Category: Environment

The Role of Fear

Fear of the Known – thinking aloud about stuff

Jon Lavin wrote a Post on the 13th June, 2010 entitled, “Dealing with the fear of the known.” I’ve been thinking about that in recent weeks including the comment to Jon’s article from Per. Here’s how Jon closed that article:

If more of us got used to coming out of the mind before making an important decision, and simply sat with the question for a while, the answer would probably present itself.

This will probably raise more questions than it answers but that’s not a bad thing.<!–

And here’s the recent comment from Per: Great advice… but how do we remove the fear of what is known?

Presumably Per was implying that we shouldn’t fear the known. However, I beg to differ here; it is actually fear of the UNKNOWN that is rather pointless (I am not afraid of aliens), while fear of the KNOWN is CRUCIAL to our survival.

But like anything else, you can have too little or too much. Too little, and you survive a very short time. Too much, and you sit cowering in your cellar afraid to go out. As with EVERYTHING in life it is a question of BALANCE.

How do we know how much fear to deploy? Instinct, intelligence, knowledge and experience. If any of these are deficient, we may apply an inappropriate fear quotient.

Let’s take “Global Warming”! How afraid of it should I be? What are my marks out of 10 for the four fear-factors above?

Instinct = 8 – I instinctively fear a situation when my environment is getting hotter, as I don’t know what that will imply.
Intelligence = 8 – I am (just) intelligent enough to appreciate the dangers of a rise in temperature.
Knowledge = 4 – I have no real idea exactly what is going on or how far it will go; the messages are mixed and I see no real panic among governments.
Experience = 0

So, a score of just 20 out of 40, which means IGNORANCE and DOUBT and these add up to FEAR ….. so I am quite afraid.

More apparently, than my leaders seem to be, who can’t even ban flying across the Atlantic at a cost of 60,000 tons of CO2 per day. The question is, will this considerable amount of fear push me into actually DOING something about GW? What is my inertia level and what is my tipping point? What would it take to get me to dig up my garden and plant potatoes? To sell my car and buy a horse? Sadly, humans are in general pretty inert …… it is much easier to do nothing or too little until it is (almost) too late.

So, “fear” is absolutely essential to our survival. If you’re a driver who doesn’t fear accidents then please keep out my my way until you very soon die in one.

Fear is also what pushes me to drive very carefully. People who greedily lent money to Madoff had no fear they would lose it, having lost all control of whatever ration of commonsense and/or logic they might once have had. Perhaps now people will fear rather more about losing their money and therefore invest it more wisely.

To take another topical example, any company in the future (is there one?) drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico will fear the lash of Obama’s tongue and stick and this fear will push them to be a bloody sight more careful and to have an effective contingency plan. Actually, why more people don’t have a lot more fear is a mystery to me.

Right, having dealt with fear, we come to our response to it, which is of course the interesting bit. The world is changing so fast that almost all of us have limited control. Even the US President has limited control. This is not comfortable.

How then can we gain more control and become more comfortable? Jon has pointed the way; we must become more self-reliant. Jon will presumably now have much less fear of starving to death, since he is producing a proportion of his own grub. Anyone installing solar-panelled heating will be much less fearful about their electricity being cut off.

I would go further. Anyone owning a horse will or would have much less fear about running out of fuel and being immobile – or more to the point, of being unable to plough and sow his fields, without which we really are stuck. (Incidentally, I am predicting a big comeback for work horses. They are slower, yes, but you can’t breed a tractor (or indeed talk to it) or produce your own fuel, which is where the horse wins out. We’ll have to move more slowly, but then speed is vastly overrated.)

Now Jon with his chickens is a special case. Is there, I wonder, a small element of “fear” in his decision to keep chickens? Humans are complex …. Another major factor pushing Jon down this road could be (and in his case probably is) social responsibility.

It seems pretty clear that if EVERYONE became more self-reliant then vast, expensive, high-consuming centres of production would be scaled down. Unfortunately, social responsibility is not exactly fasionable in today’s consumer world (or we wouldn’t use plastic bags for a start, just to take one small example). Like the vegetarians of 30 years ago, Jon might be seen as an exception if not crank; until of course the fear factor becomes higher and then everyone will try to grow their own potatoes.

