Saturday 5 April 2014

WHY?


WHY ? 

Some have asked what it actually is I wish to accomplish, and why I do it.
I tried to answer one correspondent towards the end of my blog of 02 February 2013 http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/snippets-questions-2-comments.htm
from which I would like to quote (bullet points extended here):
_______________________________
So much for my return comments.  Happy to learn of any corrective sources, which you – or anyone else reading this – could point me to. I only claim to be a still learning pundit (for want of a better word in contradistinction to expert or consultant which I don’t claim to be), and then not in any climate science but in the areas of CleanEnergy and Sustainability.

To illustrate, here is my current study and work program, briefly:

·         The global design problem:
".... to render the total chemical and energy resources of the world, which are now exclusively preoccupied in serving only 44% of humanity, adequate to the service of 100% of humanity, at higher standards of living and total enjoyment than any man has yet experienced."
Buckminster Fuller, UIA Paris, 1963
·         Its timescale (solutions must be valid for grandchildren’s grandchildren):
“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children.”
Ancient American Indian Proverb
·         Method (democracy defined): 
“Libraries are not just depositories of books, but cornerstones of democracy. True democracy --based upon the informed consent of the governed --cannot exist without full free and public access to knowledge.”
Seattle City Librarian Deborah Jacobs, as quoted by Bruce Mau
·         Aim: Sustainability

In these respects, I wholly share your closing encouragement – “Now let’s get to work, seriously!”
_________________________________

My first blog was posted on 09 September 2009 – ,
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/clean-energy-primer-quousque-tandem.html 
since when I am occasionally reporting and commenting on my learning progress – see at side column for total postings, and popularity ratings to date. 

Latest entries in the TYGER series are --  at the date of this posting (but check for later entries of TYGER reads that stirred or inspired me):
the first TYGER posting is at
The most popularly read blogs are always shown in the right margin of each posting.

The complete updated list is always available at   http://tinyurl.com/k7ryobs   

The only rewards are that I learn a lot from the sources I quote, can talk and present what I learned, find readers in many countries, and to have been asked to let some of my blog postings be reproduced for wider circulation. Two recent articles, reprinted from my blog site, may illustrate some aspects I currently wrestle with:

As referred to in both of these TYGER postings I would like to quote again from Buckminster Fuller’s Foreword to his Critical Path [Hutchinson, London,1983]:

“My reasons for writing this book are fourfold:
       (A)   Because I am convinced that human knowledge by others of what this book has to say is essential to human survival.
      (B)   Because of my driving conviction that all of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly – right now.
     (C)   Because I am convinced that humanity’s fitness for continuance in the cosmic scheme no longer depends on the validity of political, religious, economic, or social organizations, which altogether heretofore have been assumed to represent the many.
     (D)   Because, contrary to (C), I am convinced that human continuance now depends entirely upon:
     a.     The intuitive wisdom of each and every individual.
     b.     The individual’s comprehensive informedness.
     c.     The individual’s integrity of speaking and acting only on the individual’s own within-self-intuited and reasoned initiative.
     d.     The individual’s joining action with others, as motivated only by the individually conceived consequences of so doing.
     e.     The individual’s never-joining action with others, as motivated only by crowd- engendered emotionalism, or by a sense of the crowd’s power to overwhelm, or in fear of holding to the course indicated by one’s own intellectual convictions."


I am trying, as best I can, to follow the advice in Fuller’s point (D) above, using as much as possible of the Traffic Signs in my comment in 
http://www.principia-scientific.org/tyger-tyger.html#comment-2562 
already referred to above,
   
as  ...my own ‘Traffic Signs’ in my ‘Whole-Earth-Sat-Nav’ through the CRITICAL PATH as a pointer to Democracy needing what appears to me like a never-ending minimum seven-voices, ricercar-like spiralling quest that might help mankind to ‘make it’ to the next interglacial.”    [see Comment #1 below, for ease of reference]

Following this advice, 'doing what I do' gets more exciting day by day, and that’s why I blog in order to share this excitement while quoting literature and links to sources that give rise to it.

The list of countries that are reported to have attracted readers of my blog postings comprise (at time of writing) :

And the Critical Path is still very long – with thanks to those who illustrated it for us: 

 http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/reality-check-following-collection-of.html

and above all,  Thank You to all those ‘teachers’ on whom I leant  in my various blog musings.

1 comment:

  1. Here are my own ‘Traffic Signs’ in my ‘Whole-Earth-Sat-Nav’ through the CRITICAL PATH as a pointer to Democracy needing what appears to me like a never-ending minimum seven-voices, ricercar-like spiralling quest that might help mankind to ‘make it’ to the next interglacial:

    “Libraries are not just depositories of books, but cornerstones of democracy. True democracy – based upon the informed consent of the governed – cannot exist without full free and public access to knowledge”.
    Deborah Jacobs, Seattle City Librarian

    “For only a short time, in most countries, has the individual human had the right of trial by jury. To make humanity’s chances for a fair trial better, all those testifying must swear ‘to tell the truth, all the truth and nothing but the truth.’….. If we don’t program the computer truthfully with all the truth and nothing but the truth, we won’t get the answers that allow us to ‘make it’ “.
    Buckminster Fuller CRITICAL PATH, Hutchinson, 1981

    “Truth is a purely human construct but facts are eternal.”
    Alexius Meinong

    “There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.”
    Arthur Schopenhauer

    “The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other.”
    Thomas Payne THE AGE OF REASON

    “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”.
    George Orwell

    “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
    Karl Popper
    {… who deserves special mention by referring if only to these five tokens from his legacy, from The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934], to The Open Society and its Enemies [1945], to Conjectures and Refutations [1963], to the latest and most important: The Lessons of this Century [1997] and All Life is Problem Solving [1994,1999]}.

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