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Category:
Essays
Publisher: Magenta
ISBN-10: 1926891570
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 265
Copyright: April 17, 2018
ISBN-13: 9781926891576
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
A collection of think pieces on a variety of topics
A collection of think pieces on a variety of topics: the environment (the notion of garbage, who owns the water, climate change as entertainment, … ), business (the limits of advertising, business in denial, …), individual rights and social issues (making certain words illegal, slutwalks, cultural anarchy, a concept of noise trespass, …), ethics (what’s wrong with selling your organs, euthanasia, should parents need to be licensed,…), education (the failure of …), and so on. By the author of Critical Thinking: An Appeal to Reason
Excerpt
Have you noticed the way the weather
is being reported?
Have you noticed the way the weather is being reported lately?
Commentators refer to “extreme storms” – making them sound all exciting and daring, like “extreme sports”.
One opens with “this week’s wildest weather” as if we’re on a fun safari.
Another asks “Will any records be broken?” suggesting that, like athletic competitions, breaking a record will be a good thing.
And on a popular weather network website, the “photo of the day” shows a huge iceberg afloat, testament to the alarming melt of the polar ice [1], and the caption reads, unbelievably, “Anyone else see a face in the iceberg?”
They’ve turned the death of our planet into entertainment.
And then there’s all that pseudo-scientific detail! The rain is going to be caused by water droplets, that’s droplets of H2O, in the air that will succumb to gravity, under normal conditions, and eventually reach us, possibly at 6:20 or maybe 6:21.
Thing is, all that drama and detail distracts us from what’s really going on with the weather. Notice the obsession with proximate causes? Is it because if they addressed the real causes, those remote causes like eating meat and using fossil fuels, they’d have to address blame? (Maybe that’s why they’re referring to “acts of weather”. Not, like, acts of humanity.) (And certainly not, anymore, acts of someone’s god.)
And, have you noticed the increase in climate change disaster movies? Right, yeah, let’s get everyone comfortable with the idea. The idea that survival is possible. All we need is a hero.
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