The Saunterer

Kirk Varnedoe on educating appreciation of art

    Concerning art, and particularly modern art, Kirk Varnedoe had this to say:
Some of the most deep-seated pleasures of our natural selves . . . involve appetites that had to be educated. If these pleasures are rooted in crude instinct, they nonetheless grow in depth and power as we acquire hierarchies of discrimination, until second nature is nowhere separable from the first.
    From Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock, by Kirk Varnedoe, Princeton University Press, 2006. For a bit about Pictures of Nothing and a brief biography of Kirk Varnedoe, click here.

Mary Wollstonecraft on “lucky is the young woman who lacks beauty”

    This is Mary Wollstonecraft striking a powerful point:
Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
    (Quoted from page 52 of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Marry Wollstonecraft. London: Walter Scott. 1891.)
    For a brief biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, click here. For images of and relating to Mary Wollstonecraft, click here.

Claude Monet on the infinite lives of a single landscape

    Claude Monet painted stacks of wheat thirty times in thirty different conditions. He explains why:

For me a landscape hardly exists at all as a landscape, because its appearance is constantly changing; but it lives by virtue of its surroundings - the air and the light - which vary continually.

    The J. Paul Getty Museum has one of Monet’s stacks of wheat paintings, titled Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning. It is illustrated and described on page 140 of The Getty’s Handbook of the Collections, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, 1997; Monet’s remark, above, is part of the description.
    The Art Institute of Chicago holds six of Monet’s paintings of stacks of wheat. When we were last there, they were in a row, illustrating the truth of his remark.
    It is the same for real landscape. Destroy a landscape and it isn’t one thing that gets destroyed. It is as many special things as would appear in the course of the seasons and the years - millions, each a special mood, all killed forever by one act.
    For a brief biography of Claude Monet, click here. For images of his stacks of wheat, click here.

Henry David Thoreau: here’s a two minute video for you

    The Saunterer feels a guiding principle of Henry David Thoreau in the video you can see by clicking here. Be sure the sound is turned up.

Socrates on why you should want to hold office

    Socrates’s answer:
The chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule. It is from fear of this, it appears to me, that the better sort hold office when they do, and then they go to it not in the expectation of enjoyment nor as to a good thing, but as a necessary evil and because they are unable to turn it over to better men than themselves or to their like.
    (Quoted on page 87 of The Lesser Good: The problem of justice in Plato and Levinas, by Wendy C. Hamblet. Lexington Books. 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Socrates, click here. For Wendy Hamblet’s vitae, click here.

Garrett Hardin on population: Delusions 9 and 10

    The Saunterer’s posts on July 13, July 15, and July 17, 2009, gave Delusions 1 through 7 from Garrett Hardin’s article “Ten Charming Delusions About Population” (The American Biology Teacher, February, 1975, pages 102-103). And with the Three Mile Island accident becoming fact fours years after Hardin’s warning of Delusion 8 - Atomic energy is safe - we skip over it and go to Delusions 9 and 10:

  9. Every mistake is correctable, so let’s continue with the Santa Clause economy until we run into trouble. In the Orient, the Near East, and around the Mediterranean there are millions of acres of land that were ruined beyond redemption by earlier civilizations. When a house falls down we can put it back up again. But when the soil washes off of hillsides because we have clearcut the forests, leaving nothing to protect the soil from erosion, we can never build the land back again. It would take too much energy. We remove the forest in the first place because of a “shortage” of energy (really a longage of people), so how can we possibly spare the energy needed to build mountains back into shape?
    10. Civilization cannot be destroyed. According to Arnold Toynbee, nineteen civilizations have perished before ours. What makes us think ours is so special? Are we more prudent? More conserving? Readier to acknowledge our errors? Less afflicted with men who have a vested interest in destruction? More courageous, more willing to “bite the bullet”?

    For a brief biography of Garrett Hardin, click here. For images of and relating to Garrett Hardin, click here.