So, fear of powerlessness drives us to take initiatives that will help to remove at least some of this fear; a circular but inevitable process. Nothing new about it; the only sad thing is that humans seem to need to travel quite a long way down the path of doom before they really start to react.

This of course is why we did nothing when Hitler invaded the Rheinland in 1936; wait and see seemed easier at the time. It’s also why America totally ignored Jimmy Carter’s ideas of some decades ago about reducing America’s dependence on Arab oil. It was much easier to deride him and do the easy (but totally wrong) thing, especially of course as the oil companies have loads of money and can buy off people who otherwise might see the light.

Well, we’re well past “Wait-and-see” now …… we are now entering the “Do-it-or-else ….” period. And where Jon is of course achieving a double-whammy is that his increasing self-reliance is also GOOD FOR SOCIETY. If everyone were more self-reliant in every way a vast saving in energy and everything else could be achieved. Flying exotic fruits into Britain from South Africa is insane, yet so normal that it seems … errrmmmm … normal.

All this was obvious years if not millennia ago, but the current state of the world has increased the fear factor and is pushing people like Jon down this road. But it is an interesting road. Being self-reliant has multiple advantages, though it will be pretty hard on the rich, who may have to learn how to do things they usually pay underlings to do.

But Jon is in the vanguard of this movement; there is VAST scope for increasing self-reliance. It could and should be an adventure, though it will involve enormous change. The latter of course can also be stressful, but less so when it is clearly a change for the better, as I believe it will be.

By Chris Snuggs

Remember Luna?

A couple of Posts from last September.

The wonderful news that US Gray Wolves are now back under protection reminded me of the beautiful story of Tim and his ‘pet’ wolf Luna that was published on Learning from Dogs September, 2009.

The first article opened up as follows:

An amazing true story of a relationship between a wild wolf and a man.

This is a story of a particular event in the life of Tim Woods told to me by his brother, DR. It revolves around the coming together of a man sleeping rough, with his dog, on Mingus Mountain, and a fully grown female Gray or Grey Wolf. Mingus is in the Black Hills mountain range between Cottonwood and Prescott in Arizona, USA

You can read the full Post here.

But then I added a postscript which I am going to reproduce in full again.

The story of Luna has some interesting connections.

The person taking the picture in the Post about Tim Woods was Willie Prescott. He just happens to be the grandson of William H. Prescott from whom the town of Prescott is named. Here’s that picture again.

Wonderful news for Wolves

Victory for Wolves

Can’t better what was published in the New York Times a few days ago:

Donald Molloy, a Federal District Court judge in Montana, ruled Thursday that gray wolves in Montana and Idaho must be provided federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. This is a welcome decision. The immediate effect will be to spare the animals from hunts planned for this fall that are now illegal. The larger hope is that Washington will devise a protection plan ensuring the wolves’ survival not only in Montana and Idaho but across the northern Rocky Mountains.

Wolves in Montana and Idaho were removed from federal protection under rules proposed by the Bush administration. The rules were upheld by President Obama’s Interior Department, which said that both states had developed satisfactory management plans and that the wolves, in effect, could be released into their custody.

Wyoming’s plan was deemed inadequate, and federal protections remained. But in Montana and Idaho, the first reaction was to authorize limited wolf hunts that — though the states argued otherwise — would slowly guarantee the extinction of the species.

Judge Molloy ruled that protections for what is essentially a single species cannot be different in each state — either the wolf must be removed from the list or listed as an endangered species in every state, meaning throughout its range. Judging by early comments, the Interior Department’s preference seems to be to persuade Wyoming to improve its management plan so that the government can delist the wolf there — thus bringing the three states into harmony.

