A week of reflection...

It's been a good, busy week... a couple of days near Karlstad at a folkmusic festival - fiddles, guitars, and music a lot like bluegrass that I've enjoyed in the US. Then on to a conference in Vasteras for people around the world who do research related to sustainable development -- a great chance to meet new people who are doing some interesting work, as well as be reminded of the great need for more people to attend programs like the one I've just completed. After the conference I visited a friend in Ostersund for a few days... one day we biked out to a moose farm (www.moosegarden.com) and another day we saw a real steam locomotive that was traveling across in Sweden in celebration of 100 years of inland railroad.

All of the time on the train and inbetween has given me a fair amount of time to think and read. One book that I finished was Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." It's a quite fascinating book, even though (and the author admits it) it doesn't live up to its name. It does, however, talk about science from the macro to the micro and how we've come to know what we do. And one reason why it's so interesting is because it's so incredibly new. So much of what we've learned in the area of physics came in the 17th and 18th centuries. Our knowledge about biology expanded greatly in the 19th century. Chemistry and a whole new bit of physics has come along this century... and we keep learning more and more faster and faster all of the time.

The impact this new knowledge has on us... is yet to be seen. But as science -- while not fully objective, it is the most objective method of understanding that we have -- begins to help us understand ourselves and the world around us and thus answer questions that have only been answered by myths and stories in the past... it challenges us in new ways. And I struggle with that challenge.

I tend to pick up on new ideas fairly quickly, in part because I get bored with old ideas that don't completely make sense. I'm frustrated by people who tend to cling to old ideas with an unwillingness to incorporate the new -- so I find myself having to work really, really hard to give people the space and time they need to come along. For one thing - I don't know that the world has time for everyone to come along... so when I respond harshly to "Jay Leno" ... well, I feel bad for having such a strong tone ... and yet I feel as though the tone is justified because we must get it right before it's too late. I'm an emotional mess of exasperation, frustration, and anger... and often find myself feeling as though I've been lied to (intentionally or not) over the last 30 years. (Ok, maybe only 25 years.)

Lied to about things like Columbus, Pilgrims and Indians, the age of the earth, and the importance of economic growth. It's less outright lying, and more a false front of knowledge... people who present themselves as experts who are really just continuing the myths that they've been told. I've done a bit of that myself.

For quite a while I've known that the more I learn, the more I would realize how much I don't know. And I'm ok with that. But lately, I've realized that the more I know, the more I know how little everyone else knows, too. And that is scary. At the conference last week, one of the keynote speakers said something like this:

"Because we go to the moon, we think we are what we are not. We think we are clever."