Doing The Best That I Can

Until recently I didn't give a thought to my thumb, the one on my right hand. It was useful for sure, opening the cookie jar, taking out the garbage, tying shoelaces, etc. But it was always there in working order, so I just got on with business.

Last week, the old thumb had enough of being used, abused and ignored. The knuckle began dislocating even under slight stress making all the usual chores painful problems to be managed. 

I'm not looking for sympathy. You don't make it to 85 without accumulating problems to be managed. It's OK. I'm managing. The right hand is on vacation. The left hand opens the cookie jar and carries the garbage bucket. Since both thumbs are needed to tie the shoes, I'm switching to Velcro. Velcro is nifty, but I can't take credit for it. Didn't invent it. Didn't design and manufacture laceless shoes. Glory and honour to inventors and manufacturers.

This reminds me:
when things are running smoothly, we forget that we are part of something bigger that keeps us safe and comfortable and solves our problems. We imagine that the world is there for us to use, and we use it as we wish because we can...until we can't. We are deluded in thinking we are self-sufficient and in control. Not so. We are bit actors in a story that has been going on forever, a story to which we belong as transient, self-absorbed trouble makers, a story that will continue without us when we are gone.

Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble 'til you try brushing your teeth with the other hand.

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It's Hard To Be Humble: Mac Davis and The Muppets

Everyone Is Playing Correctly, a game theory of collapse: Adrian Lambert

Overshoot:  Alan Urban, 2023

Ants Or No Ants

That is the question.

We've got ants.
Again.
Ants on the floor.
Ants in the kitchen.
Ants running up our legs.

I imagine an ant saying, "How do I get this tasty human to hold still so we can get his butt back to the nest? We've got babies to feed."

As for us tasty people,
how do we get rid of the ants?
We use ant traps, of course.
Ants will take the poison bait back to the nest
and that'll finish 'em off.
When the ants are gone, the traps go in the garbage...until there are more ants.

There are always more ants.

Years ago a wise granddaughter told us we were being mean. We should put a jar of jam on the lawn so the ants would stay outside. She hadn't been around long enough to learn how we humans deal with stuff we don't like. Jam on the lawn doesn't work. If you feed the ants, they thrive and you get more ants looking for more food. Ants will happily bite the hand that feeds them.

We do that too. Come to think of it, we have a lot in common with the ants.

When they have exhausted the provision around their nest they send out an army to exploit surrounding territory. Just like us.

Sometimes ants send a swarm off to find somewhere else to call home. Just like us.

Some ants let aphids do the foraging for them and harvest aphid sugar secretions. Ice cream anyone?

These solutions to survival problems have evolved over millions of years along with everything else on the planet including us.

We have evolved smarter than ants, but not as smart as evolution. We are good at altering our circumstances but not so good at predicting outcomes, some of which may be bad. Eventually evolution fixes its mistakes. 

If we continue to exceed the regenerative capacity of the planet, that mistake will be fixed.

After that there will still be ants.

May we be wise enough soon enough to survive being so smart.
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The Abundance, Biomass, and Distribution of
Ants on Earth: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Creation As Relative: Randy Woodley
Climate Science Awareness and Solutions: Columbia Climate School

Record Heat: The World, The Universe And Us, 23 minute video
The Failure Of Climate Politics: Prof Eliot Jacobson
I Need To Be Honest For A Moment: The Earthly
The Mouth Of The Ouroboros: a chronicle of civilization's suicide: Gabriel Lovemore

After Earth Day

Earth Day was April 22. It went by hardly noticed. Our attention is on war and tariffs, the price of fuel and groceries, housing and jobs. All of that is important here and now. 

But have you noticed that the conversation around climate has hushed ? William Rees (see link below) explains why humanity is mentally, socially and culturally unequipped to pay attention to this large scale, slow moving existential threat. If he's right, we are done. 

It would be so tragic if our grandchildren were extinguished because we are distracted by the price of gasoline. 

We have a choice.
We could pay attention to the facts,
imagine a better future for the planet and
make it happen. 

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Conflict and Crises Floodlight Fossil Fuel Folly:  David Suzuki and Ian Hanington

Mything Out On Sustainable Development: William E. Rees

Something Brewing In The Pacific: Chris Gloninger

Super El Niño: The World, The Universe and Us and New Scientist (13 minute Youtube video)

Super El Niño: Covering Climate Now (1 hour Youtube video)

Let's Talk Climate: Bill McKibben

The Economy of Becoming: Indy Johar

Another Year Gone

Eighty-five today and still writing.

