Bill McKibben, American Idealist, Sours on America’s Ideals

In "The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon," an activist finds flaws in patriotism, faith and suburban life and urges fellow baby boomers to change.

In his writings, his many speeches and bullhorn exhortations, Bill McKibben comes across as one of the least cynical people on the battlefield of public opinion. He's passionate about solving problems others have given up on, about building a better world and particularly about climate change, the issue that has made him the Paul Revere of alarm about our fevered planet.

Growing up, he actually sang "Kumbaya" around a campfire — "always earnestly," he says. He won the Gandhi Peace Award and the Thomas Merton Award. One day, perhaps, he'll win the real Nobel to go with the so-called alternative Nobel, which he's already been awarded, the Right Livelihood Award. As is sometimes said about effective environmentalists, he'll make a great ancestor.

His latest book is a slim cri de coeur about the rot at the base of his biographical foundations. McKibben finds his country, his religion and the suburban lifestyle of his youth to be so flawed that he's ready to divorce much of his past... nyt

Wittgenstein's Norway

#Skjolden#Wittgenstein#TheTractatusAfter100Years pic.twitter.com/WzsOccALIE

— Chon Tejedor 🌱💚🌍 (@ChonTejedor) May 30, 2022

Australia’s solution

	CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 ⁦‪@CBSSunday‬⁩ In Australia, there have been only one mass shooting, and gun homicides decreased nearly 60%. After 35 people were killed in a mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996. The government of Australia enacted strict gun control legislation cbsn.ws/3x27GHM pic.twitter.com/S2JqpwmNdy   5/29/22, 9:07 AM

Sandy Hook to Uvalde

	CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 ⁦‪@CBSSunday‬⁩ Francine and David Wheeler, whose son Ben was among the 26 students, teachers and staff killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., are one of nine families who accomplished the unthinkable: they sued Remington Arms cbsn.ws/3lU9pJV   5/29/22, 8:27 AM

Meaning of Life

	Five Books ⁦‪@five_books‬⁩ Finding meaning in life is not the same as finding happiness, argues Canadian philosopher Paul Thagard. He picks the best books on the meaning of life. fivebooks.com/best-books/pau…   5/27/22, 11:06 AM

Teachers Under Attack

Today's culture wars treat teachers like political prisoners or, even worse, the enemy.

...PEN America, a nonpartisan advocacy organization that promotes and defends free speech, has documented the introduction of 185 educational gag orders — most related to race, gender, racism and American history — designed to control what may or may not be discussed in a classroom. Combined with the more than 1,500 book bans issued in the past 10 months alone, these bills "represent an orchestrated attempt to silence marginalized voices and restrict students' freedom to learn," according to a statement released last week by PEN.

Not all of these gag order bills have been signed into law, but they have had an unsettling effect on the teaching profession nonetheless. They put teachers on notice: Big Brother is watching you.

And all of this comes on top of the burnout exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, the epicenter of yet another culture war. The pandemic has led to mass teacher absences, contentious mask debates and chaotic "plans" for how to teach remotely. No wonder a poll by the National Education Association found in January that 55 percent of teachers in public schools are ready to leave the profession altogether.

Many won't, of course. They need the paycheck. They need the health insurance. They may hate the cultural context they now find themselves teaching in, but they love their work. The Achilles' heel of schoolteachers, one all too easily exploited by politicians, is that they love their students.

They may be teaching with whiteboards instead of chalk and computers instead of books, but in this sense, teaching has not changed since my grandmother's day. Policymakers are still out of touch with actual schools, and natural-born teachers are still in love with learning, still in love with sharing the excitement of ideas. Most of all, natural-born teachers love kids. And we cannot afford to lose a single one of them. Margaret Renkl

‘What are our lives for?’: a philosopher answers kids’ existential questions

Children are constantly wrestling with questions about metaphysics and morality. But most adults in their lives don't notice or, even worse, discourage them when they do. I'm a philosopher and a father. I've got two boys, Rex and Hank. They have been asking philosophical questions since they were little, and they try to answer them too. They've recreated ancient arguments and advanced entirely new ones. People are sceptical when I say that. "Sure, your kids are philosophical," they respond, "but you're a philosopher. Most kids aren't like that."

They are wrong, though. Every child is a natural philosopher. They're puzzled by the world and they try to puzzle it out. And they're good at it, too. Kids are clever and courageous thinkers. In fact, adults can learn a lot from listening to them – and thinking with them... Guardian

Bertrand Russell

It’s the birthday of philosopher Bertrand Russell, born in Trellech, Wales (1872), into one of Britain’s most prominent families. His parents were radical thinkers, and his father was an atheist, but both his parents died by the time he was four. They left their son under the care of radical friends, hoping he would be brought up as an agnostic, but his grandparents stepped in, discarded the will, and raised Bertrand and his brother in a strict Christian household.

As a teenager, Bertrand kept a diary in which he described his doubts about God and his ideas about free will. He kept his diary in Greek letters so that his conservative family couldn’t read it. Then he went to Cambridge and was amazed that there were other people who thought the way he did and who wanted to discuss philosophical ideas. He emerged as an important philosopher with The Principles of Mathematics (1903) which argued that the foundations of mathematics could be deduced from a few logical ideas. He went on to become one of the most widely read philosophers of the 20th century. His History of Western Philosophy (1946) was a big bestseller and he was able to live off its royalties for the rest of his life.

He said, “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

WA

==

Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)*
By Bertrand Russell

The Lecture that is here reproduced was delivered at the Battersea Town Hall on Sunday March 6, 1927, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society. It is issued in booklet form at the request of many friends. It should be added that the author alone is responsible for the political and other opinions expressed.

As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is ‘Why I am not a Christian’. Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word ‘Christian’. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians—all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on—are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions.

WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?

Nowadays it is not quite that... (continues)

g'r

Bertie Russell, patron saint of summer https://t.co/eYwA03sOk8

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) May 18, 2022

POSTSCRIPT. For the record, Russell did NOT say that... 

Presentations conclude

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