We have been sheltering from the heat and the smoke, dreaming of better times. Yesterday the rains came, and today we went for a walk under blue skies with puffy white cumulus in refreshing coolness.
I won't waste today blogging and we should all get out and enjoy while we can.
If you disagree, here are some links to pass the time.
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The Dice Are Loaded: Just Have A Think
For two minutes yesterday I was exposed to wildfire smoke while putting out the garbage. My eyes got so scratchy I kept them closed during the National News, where I heard what I had already seen firsthand: our air quality yesterday was abysmal, maybe the worst in the world.
Some of the stink sneaked across the border without a visa. Today the neighbours objected. (Republicans Blast Canada Over Wildfire Smoke: CBC News, July 16, 2026.)
My reflex reaction is to shout back that it's a real consequence of climate change, which is not a hoax, stupid.
My considered reaction is that we all have a problem to which we are all contributing, Uncle Sam more than most. And that's not a hoax. It's data.
Wildfire damage is global, not just Canadian.
(Real Time Wildfires)
Wildfires in Canada are on the increase (Fire History: Government of Canada)
Greenhouse gas emissions are creating the conditions for the increasing wildfire damage, and the warming of the north is more rapid than the global average. (Climate Change and Wildland Fire: Government of Canada)
The USA is responsible for 11.25% of global greenhouse gas emissions while Canada's contribution is only 1.41%. (GHG Emissions By Country: World Population Review)
Finally, a confession: I voted for a liberal government because Mark Carnie had a record of taking climate change seriously. Yet he is delivering policy compromise that delays reducing GHG emissions to an indefinite future. (Carnie's Climate Agenda: CBC News, Aaron Wherry, June 20, 2026)
Of course, Mark may be smarter than I, whose only occupation is putting out the garbage. We will reconsider this in four years if the USA permits us to manage our own affairs and Canada still exists in 2030.
If I'm not here, it's up to you. If you aren't here, then who cares? Maybe the grandkids?
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Just Stop Burning Fossil Fuels: Inayat Singh, CBC News, July 18, 2026
The Energy Transition Phase Two: Just Have A Think
Yes, but
32°C is more than enough
even for daisies.
We just took a walk around the block, pausing whenever we found shade under a tree. The daisies are stuck in the sun. Must give them a drink.
Lucky us, compared to those enduring an Omega Heat Wave in Europe last week with temperatures reaching above 40°C.
It's our fault, we Homo kaputiens. We have evolved with a will to thrive that erodes the conditions supporting life even for daisies. We have known this was happening for decades but we did it anyway because our collective will expressed in business and government prioritizes here and now. Elsewhere and later is somebody else's problem... until elsewhere is here and later has arrived, and we are dealing with the accumulated deferred cost of past human excesses. Our preferred solution, according to most business and some governments, is much more of the same. Never mind the daisies.
If instinct wins over intelligence, we are kaput. Let's pretend to be intelligent.
I know. We aren't very good at it.
Daisies may do better when we are gone.
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Heat Dome. How to Stay Safe: CBC News, June 30, 2026
America's Climate Warning System: Just Have a Think, June 28, 2026
Alberta's Pipeline Proposal: CBC News, June 30, 2026
Energy Innovation in Alberta: CBC News, June 25, 2026
Canada's Energy Future: Prime Minister Mark Carnie, June 30, 2026
"Nobody's Perfect", The making of 'Some Like It Hot': Youtube. (Just for fun)
During the cold months past, I have been lurking for free on Substack.com, exploring information and opinions about anything and everything (science, climate, economics, philosophy, politics, religion...), and leaving clever comments to set things straight, yes-butting ignorance toward enlightenment.
Yesterday I read The Church Paul Described Terrifies Modern Pastors with a quote from First Corinthians 14: “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.”
Interesting. Church with no pastor, everyone bringing what they can for the benefit of the group.
Yes, I see the genius of that, worshipers as participants rather than audience. Reminds me of God as Holy Spirit rather than law giver and judge. But how would this distributed divinity work in a large congregation?
OK, anybody who has something inspiring to tell us, line up at the microphone. And speak up when it's your turn.
Someone has to give the orders, and the rest of us have to follow their lead. And somebody has to shut down the nutter who interrupts the other speakers with a "yes-but" argument.
Pastor: Just listen. You can talk when it's your turn.
