Microcosm Week

 

 Parmenides

Let's go to the beach again, or the mountains.  But, of course, we can't. Not because of Covid 19, but because , as Heraclitus taught us, we cannot step into the same river twice. Anyone who visits a hometown after many years knows this truth. Everything is changing. Climate crisis is changing our world. 

The week that is concluding today has been surreal. Teaching masked students astronomy and philosophy online is surreal. With deaths overtaking a thousand Americans a day, with skyrocketing cases in Georgia, with conflicting policies on schools and everywhere else in the state, it is no wonder we are filled with anxiety and apprehension. 

This week we discussed the remarkable shift in knowledge from the time of Ptolemy to that of Galileo. For thousands of years only a rare few knowledgeable people grasped that the Earth was not the center of the universe. The lengths responsible people went through to maintain this lie are proof of how gullible and uneducated most people are. 

We discussed the reaction of the Catholic Church to Galileo's discoveries. After his success with the military with his telescopes, making money and gaining popularity, he turned those telescopes to the sky, recorded four of he moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus.  He confirmed the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. And on pain of death for heresy, Galileo had to lie, to deny what he knew with certainty. Not until 1960 did the Church finally admit that the earth goes around the Sun. Not until 1992, did the Church say that Galileo was correct. 

Unlike the majority of people who just want pleasure: a good meal, a drink, money, a nice house, a spouse, vacations,  philosophers wanted to understand the world, to know what is real, how to explain the fundamental elements of the world. They refused to accept the silly gods, powerful, fantastic beings modeled on people... often bad people who rape women and boys, and start wars. Philosophers like Socrates wanted to know what is right and just. He questioned authority. 

The first Western philosophers played around with Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as possible fundamental elements. Democritus came up with the idea of atoms as the most basic material. But Heraclitus and Parmenides were deeper; they explored questions of change and permanence, formed the empirical and rational  ideas that fascinated Plato. These thinkers did not blandly accept the official views of their leaders and their society. Parmenides was certainly correct from the rational point of view that change is illusory when you look at how seldom people examine their beliefs and try to understand what is happening, whether then or today. That all their little pleasures will soon be wiped away by unfolding forces in the world is inconceivable to most, even as this pandemic has already altered their lives. 

This was the week Kamala Harris joined Joe Biden in the attempt to rid the country of Trumpty Dumpty. This is the week Humpty began in earnest to destroy the  U.S. Postal Service to prevent people from voting against him. Nonetheless, 40% of Americans watch the Propaganda Channel and do not see the intense evil in this man. They are like the people who refused to see that the Earth orbits the Sun. Science is beyond them. They hear, see, and speak no evil, as evil itself grows bolder and more autocratic daily. 

This has been a strange week at home. Daily sunsets through downpours and lightning. Curious films and series about injustice, bigotry, and even the end of the world. Time Travel. My evening strolls under colorful cumulus, the sound of cicadas almost deafening. The last of the fireflies are still flashing their girlfriends. They have endured longer this summer. 

It has been a week for exposing myths. Again, social and historical truths people don't know or simply deny. Must we condemn all those in the past who approved of slavery? Washington? Jefferson? 

Well, what about Jesus who repeatedly admonished slaves to obey their masters? The first masters were not white. Almost every ethnic group has practiced slavery. black Muslims in Moorish Spain owned white European slaves. The people who opposed slavery on principle before 1800 were rare indeed. So too were people who thought highly of women or respected their right to learn, philosophers like Parmenides,  Plato, and Epicurus. We could write books on people and societies that abused gays and lesbians; Greek and Roman society to the contrary, as were native Americans, long periods of Japanese culture, etc. And there we have Parmenides, white haired, distinguished, visiting Athens with his lover Zeno, handsome, greatly admired. For most of history the idea that loving one gender meant rejecting the other sexually was simply bizarre.

So, yes,  surrealism and a very full week. New reports on the state of nature. Yes, more evidence of melting polar caps and ice shelves, more melting glaciers and rising seas. Recent destruction by hurricane of the already damaged coast of North Carolina. The ravages to water and air by pollution. The hottest temperatures month after month. Wildfires. Every week, more devastation.

It is hard to deny the fragments of Heraclitus; we cannot step into the same river twice, because the river has dried up in the heat. We cannot return to normal because the new normal has replaced it. We shall never know again the world we loved last year. It is gone. We might be able to postpone the worst horrors to come by electing Biden, but the old, happy normal we fondly recall...

Jameson