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Garrett and Jane Hardin
Every great thinker should be married to a woman like Jane.
"I think a good case can be made for a third level of education, the level of ecolacy. This is the level at which a person achieves a working understanding of the complexity of the world, of the ways in which each quasi-stable state gives way to other quasi-stable states as time passes.
"The three levels of education can be epitomized by three questions:
Literacy- What is the appropriate word?
Numeracy- How much/how many?
Ecolacy- And then what?
"The basic insight of the ecolate citizen is that the world is a complex of systems so intricately interconnected that we can seldom be very confident that a proposed intervention in this system of systems will produce the consequences we want."
--Garrett Hardin
All so very well said, but unfortunately it is not just innumeracy we are up against. Several times over many years I have asked each of my U.S. senators--to protect their identities, I shall simply call them Barbara and Dianne--both proud avid 'environmentalists' and both pro sky-high immigration, the following:
How many more times can mass in-migration plus offspring continue to redouble our state's population, while at the same time we continue claiming that we are protecting the state's environment?
Surely it is not that these very bright and savvy women were unable to master their grammar-school times tables that they have always kindly responded--but never with an answer to the question asked.
Or maybe that all that comes under being inecolate. Or it could be be that numeracy and ecolacy are simply swept aside by other agendas that really do not care all that much about the environment or the quality of life of our grandkids' grandkids.
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