Just Check The Thermostat

( To view black text on white background, >>  click here  << )

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.

****************

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.

****************

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.

***************

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.

********************

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