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Brian Klaas

Resonance

During my sojourn in California there was a nest with two humming bird fledglings in the garden. The parent would come and go, feeding them, eventually helping them to fly out into the world. You could practically stand beside their nest and watch them, or photograph them – it was wondrous.

Now in my own garden, I have hummingbirds come to the butterfly bush, or the salvias, like most years. It requires patience to catch a glimpse of them, sitting quietly near the plants, hoping they make an appearance. And then there they are, fluttering, flitting, an occasional short rest break, and as suddenly gone as they appeared.

They are acrobats, they are beautiful, they are for me, coming from colder climates, still exotic. Here in the US we have about a dozen species, the birds’ real ecological home is Peru and there are multitudes. If I were younger and had the relevant pocket change (ca. $10 000 for a trip, anyone?), I’d join one of those birding tours that expose you to large numbers of species in their habitat – making due instead with marvelous photos of the birds they typically see.

But back to my garden – and the joy derived from sitting still, waiting, anticipating and being rewarded with glimpses of metallic sheen and wings in motion and soft, clicking chatter that somehow resonates in my soul.

Resonance is a normative concept that has recently incurred a lot of buzz. The construct is offered in the context of how to lead better lives by Hartmut Rosa, a Professor of General and Theoretical Sociology at the University of Jena and Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. Rosa had a large impact two decades ago with his study Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. In 2019, the English translation of his book Resonance. A Sociology of our Relationship to the World followed up on the former explanatory model. It offers a guide to how we can and should slow down under conditions of ever faster production and performance orientation, of running ever faster to just stay in place, missing out on ways of living that would fill the emptiness so many people are experiencing.

Here is an interview with him from last year, not coincidentally published in the Church Times, since he is a deeply religious person and draws on the history of faith systems to support some of his ideas. He considers religious spaces as “realms of deceleration, pockets and resources of resistance against the overall imperatives of speed and growth.”

The goal for all of us striving to get out of the rat race, the over stimulation, the performance demands, is, in the simplest terms, to develop an attitude, or a habitus, of attention, of receptivity — in short, a resonant disposition, a mode of listening and responding. The concept does not just include people – it also applies to nature or more abstract entities out there. As Rilke once demanded: Listen to the singing of things (or hummingbirds, as the case may be….)

by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Daniel S. Shabasson

I am, of course, a solid believer in words, as long as they do not drown out everything else. And I believe in listening to people as well as things, although it gets complicated when you know it is futile if all that is served is lies, misconstructions, gaslighting and so on. We have to find the fine line between listening to those with different views, and not listening to those who abuse a power differential. It sounds like some people are wildly successful with that in politics as well, if you assume that Mamdami’s strong position as a NYC mayoral candidate is connected to his listening strength.

Some of the words that triggered todays’s musings can be found here, a worthwhile long read for the weekend. Brian Klaas gives a much more learned overview of the whole acceleration/deceleration bit that so engulfs us, a better exposition than I could ever muster. It is a captivating essay, and maybe the antidote to thinking about all the terrifying things that happened this week, in nature as well as in politics.

Not sure, of course, any words can truly distract from all this. But the quiet minutes in nature, listening, resonating, still able to feel awe did – do – provide a respite.

Music today is unusual for my ears and requires close listening – you’ll be rewarded. The Peruvian duo (in honor of the hummingbirds) uses pre-Hispanic instruments and traditional songs.
 

And on a totally different note, just to end with a smile, here is a version of book reviews I might contemplate….

Enjoy your weekend, perhaps listening to a classic book. That will do us good, too!

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Helpful Advice.

Walk with me, but bring the gloves, on a brilliantly sunny and cold day at the wetlands. Puddles covered with ice, ponds slightly frozen, fallen leaves coated with sparkling crystals putting to shame any jewelry store – display.

My avian friends are warming up in the sun. For every heron at rest, there is an egret flying to the next perch, surveying their realm.

The sky occasionally fills with geese spooked by some raptor, and I wish I could add the sound here of them chattering and honking, a spectacular chorus. Eventually they come to rest, returning to snoozing.

