Every time I think about the threats to the ocean and all life in it and on the planet, I get this gut punch that takes my breath away. One fact that should be taught from kindergarten through college, and be repeated everywhere that it is pertinent is “If the oceans die, the Earth and all life on the planet dies.” Perhaps there is a short way to say it ‘Killing the oceans kills the planet.” Have you seen the stencils next to various drains on streets and parking lots that indicate a drain to a live waterway.
I know that many of us are heartsick about the state of affairs in the United States and the world. However, it is critical that we not give up.
IOW short for In Other Words
People often feel either that things can’t get worse (IOW, we have already lost), or that things will right themselves (IOW, I don’t have to do anything). First, don’t give in to the former. Remember September 11, 2001, and our “failure of imagination”? Or thinking that the GW Bush administration was the bottom… and then we got Trump and crew? Things can, and will, definitely get worse IF WE DO NOT ACT. In relationship to the second, things may right themselves – in several thousand years. So we MUST ACT!
Call it “dark humor” or “writing with teeth”, this essay by Elizabeth Anker (AKA Eliza Daley), had me from the first paragraph. Anyone who has been here at UncommonThought for a while knows my love of language. And like Henry A. Giroux, I believe that language is critical to agency, and to taking our power back. This piece has numerous examples of this – just one of which is reclaiming “normal” from its politicized painting over of reality.
Education needs to be a lifelong and borderless endeavor. It is a part of life, more than the limited construction we put in “schools” and texts. We are built to be learning creatures. What else is this big brain for? Counterweight? The following interview by Resh Budhu of Henry A. Giroux is a free-flowing discussion of the critical importance of education and learning to learn in successfully facing the existential crises of this era.
This new book by Henry A. Giroux with forward by Julian Casablancas does more than sound the warning cry of the wave of neofascism sweeping the globe, it helps us identify it. Americans, and perhaps people in general, think that because one feature of something undesirable is no longer present that problem has been solved. For example, we outlawed slavery (debatable), so we no longer have racism. Or the flip side of this, “my family never owned slaves so I’m not responsible for racism”. The expression of oppression may change but that does not mean it is resolved. However, we seem to always point to examples from decades ago and say “We don’t do that any more…”. This may comfort us, but it means we never actually address the issues because we are looking for the wrong manifestations.
[Photo: NASA image via wikimedia]
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