Caring Properly

When people are scorched, scarred and scared, with their livelihoods and environments eroded, their trust corroded and their beautiful gardens and home furnishings damaged beyond repair, why do politicians usually fail to care properly?

How do you attempt to take good care of your home environment, your handiwork and your health?

How do you attempt to encourage other people to do likewise?

And how sustainable is your approach to caring properly?

How has Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, helped you to understand the scientific law associated with the conservation of energy? 

What have you discovered about enlightened investment practices?  

How have you been investing in conservation over the past few years?

How deeply are your values associated with natural and/or cultural conservation?

How do you identify and interpret scars in various situations, including psychological ones?

What caused your physical scars, if you have any?

What caused your psychological scars, if you have any?

Perhaps you have unhealed physical wounds.

Perhaps you have unhealed mental wounds.

Perhaps you are battle-scarred.

How do you attempt to understand and acknowledge fear? 

How do you attempt to understand and acknowledge enlightened self-interest?

How do you attempt to distinguish between enlightened self-interest and greed?

How do you attempt to distinguish between enlightened free will and ridiculous conformity to dangerous practices? 

The Marquise du Châtelet assists the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee in many ways, particularly in relation to the universal laws of nature, the universal laws of morality, and the dangers and benefits associated with thermodynamics.

What do you know about forest dynamics?

What do you know about fire ecology?

What do you know about soil biology?

What do you know about biochemistry?

What have you discovered through the earth sciences, about erosion? 

What have you discovered about the natural process of corrosion?

What have you discovered by studying the water cycle?

What has motivated you to learn about such matters?

What do you know about The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville?

Perhaps you became aware of the ironical connection between a satirical poem and anthropogenic climate change quite a while ago.

Perhaps you became aware of the selfishness of military personnel and legal personnel quite a while ago.

How have you assessed your own selfish motives?

How have you assessed other people's selfish motives?

How do you assess threats of various sorts?

What do you know about various forms of corruption? 

How do you try to understand all biogeochemical cycles and biological life cycles?

How do you try to understand and appreciate ecological communities?

Do you think much about biomes in relation to simple living and similar investments? 

Perhaps you do not equate simple living with virtue, especially if you live in an elegant château, a grand palace or magnificent mansion.

Perhaps you mistake eminence for virtue.

Are you sure you are well-informed about CO2 levels, record temperatures, Arctic ice, permafrost and forests?

Are you sure you are well-informed about the history of science, including the motives for scientific research?

Are you sure you are well-informed about the history of economic prosperity, including the motives for its pursuit?

Threats are usually associated with intimidation and coercion.  They enforce compliance.

How do you usually respond to the threat of punishment or any other form of harm? 

What have been your experiences of threats?

What have been your experiences of greed?

How do you respond when obedience to the truth is viewed by powerful people as a threat to their power?

The powerful are usually hypocrites.  They are usually corrupt.  They are usually greedy.  They are usually manipulative.  They may or may not be intelligent.  They may or may not be relatively well educated.

That is why the people with social and/or political power are usually incapable of caring properly.

What does caring properly mean to you?

How well do you care for yourself and any dependents you may have acquired?

What do you know about the biological concept of mutualism?

How do you know you have been investing in a sensible approach to sustainability? 

How have you located the necessary information with which to do so?

Perhaps you have relied upon a daily news service of one sort or another to help you avert disasters.

Perhaps you have required hourly news or minute-by-minute news or weekly news or monthly news.

What have you discovered from the history of disasters, and how?

You may or may not have experiences an annus horribilis and/or an annus mirabilis, or at least not yet.

What have you discovered about adaptive management, and how?

You may have noticed that one disaster often leads to another, either directly or indirectly, yet the initial causes of disasters are often inadequately researched.

But who describes particular events as disasters, and why?

What do you know about ecological disturbances?

What do you know about ecological succession?

What do you know about the War of the Spanish Succession? 

What do you know about corporate mergers and acquisitions?

What do you know about the Spanish Inquisition?

Perhaps you regard the questioning here as an inquisition.

Perhaps you possess self-inflicted, or otherwise deliberately inflicted, physical scarifications. 

What do you know about scarification in botany?

What do you know about slashing, heating, scorching and burning in various contexts?

What do you know about cauterisation?

What do you know about dry heat sterilisation?

While slash-and-burn agriculture has had a long history, so have military scorched-earth policies and brutal punishments.

Why is mental illness still treated as a crime in most situations relating to breaches of laws?

Why are physical disabilities and chronic illnesses so often treated as though they are punishments?

You may be aware that corrupt individuals tend to display themselves as dignified, law-abiding and possibly even religious.

Caring properly requires careful research, including careful social research and careful historical research.

Caring properly also requires proper respect for the scientific method.

What do you know about the natural process of catalysis?

What do you know about the scientific career of Elizabeth Fulhame?

What do you know about light-dependent reactions in photosynthesis?

