I wish that I were about to and able to write something worthy of the title of this blog.

I start with an excerpt from the blog of the Maverick Philosopher: “There is a discrepancy between the seriousness with which we take our projects and the indifference with which we view them from ‘on high’ under the aspect of eternity.  This discrepancy is inescapable since both the subjective and objective viewpoints are essential to being human and they necessarily conflict.”  (Typeface emphasis is mine.)

On this point, I totally agree.  I spent in excess of an hour today replacing the pump on our birdbath fountain — no further evidence is needed to demonstrate to me that I (like other humans) willingly undertake trivial efforts to achieve (from the perspective of eternity) objectively insignificant results.  Question is, why?  Don’t I have something better to do?  Yes, of course I do, and yet I rarely do it, or I do very little of it.

The problem is, everything is insignificant when viewed “under the aspect of eternity.”  You and I have no idea how the future will unfold.  There is an endless expanse of future, but all we have access to is an ever-vanishing present and only as much past as we have managed to stuff into our brains.  We are disadvantaged when it comes to viewing life with an eye on eternity.  Not just disadvantaged but clueless.

We have limited ways to influence the future and sketchy internal models as to how our actions might or might not shape the future or benefit others.  Yet we act boldly, blind to outcomes.  In our culture, failure to act is tantamount to abdication.  For us it is better to act insignificantly than not at all.

And so we act, knowing that we occupy an insignificant slice of eternity.  It just so happens that this slice is the most significant parcel of time we can imagine, because we happen to occupy it.   But why should such meager lifespans as our own be held up against the aspect of eternity?  What denizen of the future time-traveled to our century and sold us this bill of goods, that our acts should benefit the future more than our present?

My answer to the question posed in the title of this blog: no, philosophy does not matter.  Philosophy tries to answer things with words that evolution already answered with DNA.

The little state I live in, North Carolina, has a Republican governor to go along with its gerrymandered Republican legislature.  (Asheville lost its blue-dog Democrat congressman to the magic of redistricting.)  So a flurry of laws that were once or sure to be vetoed by our former Democratic governor have now been signed into law by Republican Pat McCrory.  As reported in the Asheville Citizen-Times, here are bills he recently signed:

“One new law blocks the state from expanding Medicaid to cover more lower-income people and from operating an online health care marketplace.  The federal government will run the exchange instead.  Another law ensures group homes and Alzheimer’s care units can access state funds to deal with Medicaid coverage changes.  [Comment: There must be more to this than that — as worded, it sounds too good to be true.]  There’s also legislation that will allow a live possum drop to continue on New Year’s Eve in Brasstown.  Another increases penalties for protests at funerals.”

The Republican insiders who run the little state I live in decided to make their state-ment: it is now open season on progressive policies.  They are determined to keep North Carolina from going red to purple to blue, although economics and demographics tilt against them.  Custer’s last stand, if you will.