I, on the other hand, have not been snoozing this week, driven by a sentiment probably shared by many of you: What can we do? I have been reading quite a bit, soaking up good advice from trusted sources, and making use of many helpful sites that display what we need to know in straightforward and legible ways.

Much of the advice overlaps: inform yourself, pace yourself, don’t give up in advance, protect the most vulnerable, engage, build and cherish community from the ground up. Two things I found particularly helpful:

  • Ask yourself what your strengths are: not all of us are able or willing to do public work, or join committees, or have the resources to support causes financially, or get engaged in elective office. We all have something to contribute, however. If you like baking, organize bake sales. Agreed, chocolate chip cookies are not going to defeat fascism, but a community nourished by seeing members contribute in whatever ways they can, will be more resistent and more effective in coming together and taking the necessary steps.
  • Focus on your interest. You cannot fight on every front. Pick the arenas where you have the most expertise or the most passion, and join efforts there.

In my case, I have a platform with this blog where I can summarize both relevant sources and write about my interpretations of them. I can do much of the reading you don’t have time for, and pick the best pieces with a critical eye on informational value, not necessarily ideology. I am also deeply interested in science and climate crisis, so that is where I will be particularly involved. Note, though, it really is up to everyone – if you are interested in protecting immigrants, DEI-or women’s rights, or fight against racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or newly established prison camps, it matters. There is no hierarchy of what needs to be protected- there is much under attack and requires advocates.

Here are Robert Reich, Dave Troy, and Timothy Snyder with pragmatic advice lists. And here is a helpful conversation between Jen Rubin and Heather Cox Richardson.

Here is a nifty google drive action tracker listing all the Executive Orders and memos proclaimed so far, grouped by targets. That allows you to inform yourself about your area of interest and what is currently affecting the status quo.

***

Given one of my interests, science, here is another bit of news (in more detail in Paul Krugman’s assessment today):

As of now there is a new communications ban from HHS. The gag order includes the publication of scientific information, including reports that are already done, prohibits emergency alerts for pandemic information, or rising health risks, including weekly data on respiratory disease developments.

Meetings and report releases for the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic Resistance are canceled. HHS is searching for DEIA programs and threatening anyone who disguises them. They are asking for people to report colleagues.

NIH study sections are canceled/postponed. These are the sections that approve grant proposals and provide funding for institutional research. This affects more than 300.000 researchers and 2500 institutions. All travel is suspended and conference publications must be approved in advance by a presidential appointee. That affects nearly $50 billion of scientific research.

Pausing public health communications and research means delays in responding to emerging threats, like H5N1. But these measures also have an economic impact. Public health protects more than health—it safeguards our economy. Disruptions in systems can ripple across industries, as we’ve already seen with avian flu and egg prices.

Note that every $1 spent by NIH generates $2.46. For example, in 2023, $47B in NIH spending generated ~$93B. Halting it all will cost us money, create worse health outcome and might motivate all the scientific talent that is now losing their grant funded jobs to go elsewhere. As of now, it is all gone, with health and education directly implicated.

If you click this link, it offers map and you can tap on your state and find out what is affected by the new administration’s directive towards the National Institute for Health (NIH). Here are the OR and CA impacts, respectively.

Before we are getting too discouraged, here is the long read for the weekend that argues the world isn’t as bad as you think. I agree with much of it, but also want to point out that it is psychologically much harder to relinquish a right or protective matter that you already held or is available to you, than experiencing improvements of a state of need. If we know we can protect our children with vaccines or health risk alerts and they are subsequently blocked by political maniacs, it is a huge blow, individually for all the little ones I love and societally for what the future will hold.

Music today dates me since I still saw it live – album by The Band. RIP Garth Hudson, who died this week.

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Fluke

You never know. Here I was planning a quiet walk in one of my favorite places on earth, the place where I go to air out my soul. It reminds me of the landscape of my childhood, flat as a pancake, skies low, agricultural fields and watery flats seamed by alders and willows.

