(2019-09-12) Guinn Rust And Blight

Rusty Guinn: Rust and Blight. ...tearing up the tree and replanting a new one? Wouldn’t do a thing. Cedar rust isn’t a problem with the tree. It’s a problem with the tree’s environment.

Fire blight is different from cedar rust

When it comes to blight, the problem is with the tree and with its roots.

pay your weregild to Cornell University, which curiously owns the patents on nearly every fire blight-resistant rootstock and makes a few bucks on just about every apple tree you’re likely to find at a modern orchard.

How does the orchard hobbyist discern between rust and blight? How does the investor and citizen discern between rust and blight? It is never easy.

American exceptionalism – an idea manufactured into a meme by the right and an ironic joke by the left. We are an exception, but not because we are uniquely free or uniquely smart or uniquely strong. We are an exception because for most of our history we have been a frontier.

The most popular and enduring myth about these early pioneers – especially among my fellow Tocqueville-loving conservatives – is that they were an especially pious people, bringing civilization, godliness and order to the untamed country. What a laugh. As Lyman Stone correctly points out, they were drunks and heathens all, by which I hope you understand that I mean no criticism. These were my kind of people. The settling of the frontier was a demonstrable rejection of established cultural norms, established social structures and entrenched power.

Despite the fundamental small-l liberalism of frontier expansion, in each of these new communities, duty to fellow-laborers quickly became sacred and indispensable.

Civilization emerges. Conservatism follows when people conclude that they’d like to keep the things they’ve found.

Every great achievement, every great leap, every great advance we have made as a species is the result of small-l forces of liberalism and heterodoxy braving new ideas and new shores. AND it is the result of small-c conservatism and the successful institutionalization of orthodoxy around those new ideas alongside those that came before that worked.

The Long Now, well, it usurps and perverts them both. In the Long Now, we are helicopter parents and helicopter policymakers. In the Long Now, we create memes of liberalism! out of whole cloth in place of real frontiers, and memes of values! and conservatism! to defend not Lindy-proven ideas, but sources of existing power and influence. 2019-07-31-HuntTheLongNowPt1Ticktock

Within these tribes of little meaning we have allowed to consume us, we handle every disease like rust, something to be pruned and treated, but gently. Kindly. Outside these tribes of little meaning we treat every disease like blight, burning and ripping indiscriminately.

Thankfully, in our own lives, careers and communities, we get to choose what we labor to heal and prune, and what we throw on the bonfire so that we may plant anew. I’m with Ben Hunt. Even though we disagree on health care and health insurance. On abortion. On tax policy and the justifiable role and interest of the state in managing wealth inequality. On a great many things.

But national politics and national parties are a blight, and they will be a blight so long as they perpetuate their control through manipulation of existential narratives

News media is a blight, too. (Big Media)

the decision of the major outlets and their owners to fuse and gray the lines between news, analysis, feature and opinion journalism has made them vessels for fiat news and agents of the widening gyre. So yes, I think we should demand that legitimate news organizations, both left and right, exit the opinion and analysis business.

What matters most is what we lose if we embrace the Long Now and the widening gyre. What we lose is the ability and appetite to take risk.

Who are you willing to take risk for, and who are you willing to protect – emotionally, morally and financially – when they take risk?

Whatever that thing is for you, that’s your pack (Tribe). Or at least it can be. We can Make. Every ounce of effort we would otherwise devote to defending blight can be devoted to taking new risks on new ideas, new investments and new creations. We can Protect. Every ounce of energy and time we muster to defend memes of our beliefs against all comers can be devoted to supporting our fellow-laborers when they fail. We can Teach. Every ounce of exhaustion that is poured into trying to signal our adherence to the Right Ideas can instead be poured into growing together intellectually, physically, emotionally, technologically, socially and culturally with our pack. 2019-09-11-HuntTheLongNowPt2MakeProtectTeach