Maybe I have said everything I have to say. I look back and reread words from blog posts past and find I agree and disagree with it all, naive simplicity and pedantic complexity, so serious and so silly. Ideas are to be lived, like seeds sprouting questions, budding heresies, and bearing fruit with new seed, then doing it all again. That's life, or perhaps meta-life.

Which leaves me wondering:
what's the meta for:
overthinking simplicity,
oversimplifying complexity,
being seriously silly?

Enough!
Time for life.
I will dig the garden and plant again.

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Evolution of Minds: acknowledging the complexity of thought

KISS or SIN: in praise of simplicity

Emergence: a simple poem about the source of complexity

To Look at Dust: the last words in this blog.

Just Check The Thermostat

One night last week, the furnace went down. There was an error message on the thermostat telling us to call for service and not try to fix it ourselves. I called. The receptionist walked us through a couple of first steps: does the filter need changing (did that last week), turn the power off and on to reset the controls (tried that with no effect). A service call was set for that afternoon. Meanwhile we kept ourselves warm with the fireplace, space heaters and ovens.

Let me explain. We have a hybrid heat-pump/gas-furnace. The heat pump works down to -10° C outdoor temperature. Below that the furnace kicks in, until it kicks out. It kicked out some time during the night leaving the house cooling to 17° C by morning. 

That's all I knew or want to know. For control, we have the thermostat, filter, power switch, and the telephone connecting us to service. That's enough. The jungle of tubes, wires, switches and valves inside the furnace is up to the technician. He says the high temperature kill switch was thrown for some unknown reason, and if it happens again they will replace the switch. Thank goodness he knew how it works and what can go wrong. We are warm again without needing to take a course in furnace repair.

The equipment, which is warranted by the manufacturer, has parts made who knows where on the planet. The materials from which the parts are made come from remote mines and refineries. The minerals which aggregated from space rubble 4.5 billion years ago, came from stardust, and we could trace their origin back to the inflation of the singularity 13.8 billion years ago, a year being the time required for one revolution of the earth around the sun. Note that there wasn't always an earth to serve as a cosmological clock. 

You get my point? It's complicated, but you don't have to know where it all came from or how it works or what the evidence is. Just check the thermostat and do what it says.

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We called a taxi to go to the optometrist last week. The driver said it was a slow day because it was March break, and he was wasting time when he should have been earning fares. Our fare came to $19. I gave him $25. He said, "God bless you", and we departed mutually happy with his fee and our ride. 

God bless you? I appreciate the gratitude. But what's God got to do with it? Is God going to fix things so I win the lottery as a reward for my generosity? Well, no. I am pretty sure reality doesn't work that way. But yes, we participate in reality and in response to our God-thoughts we can make it more generous.

That's my inner theologian being hyper-vigilant. If you've followed along, you know I have been thinking of God as two things: reality (complex and mysterious), and also our simplified understanding of reality (metaphorical, incomplete and fallible). We don't all have to be theologians (trained existential technicians), but we do have some control over how reality plays out. We may need to repair things and clean up our messes (reset and change the filter). Experience is our thermostat, showing us how we are doing.

We can choose (within limits) the warmth of the world we  live in. We have a hybrid furnace, more or less passionate or rational as needed.

Let us be generous, passionately and wisely.

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The Good Life Was Never Mine: Jessica Böhme

The Last Illusion: Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer

The Right Story

I'm stuck. I started to write this note and didn't have a story. Let me see...

Our rooftop solar averages almost $300 income per month. Last month, 47 cents. Now that the snow is off the roof, we're going to make electricity. True story.

We got up an hour earlier this morning in honour of daylight saving time. That's a true story.

The hibiscus we brought indoors last autumn responded to lengthening days by blooming for the first time this year. That's a true story.

After being indoors for months, we walked most of the way around the park today on bare pavement under a blue, windy sky, with meltwater gurgling down the storm drains. That's a true story.

I've started dreaming garden dreams again. Last night I dreamed that I had grown a big zucchini and was deciding what to do with it. I didn't dream recipe dreams: zucchini muffins, zucchini relish, zucchini linguini. That would make a credible story, but not my story. I dream gadgets. I dreamed a plug-in electric zucchini. I woke up before I dreamed a use for a plug-in electric zucchini. That's a mostly true story.

