Process - Postscript

Which brings us full-circle back to where we started, Professor.

Correct – except that in your prior summary of Process, you omitted what I feel is an important idea that preceded my conclusion, to wit:

‘Humans come of age are totally responsible for what they are and what they do.  We are free to do whatever we like within the limits of our several abilities.  We need only face the consequences.’  Which is to say that we have the freedom and ability to change the world around us but we have no one to blame for the outcomes but ourselves.

Well, that may be true, Professor, if we could control all of the outcomes from a particular sequence of events that our actions might set in motion, but we can’t.  Why do you say that we must be responsible?

We’re responsible because we can anticipate, observe, and respond if we choose to.  We’re not oblivious to the implications of our actions, unless we choose to be.  Do you sit in your car in the middle of a busy intersection and ignore the horns of your irritated fellows, or do you move so they can get through?  Better yet, do you anticipate that someone may be coming along before you have a chance to clear the intersection so it’d be a good idea not to block it?  Even still, do you recall from your age-old driver’s ed training that blocking an intersection is not permitted so you make a point to leave it clear automatically?  It’s true that we are unable to anticipate all of the possible outcomes, but where there is causation there is responsibility.  What I’m suggesting we should be applying is available knowledge and accumulated wisdom that helps us to anticipate undesirable environmental outcomes and to avoid behaviors that are likely to cause them.  Where medical science demonstrates linkage between eating red meat and heart disease or smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, we can choose to alter our behaviors to lessen the potential for such negative impacts.  When science demonstrates that inhalation exposure to benzene increases the likelihood of cancers in rats, we can choose to regulate sources of such emissions and protect the public from such exposures.

Or not.

Precisely – or not.  And in that case, who do we have to blame for our problems but ourselves?

And don’t you think that we have taken responsibility for our actions?

In some cases, certainly, but in many cases, I think the long-established TRADITION has been to ignore issues and “block the intersection” so to speak while the warning horns blare around us.  It’s just much easier to avoid problems than to face them unless we’re forced to, don’t you think?

Well, I think that many people have plenty of issues to be responsible for on a day-to-day basis and that it’s too hard to sort out issues that don’t elicit themselves obviously in front of their eyes – like global warming.  I think the tendency is to feel that the individual contributions to solving large-scale societal or environmental problems are insignificant.

Yes, individual efforts can be insignificant and unnoticed but as we saw in Tiananmen Square, they can also be very powerful.  As we’ve seen recently in the Middle East – profound changes can occur when people focus their attention on something important.  As we saw in July of 1969, when our efforts are focused by a clear vision, amazing feats can be achieved.

"A vision without a task is but a dream.
A task without vision is but drudgery.
A vision with a task is the hope of the world." - anon