Sacred Cow Consideration (or what's a FAH! for?)

To Sustainability Club

“The senses interfere everywhere
and mix their own structure with
all they report of.” (R.W.E.)

Common Sense can’t cut it.
Common Sense covers up,
in denial, illusion: pandering
to itself.

Just describing. How could
Common Sense not validate
itself, verify & confirm its
common sensibilities: always
getting what it preys for in
some form or other—like it
or not?

Sealed-in & salved: our collective
Directional Navigational Algorithms,
what we could call solipsism and
narcissistic if common sense
didn’t object. Deny.

Who’s a solipsist?
Raise your hand.
Narcissist?
We’ll talk.

Confessions of
an EngMajor:

Gong Show of My Self,
Leaves of Clanging Brass

How Hard & Social Science majors
talk about these things: that’s a course
of another color. This is FINE ARTS
& ah! Humanities Kind of Talk.

Diversity. Turn up our differences and
Put Us in Play.
Other wise we’re all simply Courses:
Aims & Objectives & Outcome
Assessments

We rightly accuse
the critic who
destroys too
many illusions.

Society does not
love its un-maskers.
(R.W.Emerson: EngMajor)

Sustain Ability


The challenge is to find decent description
without disturbing too much the sensibilities
of The Common Sense. Have to build an
Environment for it: frame-work & context—
a shared attitude willing willfully to suspend
common sense belief and disbelief so that
Sustainability Issues don’t merely sustain
our seductive un-sustainable sustainables so
seemingly sustain-able they got us into the
sustainability pickle in the first place.

In public I salute sustainability,
admire Al Gore, support the local
food initiative, view The Dark
Knight as tragic tribute to one of
our most promising actors, prefer
Obama to John McPain—though
I understand his arthritis and
appreciate his heroism.

In private (“idios”): always besieged
by pressing personal issues not even
close to greening or polar bears, off-
shore drilling, plug-in automobiles,
Virgin flights to outer space, runs on
banks, Freddie & Fannie, universal
health care, terrorism, axes of evil, 4
dollar gas, stay-cations, earthquakes
and fire in California, on-line degree
programs…the pour I have with
me always.

Beyond me, I say.
IT’s beyond me.
Does this make me a bad person?

My eyes & ears occlude truth-of-the-
whole, my terms of desire, my good
& evil, my likes & dislikes, my
privileging & under privileging,
discrimination & explanation,
reasons why, interpretations,
escape-goating: all block,
pre-vene, prevent & seal
me in my cave, culture,
convention, market
place, theater &
I am powerless
to prevent it:
addicted
to me.

If you accuse me of this,
I’ll deny. Cover. Pander.
Makes good common sense:

Save the Appearances.

To sustain as I am sustained.