An apocalyptic mood

An apocalyptic mood in the media in the last few days and weeks; James Lovelock gives us twenty years before inevitable disaster, but he looks on the bright side and recalls the virtues of the war-time spirit. He envisages desertification in Europe and environmental migration into our overcrowded island, drought in Australia and Africa, rising sea levels threatening coastal populations in Asia, along with water shortages elsewhere. Meanwhile EU foreign policy officials warn of tensions in the Arctic over mineral resources between Russia and the West. Then there is the high price of wheat, explained by poor harvests and the increasing demand for grain-intensive meat in developing countries, scarce resources, then, and the ruthless pursuit of control ... It reminds me once again of the prescient last sentence of this remark of Kant's:

"It is only from Providence that man anticipates the education of the human race, taking the species as a whole ... Only from Providence does he expect his species to tend to the civil constitution it envisages, which is to be based on the principle of freedom but at the same time on the principle of constraint in accordance with law. That is, he expects it from a wisdom that is not his, but is yet the Idea of his own reason, an Idea that is impotent (by his own fault). This education from above is salutary, but harsh and stern; nature works it out by great hardships, to the extent of nearly destroying the whole race."

'An Idea that is impotent (by his own fault)': so what are the conditions in which Ideas gain potency, what is the nature of the fault and how is it to be overcome?

It reminds me also of Mill's remark that society needs philosophers (but not philosopher-kings), presumably because philosophers (thinkers) are at least capable of giving expression to ideas and, perhaps, keeping them before the public mind.

'Are at least capable ...' and yet there is a prior impotence of thought which consists in the failure to express and formulate ideas in the first place, an impotence brought about by the absence of the conditions under which thinking and the formation of Ideas can occur at all. I feel this rather personally at the moment since thinking and writing have hardly been possible for me for almost half a year. It is partly a matter of a series of viruses, but also the expenditure of energy on 'time-consuming' and routine tasks, on tasks that have become routine because of the new atmosphere of institutional anxiety within higher education. (I sometimes laugh when I read the motto of my own place of work: haec otia fovent studia: but I like to be reminded that the word for business in Latin is 'neg-otium, non-leisure). The trouble is that this kind of work leaves little energy for philosophy and is profoundly boring. It is a form of emasculation, to stay with the sexual metaphor, a form of social control: do not give them time to think.

The anxiety starts with the thought that our activities must be transparent and that we must be accountable to scrutiny, and then draws as a logical conclusion an obligation to be accountable and transparent in these very specific ways ... and always the promise that in the future there will be a 'lighter touch'. Anyway, although I am ranting, it has its effects, a paralysis of creative thought because there is too much traffic. too much chatter, too much business in the mind. It is almost as though I need early retirement in order to gain the freedom to think and write. Perhaps I need a few weeks in Orkney. I'm off there at the end of the week and hope to write up a couple of papers as well as plant some potatoes ...