Thanks For Nothing, Al Gore

It may be result of believing a false memory, but I think I remember a time when pollution and polluting were bad things and being conservative meant one was interested in conserving things.

I remember Woodsy Owl commercials suggesting that if I, in fact, give a hoot, I would not pollute. If I cared, polluting was something I would not do. The implication seems that there isn't a cost benefit analysis involved, that it is not my libertarian right to dump garbage on "my" land, that polluting itself- was bad. I have the cloudiest memory of Iron Eyes Cody crying at a pile of garbage. It's not good to make people cry, piles of garbage made him cry- don't make piles of garbage. I even remember a character named ConservaCat coming to my school to teach me how I could be a conscientious energy consumer. Actually, I think I was taught how to be an annoying kid- reminding my parents to turn off lights, unplugging appliances, saving water by refusing to take a bath.

But that stuff was for kids and we all know now that what we say is good for kids is really a bunch of bologna that you have to put up with until you're an adult that gets to do whatever you want. Well, it was for kids and naive adults. This was about the same time that future next president of the US, Al Gore, held the first congressional hearings on greenhouse gas emissions and Honda came out with the CVCC engine- stupid Nobel prize winner and flash-in-the-pan Honda Motor Company. They won't be around long.

Did that stuff disappear? I know Al Gore refuses to do us all a favor and disappear, and Honda hates America so much it keeps making high quality vehicles, but that other stuff- do we still do that?

These days I don't think we can even talk about pollution because we've managed to find a way to create a controversy about the parameters or frames of reference for what pollution may be... Does that seems too conspiratorial? Are our failures on the subject really more a matter of the difficulty of finding shared values and commitments on the matter and not necessarily a consequence of decisions made by oligarchs in smoked filled rooms or whatever other fora fit the metaphorical bill? Well I guess that's really begging the question; clearly I assume we've missed some major opportunities to intentionally apply technology and resources in such a way that would have created a dramatically different present... Like anyone could even know that.

This set up is a bit misleading. I suppose I could go into how those options that were available to us some 30 years ago, if pursued, if not quelled, if leaders lead in different ways could have... Who knows? Well maybe at the very least the Ford and GM SUV plants that are being closed may have been producing something else these days- something else that needed to be produced- something else that the workers presently facing lay-offs could still be producing. There is something to realizing that the commitments and choices of today feed the "could have beens" of our future. As a post, it could go that way, and maybe it is in part about that, though I haven't clearly said what "that" is. "That" is intention and more specifically my wonder at how we could intend to participate in creating a world that I would imagine is so clearly contrary to what many would say are our interests.

I don't happen to think there is an "end" to humanity that can be universally known. Let's be specific. That is, I don't think you can translate virtue from one culture to another nor that there is the possibility of "inherent" anything in an act that makes it a matter of good or bad as itself. So to be absurd (because that's seems to be necessary when we talk about moral concerns), I would say there in nothing inherently evil about pushing an old lady in front of an oncoming bus. First of all, why would you say an act in inherently anything? Does that add anything to it for you? Isn't it rather that the act is either evil or it isn't? But why am I asking, it's me on the spot here, right? So I say there is nothing inherently evil about pushing an old lady in front of an oncoming bus. Does this mean I am going to push an old lady in front of a bus? Does it? C'mon- be serious. It means there are no acts in themselves that can be inherently anything. What would that even be? But this is a bit of a tangent- a frustratingly important tangent (frustrating because it seems that it needs to be something), my interest is in saying I don't think we can universally say "This is what you do to be a good person". I say that because virtue is not translatable across a culture's boundaries and there is not the understanding of an act that is separable from a culture. So sure, I say pushing an old lady in front of a bus is probably evil. But probably more importantly I am not going to push an old lady in front of an oncoming bus. Unless...

Anyway, I do say that morality is a matter of virtue and that we ought to be concerned with what type of people we are becoming- I am concerned with a telos of sorts. That is, we are for something. I just say you can't know that apart from a people among whom that end is known and pursued. That end is absolutely a matter of faith- It is a matter of absolute commitment to that end and that does not express itself in commitment to a prescribed list of inherently good acts or the avoidance of inherently bad acts. So say you are of a people that say "we want to be a people who love justice, seek mercy, and walk humbly with God" what do you do to be that people? What is it you do that demonstrates any of that and how is it that those things do that- in your condition?

So I am baffled. I am baffled because I think these last two paragraphs I share as a matter of background must be true yet I see how easily we separate what we do from what that makes us... even though I realize in what I wrote above that simply means we are a people largely concerned with confronting only petty and narrow complaints. And like other things that we learn, these must be fabricated as well, so we fabricate a world and people wherein our specific little gripes and grumbles reign. Of course we are most concerned with our lives- I don't mean just that, and I don't only mean to suggest that the good old value of "pursuing our self-interest magically leads to what's best for everyone else" is garbage- it is garbage, but I mean our sense of what is good or important to our existence is so petty and small-minded.

We are acting today in a way that creates what is possible in the future- that's plain; not only is there a disconnect between what we will and won't care about and the growing consequences of those cares, there are also the actual results of those actions. So, as an example, we are a people for whom enhanced interrogation, extreme rendition, and Operation Iraqi Freedom can mean something. That demonstrates who we are. Even if there is a sense of unease with those things, we would largely not know what to do make them right. In that sense, we have created a world in which they are present but wherein we also lack the knowledge or craft to address them (if we find them a problem to address). Similarly, whether we think President Jesus has done anything that requires the attention and accountability impeachment would bring says something about who we are, and how we proceed now, in that specific example, will open some possibilities and collapse others.

Perhaps those examples are too global- perhaps we are a people who don't think caring about those things requires anymore than sucking our teeth, or that even caring about those things is a distraction from what we really ought to care about. In that case does it make sense to try to have something that doesn't make sense make sense?

That's a tough one.