Garrett Hardin on population: Delusions 5, 6, and 7

    The Saunterer’s posts on July 13, 2009, and July 15, 2009, gave Delusions 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now from the same source - Garrett Hardin’s article “Ten Charming Delusions About Population” (The American Biology Teacher, February, 1975, pages 102-103) come Delusions 5, 6, and 7:
    5. Birth control is population control. India put an end to government sponsorship of birth control two years ago because she had been disillusioned. During two decades of public financing of birth control programs the rate of India’s population growth doubled. The program was a “success” - a Pyrrhic success. A poor country can’t afford many successes like that. Perfect birth control enables parents to have exactly the number of children they want. But the “average parent” wants too many children for the good of the country, so birth control is not population control. Planned parenthood programs are good; they’re just not good enough. Something else is needed. Our problem is to find - and accept - that “something else.”
    6. Nobody ever dies of overpopulation. If a country is so crowded that families have to live on dangerous flood plains, when the flood comes and people die by the thousands, the river is blamed. We never blame overpopulation for deaths by disease or civil disorder, though it is one of many causes, acting jointly. We mention only the causes we are willing to face. We cannot face overpopulation.
    7. There’s an energy shortage now. Nonsense. There’s no shortage of energy - there’s a “longage” of people. More exactly, this is a relative matter. Energy is short relative to population; population is long relative to energy. We haven’t the courage to face the possibility of bringing the two into balance by diminishing population, so we complain about the “shortage” of energy. The same principle applies to all so-called shortages.
    For a brief biography of Garrett Hardin, click here. For images of and relating to Garrett Hardin, click here.
    In the Saunterer’s next post: Delusions 9 and 10.

Garrett Hardin on population: Delusions 3 and 4

    The Saunterer’s July 13, 2009, post gave Delusions 1 and 2. Now from the same source, Garrett Hardin’s article “Ten Charming Delusions About Population” (The American Biology Teacher, February, 1975, pages 102-103), are Delusions 3 and 4:

    3. The cancer of overpopulation can be cured by more food. Twenty years ago Dr. Alan Gregg, a vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, identified the spreading of mankind over the earth as a cancer and remarked that he had never known a cancer that was cured by feeding. Ironically, the same foundation today supports Norman Borlaug in his search for ways to produce more food. Borlaug himself is ambivalent about the value of his work - for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize - but he is “hooked” by the delusion. He not only defends feeding the cancer; he also speaks out in favor of pollution as being necessary for growth. Borlaug is a tragic figure.
    4. Poverty is cured by sharing the wealth. Borlaug proposes that we create a giant world granary open to all comers. This is the solution of the “commons,” which inevitably leads to ruin for all. People who cannot, or will not, control their population growth can, in time, absorb an infinite amount of food. No matter how clever we are, the food supply will always be finite. In a world of different population growth rates wealth cannot be shared. In this world, only two things can be shared: poverty and information. . . . Which would you prefer to share?
    For a brief biography of Garrett Hardin, click here. For images of and relating to Garrett Hardin, click here.
    In the Saunterer’s next post: Delusions 5, 6, and 7.

Garrett Hardin on population: Delusions 1 and 2

    From Garrett Hardin’s article “Ten Charming Delusions About Population” (The American Biology Teacher, February, 1975, pages 102-103):

    1. We can grow forever, because the world is infinite. If this is true, “anything goes.” If it is not true, we must use our heads. Who wants to use his head when dreaming is so pleasant?
    2. Everything will be okay if population grows slowly enough. In a spaceship, this is ridiculous. To exceed the carrying capacity of a spaceship is bad no matter how slow the rate of growth. Over the long term, only a zero population growth rate is tolerable. Overcrowded spaceships are advised to institute negative growth rates for a while. Is ours already overcrowded? What would the “Man from Mars” say?

    For a brief biography of Garrett Hardin, click here. For images of and relating to Garrett Hardin, click here.
    In the Saunterer’s next post: Delusions 3 and 4.

Heinz R. Pagels on drawing strength from one’s enemy to fight that enemy

    Pseudoscience should be the enemy of us all. So the more we rub shoulders with it, the better we are inspired to stamp it out. So tells Heinz R. Pagels in his book, The Dreams of Reason:

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

    Quoted from page 35 of The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate, by Adam Frank. University of California Press, 2009. For a brief biography of Heinz Pagels, click here. For Adam Frank’s website, click here.