This is a terrible idea, and could end up authorizing hunts in three states, not two. The Interior Department, instead, should write an areawide management plan. There are roughly 1,700 wolves across the Rockies — far more than when they were reintroduced in the 1990s. But most biologists believe there should be a minimum of 2,000, with enough breeding pairs to ensure the long-term survival of a dynamic population across the range.

State plans meant to satisfy hunters rather than protect the wolves cannot do that. The gray wolf may need federal protection for years to come.

By Paul Handover

More on those noctilucent clouds

Otherwise known as Night Shining Clouds

There was an article on Learning from Dogs on July 22nd about these mysterious and beautiful clouds.

This is just an update to show you an example of photographs taken by Finn Jari Luomanen over the night of the 29th-30th July. All the pictures may be seen here – they are of this quality:

Here’s what Jari said about this night:

This mesoscale convective system sweeped over Finland with ferocious energy. The day before was historical as a record breaking temperature of 37,2 degs Celsius was recorded. The MCS proved to be a good match.

Thunderstrikes happened every two seconds at the peak and it was difficult to expose correctly due to the multiple strikes in each exposure.

Noctilucent clouds shone above the swiftly moving cell creating an eerie electric blue backdrop for the spectacle.

Never before have I seen anything close to this. I was jumping behind the tripod firing away in the hot, humid night. Since when has Finland turned into tropics?

This is a very beautiful planet!

By Paul Handover

Mau Piailug

A Pacific master navigator sails into the sunset

The Economist, for me, is one of the great newspapers of our time. I have often referred to it on Learning from Dogs.

Last Saturday’s edition (July 24th – 30th 2010) carried a most beautiful obituary about Mau Piailug who in 1976 demonstrated that ancient seafarers could indeed have voyaged from Hawaii to Tahiti, a distance of some 2,500 miles, before the age of compasses, sextants or charts. Here is an extract from that obituary (you may need to register to view it):

As a Micronesian he did not know the waters or the winds round Tahiti, far south-east. But he had an image of Tahiti in his head. He knew that if he aimed for that image, he would not get lost. And he never did. More than 2,000 miles out, a flock of small white terns skimmed past the Hokule’a heading for the still invisible Mataiva Atoll, next to Tahiti. Mau knew then that the voyage was almost over.

On that month-long trip he carried no compass, sextant or charts. He was not against modern instruments on principle. A compass could occasionally be useful in daylight; and, at least in old age, he wore a chunky watch. But Mau did not operate on latitude, longitude, angles, or mathematical calculations of any kind. He walked, and sailed, under an arching web of stars moving slowly east to west from their rising to their setting points, and knew them so well—more than 100 of them by name, and their associated stars by colour, light and habit—that he seemed to hold a whole cosmos in his head, with himself, determined, stocky and unassuming, at the nub of the celestial action.

Here’s an extract from the website Suite101.com:

Mau Piailug was born in 1932 on Satawal, a tiny Pacific island no wider than a mile in Micronesia. When he was still a little baby, his grandfather put him in a tide pool as though he were putting him in a cradle. There the sea gently rocked him back and forth with the rhythm of the tides.

When Mau was six, his grandfather began to teach him about navigation. He started by telling him about the stars; the grandfather made a star compass out of a circle of coral rocks, and in the center he put a little canoe he had made of palm fronds. Then he explained how the stars rose in the sky and traveled from east to west.

As he grew older, Mau spent his evenings in the canoe house. There he asked the elders to teach him about navigation. In this way, and with his grandfather’s help, he learned the paths of more than a hundred stars. He also learned that when clouds covered the sky, he could use the direction of the ocean waves to guide the canoe. He could also follow the birds toward land when they headed home in the evening, and he studied the creatures of the sea, for in times of trouble they, too, could help him find land.