A landscape best caught in black and white for its riches of patterning and contrasts of shadow and light. A reminder, too, that black and white belongs to photography and not thinking, the need to fight rigidity of both, really, thought and feeling. A landscape that has changed across the decades of my visits without losing its essential beauty, a pointer towards aging gracefully. A place you all know by osmosis, given how often I have posted from there throughout the seasons.

Weeping Willows

I meant to contemplate 2024, in all its horrors as well as gifts, its losses and riches, and above all this sense of “What now? How do I meet the challenges before us, without losing a sense of hope and integrity? How to combat the worries that tend to overtake me? The irritability with my uncooperative body? “

It was not to be. The minute I hit the footpath on Monday, usually a solitary walk towards a dike, I saw throngs of people, strangely moving at speed back and forth, as small groups, excitedly chattering. What was going on?

A field sparrow! There’s supposed to be a field sparrow! The chance of a life time to scratch if off a Western birder’s life list, since the bird resides in the Eastern US and must have made a wrong turn. Or two. Is it here, in the blackberry patch? It is there, hiding among the reeds?

What’s a field sparrow, you ask? Beats me. It looks (and I never saw it live, had to look it up in my guide book) like a million other sparrows, even when I learned to watch for the eye rings and the pinkish beak.

But you know what? It completely changed my mood, my outlook that day, this fluke of a bird appearing out of nowhere, this fluke of me arriving at the island at just that time. It was invigorating to see people as a community, whipping out their phones to call birder friends to come on down, people showing each other photos they had taken half an hour earlier, discussing the rarity of the event, people carefully placing their tripods for heavy cameras as not to interfere with their neighbor’s, and a general sense of camaraderie, excitement and passion suffusing the air. Most importantly, regardless of the current fires sweeping the world in all their manifestations, there was this bond to nature and the wonders it offers, the willingness to stand or run in the damp cold for hours on end to catch a glimpse of a TLB (tiny little bird in my “couldn’t identify it for the life of me” vocabulary.) To be free of worry for a small window in time.

The excitement was contagious and I kept smiling for the rest of my walk, long after leaving all of them behind, entering the wetlands and communing with slightly larger birds instead.

Tuesday a library book arrived from the longish wait list, Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and why everything we do matters, by Brian Klaas. I had ordered it after reading an essay (today’s Long Read) by him that hooked me, and that you might find thought-provoking. Judging by the first half read so far, the book is interesting, written in ways completely graspable for the layperson, filled with fascinating examples, but also slightly too repetitive for this reader who likes to roar through new information.

Mist in the air

Take a typical example: Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War in 1945, persuaded President Truman not to drop the nuclear bomb on Kyoto, much against the resistance of the military brass who believed it to be the ideal target, not least because its university was the intellectual center of Japan. Why did he care? He had had a wonderful visit there with his wife in the fall of 1926, seeing it in all its historic and seasonal beauty and felt that it needed to be preserved. A total fluke. He fought for the city being spared on multiple occasions until Truman relented. It had to be Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead.

The upshot, so far, is this: we need to revise our thinking about issues of chance, the order of things, and our ability to control the way life unfolds. Infinitely complex systems like our interconnected world can be affected by minute changes, as chaos theory predicted (think butterfly effect). Every one of us should likely take less pride in our accomplishments and feel less guilty about our failures, because pure luck (the very definition of chance) affects any old outcome. It’s hard to accept the notion of random drift – then again, maybe it’s liberating? Just think of the possibility that something completely random could happen that shifts the world’s current embrace of war and authoritarianism…

As the Kirkus Review observed: The book can provoke existential unease, but it also helps explain the cockamamie nature of the way things are, and it’s an always-interesting read.

That about captures it!

And who knows, maybe the fluke of my encounter led to eating less junk food that day since I was feeling more upbeat. That in turn might improve my immune system, leading to more cancer fighting power. A random bird the cause for added years of blogging…. I’ll take it.

Long live the field sparrow!

Music today adheres to the more traditional views of orderly, controlled and willful creation with the representation of chaos at the beginning: Haydn’s Die Schöpfung.

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