My friend is more politically active and passionate than I am. He wanted to know why I lagged in being warm to the subject. Thinking it over, I think it is because, like hemlines or tail fins, the fashions, the headlines, the hot buttons are so temporary. It seems to me that voters in this country want the moon: more aid but lower taxes, less armed forces but more security, more freedom and less rules, better education without having an idea of what better education is.
So hot and bothered and yet frivolous at the same time. It never ends. Listening to "The Invention of Air" by Steven Johnson, I hear the author make a distinction between transient political questions and longer-lasting questions about nature and science. Much of the book is about a friendship between Benjamin Franklin and the English scientist and churchman Joseph Priestley. Franklin was much older and considered to be one of the great scientists of his time. Priestley was a natural investigator and very interested in the natural world. His work lead to human understanding of the partnership between animals depending on oxygen and plants' production of oxygen. Late in his life, Franklin was depended on to help with the Revolutionary War and its settlement. Despite his hard work on obtaining self-government for America and a satisfactory arrangement with Britain at the war's end, he felt disgusted with men. He complained in a letter to Priestley that men swelled with pride about warfare and killing and yet covered themselves in darkness while making babies, a more virtuous occupation. I can certainly sympathize with Franklin.