Now that I'm awake, I have a use for plug-in electric zucchini. It's a story to get this note started.

This note is about finding the right story. 

If the story is that you are the good guys and they are not, then you get to drop bombs on them.

If the story is that the attack is illegal according to international law, but the attacker is a demented narcissist who will take offense and turn on you if you criticize him, then you have to be careful what you say.

If the story is that renewable energy sources create too much waste, then we continue creating many times more waste doing business as usual.

If the story is that climate change is a hoax, then we rush to collapse by burning even more fossil carbon.

Below I have listed some articles and videos I saw this week illustrating how we have got the story wrong. We need the right story, even better than a plug-in electric zucchini. Read at leisure, in any order.

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Every Problem Is A Story Problem: Joe Boyd, Called For Adventure

Why Did Carney Support the War on Iran: the Paikin Podcast, March 2, 2026

Bombing Iran: John Rolston Saul, Towards Equilibrium

Letters From an American: Heather Cox Richardson, March 8, 2026

Politics: James Hansen, Climate Uncensored

I Went to Space and Discovered an Enormous Lie: Ron Garan, 2022

Runaway Climate, The Point of No Return: James Hanson, Climate Uncensored

The Primary Energy Fallacy Laid to Rest: Just Have A Think video, March 1, 2026

Sunlight Travels 93 Million Miles To Reach The Earth: Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years

The Truth About Collapse Acceptance: Adrian Lambert, A Grand Unified Theory of Doom

Civilization and The Human Maladaptation Syndrome: William E. Rees, StandsToReeson

Rapid Warming Explained: Just Have a Think, March 8, 2026

More Than Good

Reality is so complicated. 

The week before last, I bought a little cord switch to replace a wonky one for the aquarium light. There was a small diagram on the package but no instructions. I scanned the picture and printed it enlarged so my old eyes could make it out. It showed where the wires were to go, but didn't say whether the insulation was to be stripped. We finally guessed that when the case was closed, metal spikes would pierce the insulation and make contact. We gave it a try, and bazingo, it worked. That's life. We figure it out as best we can, guess because we aren't sure, and it sometimes works. 

Metaphysics is our owner's manual for life. It is presented to us as infants by our culture. It needs to be simple enough that we understand so we can make it work. One simplification is dualism, dividing reality into this and that, love and aversion, spiritual and material, peace and conflict, good and bad. 

If our metaphysics isn't simple enough, we don't understand. If it's too simple, we misunderstand. You may have noticed that my metaphysics avoids dualism because that introduces paradoxes such as why bad things happen to good people, and we waste our time misunderstanding simplicity. Instead, I suggest that God is reality, the way things are, including what we are thinking, good and bad and everything between, a metaphysics known as monism. Reality is what it is, and it's complicated. Don't insist that it be simple. 

Anyway we need to try our best to understand. Do we strip the insulation or not? We are going to be disappointed if we flip the switch and the light doesn't come on. In our ignorance, we choose and learn from consequences.

A monist God includes everything: predator and prey, conflict and peace, love and aversion. The goodness and badness emerges from choices and consequences. A monist paradigm regards our judgment of good and bad as contingent on relationships, who our friends are, who we love better, and our perceived duty to them. So what is good for my mood may be bad for my liver. What is good for one friend may be bad for another. What is good for our sheep may be bad for those wolves. What is good for our family may be bad for the nation. What is good for our children may be bad for our grandchildren. The monist metaphysics presents us with competing affinities and duties, leading us to actions with consequences that are often conflicted and surprising. We choose without being sure, and are sometimes wrong.

It must be so. Reality is far too complex to understand perfectly. Good here and now implies bad elsewhere later. More than that, the consequences of our choices show up everywhere because reality is one thing. Calling something good or bad is our strategy to make it thinkable. Whatever we do will be  a compromise with some emotions and practical wisdom striking a balance between competing imperatives. When we choose wisely, we are risking the unknown. It's an adventure. 

Reality is more than good or bad.

Yet we know a few things and we have choices. If we get some things wrong, it's OK. We learn from experience, and continue the adventure.

Reality is also the adventure.

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Beyond the Meaning Crisis: Jessica Böhme, Human-ing

Moral Choices In An Immoral World: Jessica Böhme, Human-ing

Global Cost of Climate Change: Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research