A film was made about Mau called The Last Navigator. Do click on the link and read more about what Steve ‘learnt’ from Mau – here’s a closing taste:

It has been nearly fifteen years since I first met Piailug. In that time I have been blessed with relative fame and prosperity – an eventuality, by the way, that Piailug foretold to me. As I look back, I am impressed now by the twin qualities in the man that impressed me then: his generosity and his courage. Piailug took me into his family, assumed responsibility for my material and political well-being, and taught me his navigation without reserve. The knowledge he gave me about navigation is considered priceless in his culture. The knowledge he gave me about myself, I have come to see, is priceless as well. I often think of Piailug, and the fierceness and determination with which he defends a way of life he knows will die as the wise elders died. He has the courage to live and teach and voyage in spite of the certain knowledge that his struggle can never stem the tide of Westernization, which will change the character of his archipelago and may well eliminate the very role of the navigator as steward of his island’s sustenance and keeper of the flame of cultural knowledge.

A remarkable man.

By Paul Handover

10 Questions Dalai Lama video extract 2

The film was mentioned in a Post here.

Parts 1 and 2 were included in a Post yesterday.

Enjoy!

10 Questions Dalai Lama video extract 1

The film was mentioned in a Post here.

Enjoy!

10 Questions for the Dalai Lama

If you only had one hour what would you ask?

This is how an excellent film by Rick Ray on the Dalai Lama is introduced. We watched the DVD a few evenings ago and it was heart-stirring and full of the extraordinary wisdom from one of the leading spiritual leaders alive today.

Do watch it if you can. Here’s the official trailer from YouTube:

As so often seems to be the case these days, there is a website for the movie here. And the Dalai Lama’s website is here.

Finally, I see that part of the film, where Rick Ray is having an audience with His Holiness, is available on YouTube. I’ll post links to the four videos over the next two days.

By Paul Handover

Night shining clouds

Better known as Noctilucent Clouds

(Hoping this link is still available on the BBC web site)

Just watch this and be inspired!

From that BBC link:

Each summer, high in the night skies of the far northern and southern hemispheres a unique phenonmenon occurs – noctilucent clouds. Little is known about them, but now an amateur astronomer from north Wales is trying to predict when they are likely to appear.

Here, John Rowlands, one of four finalists in the BBC’s search for the Amateur Scientist of the Year So You Want To Be A Scientist? – and his mentor, Professor Nick Mitchell from the University of Bath – take a closer look at these mysterious silver and blue waves at the edge of space.

John has his own Facebook page here with plenty more information.

And a quick Google images search found this:

And there’s still more. This delightful video on YouTube, courtesy of NASA.

Described thus:

The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission will provide the first detailed exploration of Earth’s unique and elusive noctilucent or night shining clouds that are found literally on the “edge of space.” Located near the top of the Earth’s mesosphere (the region just above the stratosphere), very little is known about how these polar mesospheric clouds form or why they vary. They are being seen at lower latitudes than ever before and have been growing brighter and more frequent, leading some scientists to suggest that this recent increase may be the direct result of human-induced climate change. The mission is led by Dr. James Russell of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University.

By Paul Handover

(with thanks to the UK Flyer List for bringing this to my attention.)

Fear and the alternative

“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.” — Patricia Alexander, American educational psychologist.

This dropped into my email in-box the other day so I grabbed it to set this Post off on the right theme.

There is much around that can generate fear, touched on in my Post a couple of days ago where I quoted Richard Branson.

For an example of fear, many will have listened to the recent interview of Professor James Lovelock on the BBC Today programme and wondered just where we are all heading. ( The interview may be listened to here. – it’s 7 minutes long but listen to it!)

Here’s a YouTube video of Lovelock being interviewed in 2009. (Also worthy of watching for the full 13 minutes and note the connection between Lovelock and Branson.)

So if you listened and watched these two interviews then one could argue that there is more than enough to be fearful of our future.

Now go back to the opening quotation: “Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.”

Being fearful is not the answer – even if no alternative appears to be a rational way of mentally processing something.

Here’s a piece from Wayne Dyer’s book, There’s a Spiritual Solution to every Problem.

We are subjected to many illusions in our daily life. The greatest one is the one that keeps us trapped in giving our energy to what always has been.

The past is behind us. Predicting the future accurately, even by eminent scientists such as James Lovelock, is very, very unreliable. Thus all we have is today. So do not be afraid, be curious.

By Paul Handover

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Victory for Wolves

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