Raw excrement vs. medieval combat

 
From late November 2010 into January 2011 I was quite fixated on playing the game Mount & Blade: Warband. I had been waiting for this game for about twenty years. Though set in the fictional realm of "Calradia," the game strives to emulate Medieval Europe & European kingdoms, sultinates, fiefdoms, etc. At the strategic level of the game, one engages in negotiations and trade and agrees to complete tasks for village elders, town leaders, and various political factions. On the tactical level, one wields a weapon of choice to hack away at and sling arrows at enemy foot soldiers and horsemen. The goal, of course, is to conquer, vanquish, overwhelm, and otherwise find a way to found a kingdom of one's own.

Absent at every level of this game is magic, fantasy, dragons, potions, dwarves, and all of that nonsense.

Very exciting & fun stuff!!!

I will leave it up to readers to evaluate the extent to which my interest in this game provides evidence of patriarchy, warmongering, meaningless game-playing, escapism, moral turpitude, existential shallowness, Generation-X Peter Panism, etc., etc.

What is fascinating to me is

My final thought about "the commons" . . .

(. . . at least in terms of applicability of the metaphor to my book project.)

As part of the process of trying to clarify the topic for my own benefit, I've written three posts analyzing Garrett Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" metaphor (here, here, and here). I've finally read & digested John A. Baden and Douglas S. Noonan, eds., Managing the Commons (2nd ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998) and now know how I'm going to address this metaphor in my book.

"There is almost criminal negligence of city officials to permit this"

“River Looks Bad to Two Parties,” Morning Oregonian, Aug. 5, 1936, p. 3.

In August 1936, the Willamette River through Portland's harbor looked and smelled bad. For decades, Oregonians had come to expect that during the low-flow months of July through October, the lower Willamette River would become a tepid, chunky, and foaming soup thickened with raw human excrement, filamentous cannery wastes, harsh sulfite pulp and paper liquors, and other discharges.

What to do about all of this filth?

Polluting a river is quite easy. Simply route an effluent pipe into the stream, push the refuse over the banks, or allow pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals to drain into the water, and one is well on the way to polluting the river. Abating pollution, however, is difficult.

Abating water pollution requires many complementary and concurrent steps. One must, first, prove that a given pollutant is deleterious to the river's health, and/or the public's health. Along with this, one must prove that the harmful effects come from specific sources. Next, one must uncover or suggest technical, administrative, and procedural solutions. It's easy to critique actions, but does the critic have anything productive to offer in the way of possible solutions?

Solutions cost money, so once it has been determined that pollution exists and that there are possible solutions, one must convince people to pay for abatement options. Payment comes either from private or public sources. In the American system of democracy, neither private nor public sources can be tapped without passing laws. These laws will generally provide for some form of proactive or punitive money generation. Proactive generation includes increasing taxes and fees, authorizing the sale of bonds, securing loans, etc. Punitive generation includes assessing fines for people or companies that do not follow abatement regulations.

What does all this have to do with a guy in a gas mask?

The difference between amateur and professional

As the photo above indicates, sure, I can build something out of wood that's more-or-less functional and, if given a sufficient amount of paint, I can even succeed in hiding some of the more egregious blemishes on what I build.[1]

Contrast this with what a professional custom cabinet and furniture maker can do:

"Society becomes how you behave"

This quote came from Eric Liu during his interview with KUOW's Steve Scher this morning, "What Makes a Great Citizen?"

Eric Liu is an author, educator and creator of the Guiding Lights Weekend, a group that seeks to foster greater community participation. He served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and later as the president's deputy domestic policy adviser. Now he teaches at the University of Washington and hosts an acclaimed television interview program called "Seattle Voices." His latest book is called "Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility."

I appreciated what Liu said in his interview. He discussed a dynamic that I've been grappling with for many years: how can people with such fundamental differences in political philosophy learn to put aside their disagreements for the greater good? One of the resonant points he made at the end of his interview was that "society becomes how you behave" -- a variant upon Ghandi's adage "be the change that you want to see in the world," yet no less profound in spite of its near-cliche status.

-

Meaningless SpamPuffery

I opted to check out the quarantined spam messages on my Sustainability History Project website and found a funny pattern that I have not experienced with my email spam.

My email spam is predominately about porn, V!agra, a panoply of other pharmaceuticals, and those ridiculous 419 scams. All of these kinds of spam and scams have existed for so long that I'm surprised that they're still around -- surprised, that is, that there are still enough people among us who are so dense as to fall for these kinds of scams to keep the scammers in business.

One of these days I may write a rant about this ridiculous dynamic, but this post is not going to be such a rant. This post is about the funny theme I noticed in the quarantined spam messages on the Sustainability History Project website . . .

