the provincial government. We’ll never know - being a current member matters more. There is also a complaint about more men than women on the committee - six to four. A financial report indicates $65. in new memberships. That means 15 of them, because one of them at $5 per year was mine. Even for a very new organization, Five dollars a year isn’t enough to make it go anywhere,

What comes through is how easily we are distracted by incoming news all with the organizational appeals - and all arguing the side issues, which saves us from having to act on matters we think are important or support them. And the health of the institution or group always ends up at the forefront, not the causes they espouse. How do create our personal priorities? They matter. I might need a second coffee to sort out my own.

An App for That

The other evening I sat on my balcony watching planes circle and appear to be going east when the airport was to the west - but it was a pattern that allowed them to form a line to come in as others could be seen heading out to the east until they disappeared at higher heights. New planes coming in dotted the evening sky and suddenly their landing lights appeared in a kind of fairy tale illiumination - until one thought of how much energy all this was taking as their passengers landed to consume even more as they boarded their cars, buses and taxis.

A better choice might be using apps to explore nature - even in an urban environment. Here are some:

Search your app store for a bird identifier software. You will find several of them Try E-Bird or Merlin from Cornell labs designed to answer the question, What’s that Bird? Most of us as children could name several - and now we can’t - either because we have forgotten. or because they are not around any more. Becoming conscious of other forms of life around us matters more for our future than watching planes come in. It’s a great story about citizen science,

PlantNet and Picture this does similar things for plants. There’s another one for trees. We need to become much more aware of our surroundings - and remind ourselves that technology is a means to the ends that we actually value.

Rights

I spent some of last week indoors to avoid air pollution and was reduced to watching a national joint conference of two large denominations live-streaming their sessions. Since I had been onsite at one event in the past it was interesting to see what was on the agenda.

One of the motions had to do with rights of all Canadians to clean water. No one would deny these in theory; we still have a long way to go in practice. Like many of the motions, this one had to do with social justice. It brings up a question for all of us as the last species to arrive. Is justice exclusively social justice? The eco-theologian Thomas Berry, who preferred to call himself an eco-geologian to avoid too much prying from the Roman Catholic church - especially since he was a remember of a religious order as well as a professor, asked the question. Does water itself have rights? We pretend that corporations are persons in terms of rights. Why not natural elements - soil, water, air? Berry looked at the importance of water for survival of all creatures, human and otherwise, in the Hudson Valley where he lived for many years. He also wondered about our ability to change the course of water by creating dams for our own convenience.

He would be pleased by one Canadian story.

“In February 2021, the world was introduced to Mutehekau Shipu — also known as the Magpie River — when the people of Ekuanitshit, Que. and the regional municipality made a joint declaration granting the river legal personhood and rights.”

Our first nations brothers and sisters have understood this instinctively until we took many away from the parents as children and placed them in residential schools. We act as though we have just awakened to something they have always known. It’s time for us to be their students and sit on the ground with humility.

Tragedy - and More

The news came last night. The submersible vessel in the news suffered a catastrophic implosion that killed all its occupants. We learned this new word that means the opposite of an explosion - which a violent event of pressure spreading outward. This one had a violent pressure spreading inward. It dominated all news media for four days until we knew its outcome and we will now stop thinking about it - but we shouldn’t. It tells us something about who we are. The source of this information is an article in the morning edition of the Washington Post.

What we now know is that the hull of this vessel was composed of a lighter carbon fibre than earlier ones of its type. Those who regulate the field of submersibles were concerned about the safety of this model. The owner did not have it inspected because such an inspection was not required by law. In fact there had been previous lawsuits related to the safety of such material.

In a global world, the company was not accountable to any country’s law. It was American made and launching in our waters and did not have to report to either. Submersibles, unlike ships are treated like cargo carried aboard a bigger vessel. It was in ours waters - but we didn’t regulate its activities or pay attention until there was a problem.

The company’s CEO - who perished in the event and was driving it - thought that innovation means trying new things that disrupt previous ones. Some of us can agree with that as a theory - but might have questions about its implications for its effect on others - both human and non-human. What didn’t happen this time was that it was a vessel diving deep in US waters or carrying its flag. Inspection in that case to ensure safety standards was mandatory. The CEO thought that law was well intended but “it put passenger safety over commercial innovation”. It’s worth pausing and reflecting on his statement. Innovation was important. But so was commerce - which is making money for profit. Making money for profit was more important to this company than protecting the life of its own leader - who said that was what he thought. It cost him his life and that of four other persons. It cost millions of dollars in the search for the vessel.

The company published an article in 2019 stating that marine accidents are caused more frequently by errors of the operator - the corporate firm - it thought it avoided this issue via its own efforts and corporate culture - not mechanical failure, which is usually seen as the error that regulations and inspections are designed to protect.. A former director of the company had disagreed with that statement and was terminated. There were other concerns and lawsuits going back several years.

While there is much in the press about this story, what is not named is the amount of hubris we all share - that we are right on our own, that we don’t need to listen to the concerns of others. It’s an important learning for all of us even if may never want to see the Titanic at the bottom the sea - a previous example of the same sort of hubris as this one.