It seems like, for about a decade or so, Bill Nye has been on a lonely crusade. I've seen him popping up in random places on TV like CNN and National Geographic, trying to maintain energy, patience, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness with an unmistakable undercurrent of exhaustion at the aggressive persistence of scientific illiteracy among the public and the powerful.
Like many people my age, I remember him initially as Bill Nye the Science Guy, a quirky bow-tied entertainer in the 1990s with an engineering background trying to make science fascinating and fun for then-young people like me. I was not an avid viewer of his show, I seem to remember an episode or two being shown in my high school science classes and finding them entertaining to the extent I could given that I was sitting in a high school science classroom.
Bill has been doing more or less the same thing for the last decade or so, except he is more serious, as the problems he is addressing are incredibly serious, and he is trying to reach a broader and different audience, though due to the passage of time that audience includes many of the same people that it did in the 90s: pretty much everyone with the right to vote, Americans in particular. Yet, while the problems are very serious, he knows that engaging the voting layperson to care about and understand it all is hard. He continues to use his skills as a scientist and entertainer/public figure to spread scientific literacy about controversial issues.
His newest effort states its intention plainly: Bill Nye Saves the World. It barrels on the scene via Netflix, the massively popular medium of streaming entertainment, delivering ~25-minute episodes devoted to the big public issues in modern science. Episode 1 comes right out swinging on the biggest issue: climate change. The show sets Herculean goals: distill confoundingly complex problems into digestible, entertaining bits that fairly reflect the state of modern science.
The show, its host and his guests and sidekicks are at turns or simultaneously thoughtful (as is his panel discussing GMOs), whimsical (as is the guest-appearance by Zach Braff in the first episode devoted to climate change), odd (as is the song about panspermia), funny (as is the show's writer who comes out to speak "to my fellow Asians" about their proclivity for promoting alternative medicine, and report filed by a correspondent who visits a looney-tunes "sound therapy" office in San Francisco), confusing (as are a lot of explanations about what exactly NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab is trying to do on Mars- especially when they try to explain what exactly it would mean to "find life" and what even might define "life"- and its connection to panspermia), profound (when discussing the possibility of finding life on other planets), illuminating (the whole episode on GMOs), impassioned (nearly everything Bill says), awkward (some of the attempts at humor), awe-inspiring (the expert panel discussing climate change and the solutions that exist right now), and more.
Coming out in the same year that a poster boy for scientific illiteracy has taken the oath of office for President of the United States and is naming like-minded illiterates to the highest posts in the land, we need all the help we can get- and Bill Nye and Co.'s latest effort is most heartily welcome.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
A Step Back From the Abyss
For several reasons I stepped away from this blog for most of April. I have been a rather obsessive consumer of the news since the November election and that and a number of more personal matters contributed to a deteriorating mental and emotional state with me.
I changed the name of the blog from Drumpf Diaries, inspired by a good suggestion from a friend which resonated with me. Drumpf is the focus of so much and it is nauseating. His place in the world and his personality seem to make the obsessive media focus on him inescapable. But the world and what is going on with it is way more than just Drumpf. I wanted to acknowledge that and the blog name change is in that spirit.
The new blog title is a feeble attempt at irony, in that the spirit of this blog has been an attempt to move away from strong opinions. It's the oldest Washington D.C. trope that we need get past bickering and listen to each other, reach across the aisle, whatever. Well, it might be true. The end of bipartisanship, and the end of intra-party factions and division is almost certainly an impossible utopia. Perhaps it is not to be a destination, but a journey. Getting past divisions is never something we arrive at permanently, but a constant direction to go.
I've found that those divisions, for me, feel like the most dispiriting and personally hurtful aspects of being an "activist," or at least someone who pays close attention to world affairs, invests in them emotionally, and wants to make a real positive difference. I have unfriended people I really like on facebook. I have gotten in angry text exchanges with family and friends- those exchanges (so common on social media) where it doesn't really feel like either of us are listening to each other, only enough to try to one-up each other as if it were a boxing match. I once said something that (unexpectedly, in my defense) made my normally very-level-headed and even-keeled wife cry and storm out of the room.
