CONCEPT: Climate Change

Climate Change: The concepts of climate change and global warming are, though distinct, frequently used interchangeably -- and perhaps too frequently. In reality, global warming precedes climate change, which is its logical and worrisome consequence. First the world's average temperature(s) begin to rise and gradually keep on rising, and then local and regional climate systems begin to change in manifest and quantifiable ways.

Climate change has a wide-range of consequences. Its impact is already being felt in a growing number of the world's economies, and more specifically in agricultural production (and related food-security concerns). It is likewise felt in terms of measurable degradation in general human health, the environment, and the social fabrics of vulnerable communities and societies around the world. Sites of great historical and cultural significance to many countries, and to humanity in general, are increasingly under threat as well. Alarm bells are already ringing, but there are still many skeptics -- and many who are not quite alarmed yet, or alarmed but powerless to act in any collective sort of way.

[READ: "Concept: Global Warming"]




Selected Readings on the Consequences of Climate Change:

1. Scott, M.J., et al (1990) "Consequences of climatic change for the human environment"

2. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (nd) Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries

3. Wikipedia, Global Warming

4. Yambo, Mauri (2015), "Climate Change: Rising Sea Levels May Be More Dangerous than Previously Calculated, NASA Reports"




UPDATED: March 7, 2018

CONCEPT: Concepts

We live in a concept-mediated and concept-loaded world. We cannot escape concepts. Indeed, mixed into our physical Earth and its airy atmosphere is another sphere -- a component of a much larger sphere that I have elsewhere called the memetic sphere. Things of planet Earth, and of the universe at large, are of course out there in the material sphere (and ipso facto outside of the mind), but don't mean a thing to us until we process them in the mind and give them a name of sorts -- that is, until we thus attach to them a set or sets of concepts (that is, memes), which is the only available path to actualizing our sense impressions. 

Likewise, alleged 'figments' of the imagination cease to be figments and become real 'things' just as soon as we're able to observe the facts that underpin the claims they embody, and can affirm our 'encounter' with them -- and, more importantly, tag them with a name. Incidentally, figments of the imagination and other un-grounded products of thought may pass as concepts too, but only as meta versions and as 'material' for artistic production and reproduction or for philosophical engagement.

Concepts are in their own universe, as well -- and thus a universe of sorts. Without concepts, there would be no learning, and nothing akin to what we call intelligence, and even what we call community. There would be no capacity to tell what there would be to tell, and what there (ever) was to pass on.

Concepts are key to all understanding -- and all missed understandings. Without them, language and speech would be preemptively gibberish, and could not arise from, after all, a non-existent language -- even for potentially the most eloquent and the most erudite individuals. Without concepts, all bodies of knowledge would be formless and one big mess of nothing without anchor. In a word, their efficacy presupposes some kind of anchoring on arrays of conceptualization. 

Our concepts have raced well ahead of us. They have reached the farthest known and imaginable realms of Being (of existence and reality) -- and even Nothingness, as Marcuse and others sought to see them. They've gone to places we ourselves (we humans) will never, may never, physically be. They've even ventured into the sun's core and into Black Holes, and on to dying stars and stars just fixing to be born -- and to galaxies which answer back in tongues, after a fashion. They have gone back in Time to Big Bang's singular and very own moment -- or so they say. 

As several scholars such as Dawkins and others (discussed in Yambo, 2012) have noted already, concepts are, for bodies of knowledge, gene-equivalents in the cultural universe. That is, they are memes which make everything make any sense at all in the physical and the social and the spiritual worlds. Concepts empower us to achieve the transition from the raw to the cooked -- that is, to the nets and webs of insight and understanding essential to apprehending our diverse realities and mastering our ever-present challenges. 

It is for these reasons that we start (indeed, must start) our journey, in any field of learning or problem-solving, armed with a set of concepts that we will need (and need to build on and add to in ever more specialized ways) along the way -- that is, Key Concepts. Key concepts may sound like a tiresome cliche, but they are, singularly or in bunches, truly key to understanding both seemingly simple and manifestly complex ideas, and to solving the associated theoretical, methodological and practical problems.




UPDATED: March 5, 2018.

Holy Days

Holidays are a time to feast
On our most cherished concepts.
Time to savour the Tinderet.
Till the memories are fully full.
Meals at the table are but a ruse,
Yet they are fully taken.

So, some have had a full week to remember?
Some but three sundowns and an execution?

There's not more place to hide now, then.
Not more time to hide quiet places in.
No more taunting
Of those who will never see morning again.
The bees are back on earth. Earth, pinch thyself!
The exhibitionists are back in town.

All the noise and all the gadgetry!
All the rush home and in every direction!

It's not like we were down, again,
To the last 2000!
Life as we don't know it gotta go
On, baby.
Life's gotta go
On!

Genghis Khan's got a number on each 200,
Of each of your warring, faithful, clans.

There's a bend in the road at the next gorge.
There is a George at the next bend in the road.
Nor is he a bad Godfather, or king, really.
Nor is he our idea of James Brown. Or Brown Tsu!
Yet he bends with the road as the next King.
Caprice is in the air, has left us a bitter taste bud.

And all the pardon moi sounds rather like
A reverse horoscope --
In which the future sees us hazily,
Unsure that we will come to pass!
We will become what we are that yet awaits us.

And play for the casual vanquished,
Who declared a war they couldn't wage.
Those who flash, let them not know you'll not call.
May you never be a pan in which they splash.
May those who rattle their sabres be not near you.
Hamahre! Let it be.

Yet let us stone the devil with pellets!

Full memories carry us a full cycle.
And the concepts are fully taken --
We are truly rotund!
Yet some we cannot hold down.

And so let us be!