Yes, like God silenced Paul until he changed his mind about Jesus. But that stroke was probably brought on by his rages about the Jesus cult. Stupid to get so worked up about other people's beliefs.
To explore that thought further, I searched Substack for 'stupid' and found Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity, We Have More To Fear From Stupid People Than From Evil Ones.
Interesting. I thought about yes-butting that one with a clever comment like:
yes stupid is dangerous, but stupid plus evil would be worse and clever plus evil would be as bad as it gets.
I was going to illustrate that thesis with examples and body count statistics, but something stopped me from publishing. Funny thing about yes-butting, nobody likes a wise guy. Sometimes a wise guy should keep quiet and yes-but himself.
Yes, Substack has been rekindling the teacher in me, but not your favourite teacher.
Yes, I thought I had retired from teaching, but it feels like I'm still in school, sometimes teaching and sometimes being taught.
Yes, I know, it's stupid to waste time in a yes-but rut, arguing with faceless phantoms on Substack. But I needed something to do when the snow was on the ground. Sorry if I sounded critical.
Enough of that. I deleted my Substack account. I'm going to go dig the garden.
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Physical activity helped a bit. For the past hour, I yes-butted along the fence while the shovel did it's thing. Yes, I scattered a mix of flower seed into the dirt. And (not but) maybe something nice will come of that.
Socrates had it right when he said the wise man knows he is a fool. So today there are two of me here setting each other straight on a lovely spring day while we finish this note.
Now that we have confessed our stupidity, what do we say to a nap? Yes?
zzzz ZZZZZZZ
zzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz
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Awake once more, I searched "wise fool". Yes, the sense of the quotation is what I intended, but I need to correct a misattribution. The wise-fool saying is from "As You Like It", Act V, scene 1, words spoken by Touchstone: "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." As for Socrates', his thought on the matter is rendered as "I know only one thing, that I know nothing."
As for me, now I know that I got the quote wrong.
Somewhere between caterpillar and butterfly there is a pupa (caterfly?) undergoing remarkable transformation.
"Within the chrysalis, the caterpillar’s tissues undergo histolysis, a process of controlled self-digestion. Most of the larval cells break down into a nutrient-rich soup, while the imaginal discs and certain other groups of cells survive. These surviving cells then use the available nutrients to construct entirely new tissues and organs. The caterpillar’s body is reorganized into that of an adult butterfly—complete with wings, compound eyes, proboscis, and reproductive organs." (Science News Today)
That must have happened to produce the white butterfly we saw yesterday, first of the season, identical to all those white butterflies we saw last year.
A metaphor gets us thinking, but is never exact. Once it has our attention, we learn much from how it doesn't fit. For a particular species, what emerges from the chrysalis is almost always the same. If it fails to repeat the inherited plan, the butterfly probably doesn't survive. Very occasionally, a mutation turns out to be useful, and will be passed on to progeny.
In the human realm, we have history to lead us into the future, but it is a future unlike anything in history. If we faithfully replicate what the ancestors have done (including war, exploitation, extraction, extermination, pollution), we race to the sixth mass extinction. Fortunately we are equipped with a tool that the butterflies lack. We have imagination.
We either reinvent what it is to be human, or the world will evolve without us.
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New Climate Research Warns of Faster Warming: Just Have A Think
A Question Of Margin: Bill McKibben
An Attractor Nobody Sees: How civilizational dissolution reorganizes itself: Richard David Hames
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
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
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.
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
I'm stuck. I started to write this note and didn't have a story. Let me see...
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-ingI was in bed last night before I remembered to clean my teeth. Getting forgetful. I need to floss between the ears to keep the brain from getting cavities. So I'll think hard and write another note about God redefined as reality. Consider this note my transcen-dental floss routine.
Reality
During my last dental cleaning, I traded stories with the hygienist about how dental care has changed over my lifetime. I told her that my Dad got dentures sometime in his forties. Now in my eighties, I still have all but two original teeth. Not to be outdone, the hygienist told a story about her great great aunt who got ready for marriage by having all her teeth extracted in anticipation of the lean years to come. She didn't want to pay for fillings. That was during wartime. Lean years indeed. Smart lady.