I have also had extremely cordial and respectful conversations on political issues with people who share almost none of my opinions. These are among the best moments of activism, where it feels like a real human connection is made across divides that are supposed to be impassable. Even when you don't change someone's mind, just humanizing yourself to the other person and humanizing them to you is fulfilling, which is a wonderful end in itself. It also often opens the door to "your side" which maybe someday they will then walk through, and you will have guided them there.
Or maybe you are wrong, will realize it, and can now walk through the door to join them.
So, anyway, while having opinions will persist, the new blog title is meant to inspire me to walk in the direction of thoughtfulness as much as possible, and hopefully encourage readers, if I ever have any, to do the same. It's also lifted from a line in Pulp Fiction.
I changed the name of the blog from Drumpf Diaries, inspired by a good suggestion from a friend which resonated with me. Drumpf is the focus of so much and it is nauseating. His place in the world and his personality seem to make the obsessive media focus on him inescapable. But the world and what is going on with it is way more than just Drumpf. I wanted to acknowledge that and the blog name change is in that spirit.
The new blog title is a feeble attempt at irony, in that the spirit of this blog has been an attempt to move away from strong opinions. It's the oldest Washington D.C. trope that we need get past bickering and listen to each other, reach across the aisle, whatever. Well, it might be true. The end of bipartisanship, and the end of intra-party factions and division is almost certainly an impossible utopia. Perhaps it is not to be a destination, but a journey. Getting past divisions is never something we arrive at permanently, but a constant direction to go.
I've found that those divisions, for me, feel like the most dispiriting and personally hurtful aspects of being an "activist," or at least someone who pays close attention to world affairs, invests in them emotionally, and wants to make a real positive difference. I have unfriended people I really like on facebook. I have gotten in angry text exchanges with family and friends- those exchanges (so common on social media) where it doesn't really feel like either of us are listening to each other, only enough to try to one-up each other as if it were a boxing match. I once said something that (unexpectedly, in my defense) made my normally very-level-headed and even-keeled wife cry and storm out of the room.
I have also had extremely cordial and respectful conversations on political issues with people who share almost none of my opinions. These are among the best moments of activism, where it feels like a real human connection is made across divides that are supposed to be impassable. Even when you don't change someone's mind, just humanizing yourself to the other person and humanizing them to you is fulfilling, which is a wonderful end in itself. It also often opens the door to "your side" which maybe someday they will then walk through, and you will have guided them there.
Or maybe you are wrong, will realize it, and can now walk through the door to join them.
So, anyway, while having opinions will persist, the new blog title is meant to inspire me to walk in the direction of thoughtfulness as much as possible, and hopefully encourage readers, if I ever have any, to do the same. It's also lifted from a line in Pulp Fiction.
Monday, April 3, 2017
My Heart is Full
My heart is full. For the last four days I have been paying about as little attention to the news as possible. I spent a lot of time with family and friends, I went out to eat, I saw a movie, I went to a concert, I watched a lot of sports on TV. My favorite sport, baseball, began its regular season today. Instead of reading deeply into the epic tragedies of today's world, in what spare time I had I immersed myself in preparing a fantasy baseball team. I had fun with my kids.
The emotional and psychological impact of staying informed and aware of the tragedies constantly befouling the earth sneaks up on me in ways I can't see until I am able to step away from it. I feel guilty stepping away from it. Stepping away is a privilege. The people of South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and Somaliland, and elsewhere... they can not step away from it. It is their existence. They need people to not step away or to look away.
But this is our reality. It has been created for us. Reading and listening to Noam Chomsky for almost two decades now has me aware that the distractions are all there because the American populace, and any world populace, is a powerful force when it awakens. It needs to be tamed and the constant distractions are good to tame us, to keep us from exercising our strength to change things for the better.
But this is the challenge. Psychologically, emotionally... it is so much easier to forget, to look away from the starving black child or the traumatized (or dead) Syrian child. To look towards them is to stare into the pit of a sense of individual powerlessness. Individually I can do nothing. Collectively, we could save them. We could take our minds, our creative energies, our dollars, our time... away from the concerts, the ballgames, the fantasy sports teams, the tv shows, the movies... we could redirect them towards food and shelter for the least of our brothers and sisters. Or we could redirect them towards creating an economic system that does not embed such criminal disparities in wealth.
