Views from Crestmont Drive

• Speculations about yesterday’s observations;
• Stupidity and mendacity: removing parts of the Constitution from government websites;
• American science withdraws; RFK Jr doesn’t believe in mRNA vaccines;
• Hegseth and academic mediocrity;
• America has defunded one of the smartest beings on the planet;
• And an example of Arvo Pärt’s striking early music, and Tintinnabuli.

Following up on the previous post:

Now, why would this be? I tend to fall back on some notion of how the human mind, a product of evolution in a world that now virtually no longer exists, was primed for survival, not understanding of the real world. Survival for thousands or even millions of years meant increasing levels of cooperation, in small tribes and larger and larger communities. Knowing whether someone was on your side — loyalty — meant more than anything, certainly more than fealty to the real world, because there was no understanding of the real world outside of mundane circumstances of survival.

And that worked fine, more or less, for all that time. As the species grew and spread itself across the planet tribes became differentiated, mostly through random evolutionary processes (except for skin color, which was adaptive), and both tribalism and competition for resources led to increased conflicts among tribes. Now, in the modern world, we’re all increasing dependent on each other, both because no one state or nation can maintain the infrastructure of the technological world all by itself, and because global, existential, problems exist that cannot be solved by any one state or nation. Climate change, the threat of nuclear war, global pandemics, even perhaps AI. Those who would withdraw from the world into their own nationalistic or religious shell are abandoning responsibility for humanity’s future, retreating into a dead-end past, and undermining their own survival in the long run.

But there’s a bit more. Continue reading →