What do you know about the military power of John Churchill?

What do you know about the political influence of Sarah Churchill?

What do you know about the judicial status of Thomas Parker?

What do you know about the development of quality journalism by Joseph Addison?

What do you know about the inbreeding of the Habsburgs and other domineering dynasties, and in various animal and plant species, and human groups?

How well do you conduct comparative historical research, and how do you know? 

What do you know about investing in historical accuracy?

What research have you conducted on the funding of science, and why?

Perhaps you mistake proper care for various, quite ignorant interventions.

Perhaps you mistake emotional dysregulation for the expression of reasonable care.

Perhaps you mistake independence for interdependence, and vice versa.

If you believe you are preparing properly for COP26 through climate courtesy credentials, how do you know you are caring properly?

How do you know your point of view is adequately based on evidence?

Perhaps you would rather sit around and gamble, like Maria Theresa of Spain, instead of thinking carefully about politics, philosophical literature and science.

How do you usually think about virtue and vice?

What is your attitude towards deference?

What is your attitude towards defiance?

What do you know about real and fake piety?

What do you believe to be your duties at present, and why?

The members of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee hope you are genuinely caring, suitably observant, appropriately informed and adequately rational.

How have you most recently been investing in quaternary possibilities, and where, and for what reasons?

What have you been learning about textile manufacturing?

What have you been learning about water wars?

What is your acquaintance with the mathematical principles of natural philosophy?

What is your attitude towards the division of labour?

What do you know about state expansionism in relation to the acquisition by governments of privately owned land for public purposes? 

What do you know about corporate expansionism in relation to the sale of public property, and the use of public money, to encourage the concentration of wealth?

What is your acquaintance with the Pareto distribution?

What is your acquaintance with the paradox of thrift?

What is your acquaintance with the necessity of thrift, particularly in the form of intelligent frugality?

If good government is possible, respect for the truth is essential.  Without good government, in every society, caring properly is probably impossible.

Without good government, most attempts to provide proper care are probably futile.  They are likely, at best, to provide short-term societal benefits, and short-term personal and/or interpersonal comfort.

What have been your experiences of economic interdependence?

Perhaps you believe that greed is more of a motivator than need.

Besides clean air, clean water and clean politics, you are likely to require food, fibre, fuel and genuine friendship.

Truly good friends challenge each other's assumptions about the truth, through the presentation of clear evidence.

What do you know about investing in intelligent frugality?

What do you know about kinetic energy?

What do you know about the scouring of fibre?

What do you know about the diffusion of innovations?

What do you know about market anomalies?

What do you know about doux commerce?

What do you know about investing in good relationships?

What do you know about bees?

What do you know about scientific misconduct?

What is your preferred approach to questioning beliefs?

How do you prevent fraud and pathological science?

What do you know about stock traders?

What do you know about the science of pathology?

How does your reading and questioning influence your worldview?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee is attempting to solve the world's most urgent problems.  Perhaps you are attempting to do likewise.

If so, what have been your most notable contributions towards investing in an intelligently kind culture, and where, and how?

What do you know about behavioural momentum? 

What do you know about momentum in finance?

How are you involved in reforming manners, preventing data fabrication, and improving understanding of the grassing and singeing of fabrics?

How do you know when claimed sedition is actually a reasonable critique of charlatans and hypocrites?

Are you a Worldling?

Are you capable of identifying biases and pointing them out in insightful ways?

How much do you value intelligently frugal pleasures, and how do you express that value? 

• Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part One
• Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Two
• Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Three
• Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Four

 

What have you discovered about good and bad government, and how?

What have you discovered about astroturfing and how to identify it?

How do you attempt to uphold civility and prevent the distribution of falsehoods?

How is it possible to solve problems and prevent them from arising again?

Good government may be no more than a fantasy to the people unwilling to support its development actively.

And the problem of ongoing climate catastrophes will not be solved without good government.

Instead, the world, as usual, is ruled by narcissists, psychopaths and nincompoops.

What are your social theories and how did you acquire them?

What are your theories about egos and how to deflate them appropriately?

Perhaps you are more interested in examining The Splendour of the Sun than the truth about politics.

Perhaps you wish to examine the future of various forms of scourings and scourges.

Perhaps you are mostly interested in caring properly for illuminated alchemical manuscripts rather than living people, and future people.

Caring properly for people and precious objects is not necessarily a popular pursuit.  It requires integrity, intelligence and courage.  It also requires patience, peace and perseverance.

Caring properly especially requires an evidence-based, centrist, political perspective, to ensure extremist views are discouraged effectively.

International law continues to serve empire, shellfire and hellfire, not true peace.  

The dark triad continues to win at the expense of everyone, and everything, else.

Relatively enlightened persons remain powerless as a consequence of your laziness and selfishness.  That is why the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee continues to require the services of wonderful witches to help counteract the forces of evil.