The Three-sided Coin and Human Progress. Heraclitus: “Man’s Character is his Fate.”

Some columns come quick to mind and others must be slowly cooked. This one is years old. It got a boost this week.  Unknowingly, a friend from the Air Force Academy unintentionally added the finishing touch to my work, the Three-Sided Coin of Human Progress.

Jim is a fellow graduate of the Air Force Academy, a fellow helicopter pilot, a veteran of the first Gulf War, a graduate of the Naval War College and a retired professor who taught Ethics and Leadership.

In full disclosure, I never spent a whole lot of time thinking of what is required to be a great leader because I did not have the ambition. My friends, all smarter than me, were quite tolerant of me, nonetheless. Maybe it was because I was an attentive listener. More likely, it was because I would volunteer to be the designated driver in my Rambler station-wagon called the Mallard.

On a serious note, all our generals, such as the ones fired last year, men like McMaster, Kelley, and Mattis, have the ambition I lacked. They know an effective leader must be fiercely ethical. Climate Change has completely altered my plans to be unambitious and retire happily in oblivion. The challenge I face is to come to discover what is going to save mother earth. *

Very briefly, here is my path of science understanding:

First, I saw our Alaskan Glaciers melt before my eyes in just 30 years.

Second, I studied climate science and found the science community in agreement. We are in climate peril.   Tragically, most Americans do not know this.

Third, through further extensive study of psychology and sociology I learned that we, all humans, are prone to adopt psychological tricks to make us feel good.

These tricks make us vulnerable to psychological manipulators. Public opinion manipulators, hired by the fossil fuel companies, have embedded in our minds lies that are welcome by our psychological tricks. These lies make us believe climate change is something that does not exist. Or, they make conservatives feel they are traitors to their ideology if they support efforts to manage the climate crisis. It is tough for us to give up our tricks because these shortcuts make us feel good by blinding us to science or, subconsciously, we fear being rejected by our conservative tribe. **

A whole lot of folks in and out of the scientific community are working overtime to raise our level of awareness about climate change, but we are failing. Why?

The coin used in human progress has three sides. One side is science (and art). It is how we understand the world around to include our physical bodies. It is nature.

The second side of the human progress coin is our moral being and our moral bearing. With spiritual grounding we can guide the ascent of science to assure we act for the good of all and protect creation.

To understand the truth of these parallel goals is our quest to be enlightened creatures of god and god’s creation.

The solution is the third side of the coin. Look at any coin. It has thickness thus a third side.  It is what binds the two sides of one coin together. It is what locks science and spirituality together. Mark Twain told us what the third side is. He called it “Moral Courage”. The Greeks called it by another name, Character. *** Is it not interesting that a person of character is a person of depth? It describes the third side of the coin, the thick binder we need, courage.

If we do not strive to unite both sides of the Coin of Human Progress individually and collectively, we are doomed. If we cannot live with the unpleasantness of this tension, our children will hold us in contempt because we lacked courage.

We have it in us. We can motivate ourselves to solve climate change. I hate to sound trite, but If nothing else, just sing America the Beautiful followed by our National Anthem.  Do it often. Sing these songs walking down the street or at least hum them. Our collective character is our fate! We are better and safer if we walk intelligently arm in arm.

After reading this I hope you ask yourself if you have the moral courage or character to look objectively at the science of Climate Change and make a personal commitment to do what you can to change the course we are currently on. 

* Solving the climate crisis will require hundreds of actions. One stands out as essential in our capitalistic system. We must put a price on destructive pollution. See our proposal at citizensclimatelobby.org.

** To be independent thinkers, both conservatives and liberals must evaluate high risk issues on an individual basis. We, at CCL, do not embrace conservative or liberal ideology because we know we must work together creatively and aggressively to solve climate change. It must be done now.

*** Defining what makes up noble character is not easy. At the Air Force Academy, we read the highly acclaimed novel, “Catch 22”. Maybe we need to know, first, what character is not. Joseph Heller describes no character. “It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required NO CHARACTER.”

Comments welcome at climatelynx@earthlink.net