“…quite a lot of solitude.” – Agnes Martin

Most hermits we actually know about are not hermits absolutely.  For the memorable hermits list, I look to individuals who experience solitude deeply, report back and return to solitude, having discovered solitude’s value to them as a desired state. Those, like Agnes Martin, who speak of solitude as part of the creative process have a special [...]

“Political” Science

Much of the hoopla over the global warming controversy seems to be the “shocking revelation” that science is being used by (and thus ostensibly soiled and manipulated) by politicians. So? Science has always had a strong thread in and of politics, just like all other human endeavors, including religion. The only non-political human endeavor is probably solitude – and it’s only apolitical to the solitaire. As soon as one other wonders about or tries to find the  hermit, his solitude becomes part of a political debate. All human interaction includes politics. The more people, the more complicated the politics.

Science as the ultimate objectivity has always been an ideal not a fact. Scientists are human, too – with mortgages and egos and tuition debt, too.  Most research is at some level politically funded – whether the funder is the Catholic Church, the Exxon Corporation, or government. (We all know how apolitical government is. Right?) Who gets the money for what research – in our culture often a variable of potential profit in the research product – is part of the process. Unfortunately, money as the engine of research comes with a built-in corruptibility factor – sometimes very subtle, sometimes openly controversial, but rarely completely out of the picture.  Which is worse good science with bad intentions or bad science with good intentions?  Add to that debate “whose science” and “whose morality” then define “good” and “bad.” Yeah, I know.

Still there’s good scientists (and some not-so-good) working hard in their labs zealously pursuing “truth.”  There probably is even such a thing as “pure” science happening somewhere in some labs. But even the most ardent and disciplined objectivists among us are still subjective human beings. The process leading up to who gets a lab, how they design the experiment and who does what with any discoveries will always be a function of politics.  The “science” that reaches the masses will always have spin. Most of the “masses” wouldn’t understand the science if you spoon fed it to them straight from the scientist’s mouth. I have great respect for Al Gore’s intentions. I voted for him when he ran for President partially because of his environmental stance. I  have warmist leanings. I am not, however, blind to the inconvenient truth that Al Gore is not a scientist – he “just plays one in a movie.” But science without politics wouldn’t get very far.

And with well-established criteria for peer review and reproducible results, science tends to self-regulate. The global warming controversy really emphasizes the stability of the scientific ideal not its erosion. It’s the old torpedo effect of all human progress – we launch out of the tube in the general direction of our target, we stray off course, we make corrections.

Challenge and controversy have always been a part of scientific progress, whether the battle is between scientists and institutions, or scientists and other scientists. Today’s unavoidable transparency just makes the noise a lot louder and faster – out where we all get to watch and comment. And after all, it is science that brought us the internet – the vehicle of its own exposure.

“Solitude is Large”

“Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. Loneliness is small, solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of eternity.”

- Kent Nerburn

via whiskey river

Blogopause with Aside of Cat Blogging

Where’d she go?
I realize it’s been almost three weeks since I posted.  That probably shouldn’t  bother me or anyone else at this point; though I do wish I hadn’t read all those best-blogging-practices articles before I started this blog. “Three posts per week plus three comments per week on other blogs” always sticks in my [...]

Loving, Liking, & Living With: The Vista from the Long Haul

Michelle Obama, to Oprah on The Christmas at the White House special (via psychobabble):
“I think we have a wonderful marriage. I love my husband.  He’s my best friend. But I always like to talk honestly about it because I think about other young couples who think there are no struggles to get here. And there [...]

True Lover of Solitude

A poem – one of solitude’s trinkets. Or why I don’t write sometimes -
I often yearn for
The wordless place
Of quiet brushstrokes
And gently rustling nature,
Where falling backward
In total trust
Without direction
Feels as perfect
As its common opposite.
Where the restful process
Of simply being
Is creativity enough.
And this place,
By its simple perfection,
Without judgment, labels,
Goals or true effort
Can transform a nothingness
Into a [...]

Solitude, SHOULD & The Hermit Uncertainty Principle

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I admit it. One of my attractions to solitude is the free pass it provides – a free pass from should. When you live in solitude, no one cares if you’re naked or nocturnal – as long as you’re self-supporting (sometimes tough in solitude) and not bothering anyone (extremely easy in solitude). Why would anyone [...]

“the world offers itself to your imagination”

Geese2Wild Geese   by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Memorable Hermit Georgia O’Keeffe: “…No One to Satisfy Except Myself.”

Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiu, New Mexico, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, August 16, 1950

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The Lifetime Channel recently aired a made-for-TV movie entitled Georgia O’Keeffe starring Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. In spite of excellent acting, the movie was a big disappointment to me* [see footnote], focusing primarily on O’Keeffe’s turbulent love affair with New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz (played by Irons), her ultimate marriage to him and her [...]

October Balance

Stevens Pass, October 2008

Stevens Pass, October 2008

October is my favorite month. I like autumn generally and (here) October is the month that finds the perfect balance between summer and winter. Nature is quieting down, weather is revving up. Humans are settling some, too (at least temporarily) – school routines are set and efficient, holiday frenzies have not quite begun.

I always prefer quiet to frenzy. It’s part of my attraction to solitude.

October is also my birth month. Birthdays provide a day of license to celebrate ourselves  – incorporate some self-indulgence into the schedule without apology.  More importantly for me they are the annual opportunity to reflect on another trip around the sun – that pivotal personal reminder of the grand balance between the clearly temporary and seemingly eternal.

There is, apart from mere intellect, in the makeup of every superior human identity, (in its moral completeness, considered as ensemble, not for that moral alone, but for the whole being, including physique,) a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is called education, (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name) – an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifarious, mad chaos of fraud, frivolity, hoggishness – this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettledness, we call the world; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter.  – Walt Whitman