Sunday, November 22, 2015

Progressive thoughtful observers have known this

George Perkins Marsh delivered an address before the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont, on this date in 1847. Marsh had worn many hats over his lifetime: lawyer, journalist, sheep farmer, mill owner, linguistics scholar, and diplomat. He designed the Washington Monument and co-founded the Smithsonian Institution. But it was in his role as United States senator that he addressed the Agricultural Society. He was the first person to publicly raise the issue of manmade climate change, and his speech helped spark the conservation movement.

In his speech, Marsh said: "Man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, yet it is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action. The draining of swamps and the clearing of forests perceptibly effect the evaporation from the earth [...] The same causes modify the electrical condition of the atmosphere and the power of the surface to reflect, absorb and radiate the rays of the sun, and consequently influence the distribution of light and heat, and the force and direction of the winds. Within narrow limits too, domestic fires and artificial structures create and diffuse increased warmth, to an extent that may effect vegetation." He was talking about concepts familiar to us now as the urban heat island effect and the greenhouse effect.

As a result of his speech, Marsh went on to publish a book titled Man and Nature: or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864). "[M]an is everywhere a disturbing agent," Marsh wrote. "Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life."

--From The Writers' Almanac, September 30, 2015.  caption

The Author of the Psalms, sings praises to an unknown Lord.

Psalm 24 
by King David (if he ever lived and was ever a King)

1 The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
3 Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?
4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
5 He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
6 This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.
7 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
8 Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
9 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
10 Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.
"Psalm 24," public domain.


COMMENTARY

  1. He owns us; we are slaves.
  2. Sea. It, the Earth, is established on the waters, a tidal flood, with no real place. The Author may be a Cretan or Phoenician. Probably not Sumerian/Ur or Egyptian descendant. They had very different relationship to Diety. 
  3. Who is who?  He can come close to the Lord?
  4. "He" a male. 
He with "clean hands".  Has not done the dirty. 
He with a "pure heart". Not self-serving, vain, nor a liar.

  1. "He" a male, gets the blessing.  And is made righteous by salvation. Diety is a Savior. Like Astarte, Isis, Dionysius, Orpheus, and Ieus Christo, aka Ieusus Christo.
  2. Who are we?  "the generation" that seeks the face of the Lord.  And in the millennia, no one. Religion is the search for the face of the Lord. Not the finding.
  3. Gates.  The gates with heads, the doors with everlastingness. A "King of Glory" awaits to enter. This is always a reference to death. Which is a reference to eternity.
  4. Yet, asking "Who is this King?"  The author really does not know for certain, but answers only with the tautology: "The Lord…is the King".