It couldn't possibly get any more exciting than this!

Of late I've been extremely focused on my book project. Today I've been immersed in archival sources relating to the City of Portland's attempts to design, fund, and build a comprehensive sewer interceptor and primary treatment system in the 1920s and 1930s. The story is fantastically complex and I've been piecing together the chronology, learning about the motivations and personalities of the key players, trying to condense the key events at the local, state, and national levels in a way that will convey the complexity in an intelligible way.

One of the key elements my book will stress is that while the Willamette River pollution abatement movement was centered in this region and abatement advocates worked within a specific set of technological, political, economic, and ecological systems, the movement at every stage relied upon public and private input. For example, in the 1930s Portland city officials benefited from the expertise of two of the foremost professionals in their field, Harrison P. Eddy of Boston, and Abel Wolman of Baltimore. In 1943, Portland city leaders benefited from the clout of renowned New York City planner Robert Moses to jump-start the sewage system plans that Eddy and Wolman had proposed.

Oregon's abatement advocates also relied upon funds and research assistance from such federal agencies as the National Resources Planning Board and the Public Works Administration, and regional organizations such as the Pacific Northwest Regional Planning Commission.

As part of my research process, I've also discovered an interesting Internet resource:

** sewerhistory.org: A collection of materials "related to the history of sewage conveyance systems. Many of these have been displayed in a traveling exhibit entitled "The Collection Systems Historical Photo and Artifacts Display." The overall collection of sewer history materials covers the era from approximately 3500 BCE through the 1930s CE."

It's hard to have more fun with one's clothes on, let me tell you!

-

Is not being stupid not enough?

There is a fascinating discussion over at Intellectual History "How Should Intellectual Historians Deal with Erroneous, Foolish, or Vicious Thought?" As Ben writes in the post, historians generally don't have a problem taking seriously egregiously wrong[1] ideas from the past and applying a more detached and objective approach to these ideas in order to establish their context, learn more about their adherents, and investigate their causes and effects.

However, what is the historian's role in shedding light on egregiously wrong ideas in the present?

In his brief post, Ben provides three things to think about as historians work to identify or otherwise confront wrong ideas in the present:

1) "People do express opinions about the past that are simply wrong. And as historians, we have a responsibility, perhaps even a duty, to point out when people use bad history to bolster their arguments in public debate."

2) "significant ideas that we happen to believe are wrong, inane, or even deeply evil should still be taken seriously."

3) "Of course how we do this . . . is a more complicated question."

I certainly struggle with this stuff. In some of my own posts, I've grappled with similar issues: trying to understand the relationship of deistic beliefs to historical inquiry and the scientific process and recoiling at the kind of asinine ideas that historical ignorance can foster, among others.

I also have a long list of posts-in-process that I may never finish but that share the theme of "what the f#*k?!?!?! Do (Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin/Newt Gingrich/insert your favorite blowhard here) actually believe what they're spewing, or are they blatantly & cynically manipulating the historical record on purpose?"

I like what Tim Lacy has to say in response to Ben's post, as it's relevant to the question I continue to reflect upon -- namely "what is history?":

Our job is to help tease through the hierarchy of causes and sort out the probability of relevance. We're experts on the probability of relevance.

----
[1] By "wrong" Ben seems to be suggesting both ideas that are "deeply incorrect" in an objective sense (an example from my own area of study would be the miasmatic theory of disease etiology) and ideas that are wrong in a moral sense (i.e., slavery).

-

A reflection on the historical method

I recently received a comment in this post that included the following thought-provoking points:

do you think that historians provide “pure” interpretations of history, and if so, what is meant by a “pure” interpretation?? Here’s my take on history: the event happens, multiple people try to “interpret” it and write it down, then more people (historians) “interpret” the interpretations until we are left with something that may not resemble the original at all . . . I’m not suggesting that historians commit malfeasance on purpose; I’m only saying that each of them (including you) interprets history through [a] unique lens. Who is to say, after all, that even at the moment of action the historical event can be reported purely? This is what makes history (and communication) rich! The fact that there can be, and are, multiple interpretations based on who is receiving the information.

I do enjoy opportunities to speak about the philosophy of history!

"Ugh! Harumph!!"

I've recently had some experiences that, to me, illustrate a fascinating discrepancy between what people express and how other people perceive these expressions. These experiences have got me reflecting on how amazing it is that humans can even communicate on anything more than the most basic levels (i.e., "need food now," "want sex now," "you go away now," "you come here now," "no," "yes," etc., like some stereotyped cave-dwelling hominid).