I was four when the second world war ended. Back then life was simple; you could brush your teeth with baking soda.After the war, as the economy expanded, dental care became big business. "You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent." Now in 2026, you can spend your whole morning at the pharmacy reading toothpaste labels: anti-cavity, anti-halitosis, desensitizing, fluoride, whitening, small-medium-large, many flavours, many brands.
Reality evolved and we learned to do things differently. In 1968 when we moved to Guelph, our new dentist said we should floss as well as brush. We were assured that with proper care our teeth would outlast us. Good. We began flossing. Now fifty-eight years later, I'm still flossing and smiling.
Meanwhile, reality has moved on. So we need to keep flossing our metaphysics.
Metaphysics
Looking back, when times were tough, we just accepted what the parents told us to believe and assumed somebody had it figured out so it must be true.
Mom and Dad deserve credit. They did their best. However, their teeth didn't last, and that tells us something. We can likely improve on the way they managed their reality.
Long after the war, the economy expanded, we grew up and got jobs and had families. We began thinking for ourselves. We had a choice between continuing with the old wartime God of law-obedience-justice-retribution or brushing and flossing some new thoughts of our own more fitting to a life of peace-sufficiency-plenty. We imagined a God of gracious providence, charity, forgiveness.
Reality kept evolving.
We are now in a reality that we didn't see coming: climate change, pollution, ideological and political polarization, poverty, intolerance, wealth disparity, nationalism, government by psychopath, empire building, drone warfare, toxic social media.
What if God is no longer the gracious provider of abundance and growth ? How do we keep smiling while reality contracts into exploitation, neediness and conflict ?
If reality demands living well with less, that has been done before, and we can do it again with new insight added to traditional wisdom. Whatever we are thinking about God, there is more.
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The Heresy of Waking Up: Jim Palmer, A Non-religious Lent, Week 1
The God of the Philosophers vs The God of the Bible: Benjamin J. Curtis, Journey Through Reality
Collapse: Living Without the Future We Were Promised: Adrian Lambert, A Grand Unified Theory of Doom
We have been watching from our easy chairs as athletes go faster, higher, stronger to earn glory. The Olympics is a spectacle promoting a lot of proud nationalism and egocentric obsession with winning. We might justify that as a harmless expression of instinctive competitiveness, which once kept us from being eaten.
Fine, but in a friendlier world, we need to shift attention away from who's the better predator to what we have in common. We need to get over ourselves and pay attention to our interdependence with everything that exists.
If that all-inclusive reality is God, and if our metaphysics places everybody and everything on God's team, then it's not a competition. It is mutual striving: faster, higher, stronger together.
Nevertheless, we bring our vestigial instincts with us, and we want God to be on our side in the contest. As a result, our metaphysics is human-biased, tribal, egocentric. We won't be satisfied with a reality that leaves us needy losers. So we imagine ourselves (our tribe, our nation, humanity) as God's team. We're going to win and the 'others' are not. Too bad about the bees and birds.
Now get real (know God).
Go back far enough and we are distant cousins of bees and birds and all of the other species, even turnips.
Life on earth has been evolving and diversifying for more than four billion years. Maybe 99% of species that ever existed have gone extinct. Perhaps 8 million remain. They come and they go, and our turn to go is coming.We would like to think we are different, that we can thrive indefinitely because God (reality) made us clever. The other species are just food or pets or pests or unimportant. We have invented a metaphysics that is good for humans without much regard for more-than-human life and the physical world we inhabit.
To be real, sooner or later there will be an end to humanity, either because we have messed up the planet, or a virus mutates faster than vaccines can keep up, or warring nations nuke everything, or the sun has run out of hydrogen. We share with other species unavoidable impermanence.
Yet we are a bit different than the others. We have more brain than bees and birds and turnips. We can accumulate knowledge and collaborate like a superorganism with billions of brains. We can use our knowledge to intentionally alter reality so we last a bit longer, assuming we get our metaphysics right.
We haven't been getting it right.
Getting it right means respecting all things living and nonliving, and valuing the future more than cheap fuel and economic growth in the present. The old metaphysics lets us take what we can get and defer the consequences long enough that it won't matter, leaving the details up to God who has a plan and is taking care of things for us so we can win.
Why would God (reality) be so obliging when we are busy messing things up?
Eventually, whatever we do, it determines how well we live and how long we survive.
A new metaphysics will be more-than-human, recognizing the interdependence of all species and the physical world, a fragile, metastable global ecosystem continually evolving.