"This compulsion strikes him at a certain instant; and he remains
under it forever after"
"To assert a proposition is to make oneself responsible for it, without any definite forfeit, it is true, but with a forfeit no smaller for
being unnamed"
@adrianhon An adequately sourced alternative example would be the Visingsö oak forest, but that anecdote has several drawbacks:
- less time elapsed, so it's less impressive
- about silly Swedes, not wise and posh Britons
- the timber wasn't harvested because of transformational technological change, proving the long-term thinking to be fallible rather than sagacious
Maybe this is where the Arendtian analysis comes in handy? Most people experience life most of the time as animal laborans, who is immersed in the cycles of nature. Even homo faber has to gradually and incrementally strive out of a naturally-informed disposition.
As *ahem* a true elite, I am one of the zoon politikon who strikes forth into the risk and self-definition of human affairs unconditioned by nature.
It's really fucking weird talking to eco people for me. Like... Do you not realize that your subjectivity is coming from inside you? There's this special constellation of nerves and anatomy that make it possible for you to use signs and that's why we're talking. There's really nothing of truth, beauty, or justice in nature per se. It merely informs human responses that expose the freedom that they bring from within.
I just took a nature-relatedness inventory and I think that this is probably my most uncommon character trait. I have demonstrated a very very low sense of relatedness to nature. I don't have anything against it but it seems like a category error to think of nature in most of the declarations supplied on the inventory. It seems like getting weepy over neon triangles or something. Nature's over there and I'm over here. I feel like I'm the only one who has his head in straight in this issue.
@niplav I think that a better intervention is reducing routine car-miles. People should understand it's a matter of personal and social de-risking to move their residences, work, and regular appointments closer together and combining car trips.
>I'm decent at abstract thought
... but we have warrant to infer that you could have been better.
I feel I should just add a little more so that doesn't feel like I'm being curt. Your counterargument seems to indicate that abstract thinking survives head injury, which may be true in a great number of cases, but I think that it's fair to say that there are degrees / extensions of brain health, and it's probably better to be on the "more" side than the "less" side.
@niplav Probably excessive.
My effective altruism project is getting people to
1. HOLD ONTO THE RAILS ON THE STAIRS
2. HOLD ON TO THE RAIL WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE BATH
3. NEVER GET ONTO THE ROAD WHILE DRUNK OR IMPAIRED, INCLUDING ON A BICYCLE
My job has made me into a TBI truther. Brain injuries are devastating to cognition, self-regulation, and a bevy of other health outcomes. It's linked to a zillion bad social outcomes.
Forget about every other factor that determines human development outcomes: forget about genes, IQ, pollution, whatever. All of that shit is easily washed out by one good fall off of a bike. But unlike genes, we can actually do something about protecting brains.
Humanist interested in the consequences of the machine on intellectual history.