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Daily Advice 12.16.20
Dec. 16th, 2020 01:51 pm The main focus of this blog is going to be Seneca's On Providence until I make my way through the whole thing. Every sentence is gold.
The debate then and now is-- Did this happen because of global warming or because we don't cut down enough trees?
The answer, of course, depends upon whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
Well, again, that was 3 years ago. Not that long, really. And now we're in the middle of a pandemic which has-- supposedly-- caused an excess of 200-300,000 American deaths. Whose fault is it, and what can be done about it? Again, the answer depends upon whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
Maybe we're all wrong, though. Maybe the Thomas Fire happened because these things happen. And the Coronavirus is happening because these things happen.
Maybe the reason we're so shocked by it all, and so desperate to find some cause, someone we can pin it on, and something that can make it stop is because we've just been through about 80 years of unprecedented good fortune-- an era of peace and prosperity unprecedented in human history.
Maybe we've all been enfeebled by all of this good fortune, and sunk, as it were, into a stupor of drunkenness-- from which the gods are now, slowly, painfully, awakening us.
Flee luxury, flee enfeebling good fortune, from which men's minds grow sodden, and if nothing intervenes to remind them of the common lot, they sink, as it were, into the stupor of unending drunkenness. The man who has always had glazed windows to shield him from a drought, whose feet have been kept warm by hot applications renewed from time to time, whose dining- halls have been tempered by hot air passing beneath the floor and circulating round the walls, - this man will run great risk if he is brushed by a gentle breeze. While all excesses are hurtful, the most dangerous is unlimited good fortune.
I really think that this is the condition in which we find ourselves these days. Today on my Facebook account, a picture came up that I took on this day 3 years ago. I was living in California, and the largest wildfire in the state's history had just broken out. Over the next few months it would burn 280,000 acres. Then when the winter rains finally put it out, they caused a series of enormous mudslides which killed another 20 people in the hills near Santa Barbara. The debate then and now is-- Did this happen because of global warming or because we don't cut down enough trees?
The answer, of course, depends upon whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
Well, again, that was 3 years ago. Not that long, really. And now we're in the middle of a pandemic which has-- supposedly-- caused an excess of 200-300,000 American deaths. Whose fault is it, and what can be done about it? Again, the answer depends upon whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
Maybe we're all wrong, though. Maybe the Thomas Fire happened because these things happen. And the Coronavirus is happening because these things happen.
Maybe the reason we're so shocked by it all, and so desperate to find some cause, someone we can pin it on, and something that can make it stop is because we've just been through about 80 years of unprecedented good fortune-- an era of peace and prosperity unprecedented in human history.
Maybe we've all been enfeebled by all of this good fortune, and sunk, as it were, into a stupor of drunkenness-- from which the gods are now, slowly, painfully, awakening us.
