It is complicated

On behalf of Envirodynamix and Safe America / WorldSafe I have been doing some research and writing on the relationships between choice, evidence, faith and moral imparatives in consideration of action or inaction on urbanization, resilience and the water, food, energy, security and health nexus. My basic thesis is that each problem we confront requires redefinition across economic viability, technical feasibility and political acceptance if we are to escape unhelpful silos and master the complexities we face.

Solutions will require that many more people than to today as seeing themselves as owners of the future. As William Julius Wilson once said with regard to youth violence, "If you have nothing at stake, why behave?" This question applies to more than youth. Can we in the midst of our current mess find environmental, economic, cultural and political pathways so that more see themselves as stakeholders in the future?

I am going to try to bring to mind some of the things I have learned in my career but more importantly some of the thoughts of great minds which are not normally applied to our subject. While climate science and concern emerged in the late 19th Century considerations of human capacity to integrate science and morality has been ongoing. I was first exposed to the knowledge that the struggles between evidence and its denial has been going on a long time when I read Sir Frances Bacon's Novum Organum. In his Aphorism XLIX he says "The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system accordingly; for man always believes more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation; sobriety, because it limits his hope; the depths of nature, from superstition; the light of experiment, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should appear to be occupied with common and varying objects; paradoxes, from a fear of the opinion of the vulgar; in short, his feelings imbue and corrupt his understanding in innumerable and sometimes imperceptible ways." Each of us brings our own historys, cultures and biases as well as educations and experience to problem solving new and old.

I will be trying to flesh this and other aspects without the intention of creating an answer. The goal, as I see it, is to get beyond the world as we have defined it in the compination of fact and will so that better questions become possible and more collaborative solutions across disciplines become the standard methodology in urbanization and resilience. I will do my best to send you something weekly. Please let me know what you think.