To varying degrees, Americans and westerners in general choose to look away. Maybe it is not such a conscious decision, but we do. In this way we are complicit in the destruction.
So often when I try to speak out about important issues it feels like I am calling out into the darkness. Maybe this is a skewed perception created by social media, where my posts about climate change are met with crickets and tumbleweed, but a post about attending concerts with my daughter receives 70 likes and 20+ comments. People talk about all kinds of personal problems among friends and at work, but we don't much talk about the 6th mass extinction in the world, or the civilization-threatening spectre of climate change, or what the U.N. is calling the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II, all things that are part of the world right now. They are not part of polite conversation at the office. I can be having an emotionally difficult day as a result of reading about these things but I won't even tell my wife I am having those feelings, let alone my co-workers or my friends.
I don't know how to begin overcoming the stigma. I don't know how you psychologically prime people to turn away from the glitz and glamor and stare meaningfully at the abyss. When an earthquake destroyed Haiti, or a tsunami destroyed Indonesia, mass media gave the story to the west and we opened up our wallets to help. People are capable of helping. I guess it just seems like the right alarms are not sounding. I watched the NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship Game tonight and there was an ad for the local news- the stories it advertised were a turkey that somehow got into a family's house, and it was captured on home video, and how people are chosen to sing the national anthem at baseball games. This is supposed to the fucking news. There is a humanitarian crisis in Africa right now. Millions of children are at risk of starvation.
I don't know. My heart grows empty.
The emotional and psychological impact of staying informed and aware of the tragedies constantly befouling the earth sneaks up on me in ways I can't see until I am able to step away from it. I feel guilty stepping away from it. Stepping away is a privilege. The people of South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and Somaliland, and elsewhere... they can not step away from it. It is their existence. They need people to not step away or to look away.
But this is our reality. It has been created for us. Reading and listening to Noam Chomsky for almost two decades now has me aware that the distractions are all there because the American populace, and any world populace, is a powerful force when it awakens. It needs to be tamed and the constant distractions are good to tame us, to keep us from exercising our strength to change things for the better.
But this is the challenge. Psychologically, emotionally... it is so much easier to forget, to look away from the starving black child or the traumatized (or dead) Syrian child. To look towards them is to stare into the pit of a sense of individual powerlessness. Individually I can do nothing. Collectively, we could save them. We could take our minds, our creative energies, our dollars, our time... away from the concerts, the ballgames, the fantasy sports teams, the tv shows, the movies... we could redirect them towards food and shelter for the least of our brothers and sisters. Or we could redirect them towards creating an economic system that does not embed such criminal disparities in wealth.
To varying degrees, Americans and westerners in general choose to look away. Maybe it is not such a conscious decision, but we do. In this way we are complicit in the destruction.
So often when I try to speak out about important issues it feels like I am calling out into the darkness. Maybe this is a skewed perception created by social media, where my posts about climate change are met with crickets and tumbleweed, but a post about attending concerts with my daughter receives 70 likes and 20+ comments. People talk about all kinds of personal problems among friends and at work, but we don't much talk about the 6th mass extinction in the world, or the civilization-threatening spectre of climate change, or what the U.N. is calling the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II, all things that are part of the world right now. They are not part of polite conversation at the office. I can be having an emotionally difficult day as a result of reading about these things but I won't even tell my wife I am having those feelings, let alone my co-workers or my friends.
I don't know how to begin overcoming the stigma. I don't know how you psychologically prime people to turn away from the glitz and glamor and stare meaningfully at the abyss. When an earthquake destroyed Haiti, or a tsunami destroyed Indonesia, mass media gave the story to the west and we opened up our wallets to help. People are capable of helping. I guess it just seems like the right alarms are not sounding. I watched the NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship Game tonight and there was an ad for the local news- the stories it advertised were a turkey that somehow got into a family's house, and it was captured on home video, and how people are chosen to sing the national anthem at baseball games. This is supposed to the fucking news. There is a humanitarian crisis in Africa right now. Millions of children are at risk of starvation.
I don't know. My heart grows empty.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)