The Edge of the Village

Without revisiting the last couple blog posts, I know it has been a while since, well, the last post. There has been intense busy-ness (related to business) for almost 2 years now. But this evening a sort of settling down has begun, a getting the house in order, and a time for listening to conversation of others. Adam Smith likened it to appreciation and empathy. It also calls for a return to the grand stretch of human endeavors through decades, centuries, and millennia.

In regards to the settling back down, I have relocated book piles from a rented to an owned space. The book piles span range and time throughout the planet. From the 20th century there is Albert Einstein’s Ideas and Opinions, and from the 21st Gary Shteyngart’s Little Failure: A Memoir. On my lap, in front of me, is a translated volume of The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle. It’s the Modern Library College edition, with the introduction by Edward P.J. Corbett.

In this translation, I flipped through all the pages many years ago I dog-eared. Which also leads to pages I had notation on: I think it was in 1999-2000 that I decided it was more than okay to scribble and add to the text of books. My philosophy went something along the lines of, “Stop with the book fetish. Write in and mark them up. It only adds to the text. That’s a good thing.”

With this work of Aristotle, I flipped to page 103, where he begins with the subsegment of Fear. This is Aristotle’s Book II, Chapter 4. With Fear, he says,

To turn next to Fear, what follows will show the things and persons of which, and the states of mind in which, we feel afraid. Fear may be defined as a pain or disturbance due to a mental picture of some destructive or painful evil in the future. Of destructive or painful evils only; for there are some evils, e.g. wickedness or stupidity, the prospect of which does not frighten us: I mean only such as amount to great pains or losses. And even these only if they appear not remote bus so near as to be imminent: we do not fear things that are a very long way off: for instance, we all know we shall die, but we are not troubled thereby, because death is not close at hand…

…fear is caused by whatever we feel has great power of destroying us, or of harming us in ways that tend to cause us great pain. Hence the very indications of such things are terrible, making us feel that the terrible thing itself is close at hand. (it was at this point that our kitten, Leonard the Lionheart [he’s just over 2 months new to the planet], planted himself between my chest and stomach; Leonard is now purring; I’ll do my best to continue typing) …the approach of what is terrible is just what we mean by ‘danger’. Such indications are the enmity and anger of people who have power to do something to us; for it is plain that they have the will to do it, and so they are on the point of doing it. Also injustice in possession of power; for it is the unjust man’s will to do evil that makes him unjust. Also outraged virtue in possession of power; for it is plain that, when outraged, it always has the will to retaliate, and now it has the power to do so. 

And here is a section that, whenever I read it last, I underlined the following sentence:

And fear felt by those who have the power to do something to us, since such persons are sure to be ready to do it. 

So these remain a few of Aristotle’s thoughts on fear. The old chap, Aristotle, had perspective, both in the micro and macro. It soothes the brain to read this sort of stuff. One kind of thinks that George Lucas channeled the stuff of Aristotle here when conceiving and drafting the character Yoda. Or at least I do on this end. It’s late. I’m tired. Good evening to you.

I’m fifteen minutes away from heading out to meet a group of friends (librarians, archaeologists, historians, humanities people) for lunch. Earlier this morning, just before Molly and I set out to hunter-gather for Saturday mid-morning breakfast, I came across Loretta Jackson-Hayes call for STEM folks to get into those arts and humanities classrooms before graduation (keep with it after graduation, too, no matter where life takes you). The article reminded me just a bit of the opportunity I had last summer (2014) to work in the Bakken oilfields of western North Dakota.

My evening notes from watching YouTube land survey tutorials while working on road construction in the Bakken summer 2014.

I spent several months working around Williston and Watford City, North Dakota. Williston is the arguable center of the Bakken universe, and Watford City can easily contest that. While in Williston, I befriended colleagues in the important business and profession of Land Survey. I helped them out, watching intensely what they were doing, and anticipating what they would need from me 2 to 5 chess moves in the immediate future.

We searched for section line corner markers throughout the summer. This is applied historic archaeology at its finest. In addition to me learning what land surveyors do, the land surveyors would ask me about my line of work, the world of cultural resource management and historic preservation. It was fun to show them, for example, stone circles in situ within the Native prairie, and to explain to them what different tribal groups have explained to me about the importance of those stone circles.

I also took up some work with a land survey group on the Watford City bypass. I helped pound hubs, as the phrase went. Pounding hubs means that wood stakes are driven into the ground with a 3lb hammer to specific elevations. The head construction manager then uses these stakes to determine where gravel and soil needs to be unloaded by a seemingly endless convoy of semi-tractor trailers. All of the drops are recorded .

While pounding hubs in the day, I wanted to learn about the gauging and marking of elevations with a level. After work in the late evenings I plugged into YouTube and brought up land survey tutorials. I familiarized myself with back-sighting and fore-sighting, turning points and benchmarks. I also took notes.

I thought about all of that this morning as I read what Loretta Jackson-Hayes said about the importance of science, humanities, engineering, arts, mathematics, and technology, at least if we are going to understand existing systems and create new and better systems for tomorrow. I hear the phrase STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) and another phrase STEAM, which adds “Art” to the original STEM. That’s important, but I want to advance the phrase SHTEAM, adding the “H” for Humanities. Civilization and culture is in a perpetual state of evolution. It has to be to stay healthy and thrive. We can train those tomorrow how not only to respond to culture, but how to spearhead culture, to be the avant-garde. Okay, my tangent has to end for now, because I need to dash to my luncheon.