SLUH Review 2.1

The SLUH Review Basics

A Propensity to Inaction: Global Warming

Logan Hayward, Senior Editor

Sam Harris, Writer

The SLUH Review is Saint Louis University High School’s premier student journal of political, philosophical, and religious opinion. Last year, Luke Chellis, Joe Esswein, Willie Kohler, and I founded the SLUH Review in order to provide SLUH with a variety of opinions on many issues. The results were amazing. We published articles about current events topics, like the BP Oil Spill, the movie Avatar, and Tiger Woods; and we published articles about timeless issues like the role of government in the economy and individual rights. We send out our articles in e-mail form to the SLUH community, for free. And we accept student articles for editing. Whether you consider yourself a conservative, liberal, moderate, libertarian, or socialist, you can send in your article ideas, however basic, and we will work with you to create a finished product. As long as nothing you say goes against the morals and doctrines of the Church, we will work with you to publish your article, even if we disagree with your ideas. If you disagree with something a writer has said, you can send in a response.

Last year, we had a debate within the very ranks of our core staff on the pages of the SLUH Review, and we look forward to many more.

“And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”—that is our motto. In the hope of pursuing and spreading the truth, we look forward to a new school year of discussion, debate, thought, and the SLUH Review.

Logan Hayward, Joe Esswein, Dominic LaMantia,

Global Warming- it's the issue of our generation. People young and old are told it's time to turn our coal plants into wind farms, trash heaps into gardens, and chemical infested rivers into sparkling streams. Political issues aside, one thing is clear: no one gives a darn.

All of the rhetoric, expense, and effort on the part of countless organizations and individuals has culminated in very little in the way of actual progress. Citizens of the Western World, myself included, continue to pollute at an incredible rate without a second thought. With the stakes for our future so high, why do we find it so hard to think about future consequences concerning such broad issues as the environment? More importantly, how can we use new scientific findings to help improve our efforts?

We need to have a better time perspective. Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University, found vast differences between individuals in the way they perceive their relationship to time. His book, The Time Paradox, explains how people not only perceive time differently, but react to it differently. His study focused on young children who were given two options. They could have a marshmallow now, or they could wait until Professor Zimbardo returned a few minutes later and receive two marshmallows. What Zimbardo found was astonishing. Over a decade later, in a follow-up study, Zimbardo's research showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow scored up to 250 points higher on their SAT, were more outgoing, forward thinking, and personable. They were

Senior Editor Junior Editor Sophomore Editor

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also much more likely to participate in conservation and other initiatives requiring long term planning.i It is this forward thinking that is desperately needed. If we can foster forward thinking through self-awareness and education, then we, as a society, can focus on improving the environment through gradual steps made over long periods of time.

We need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The Long Now Foundation has an audacious goal: to build a clock in the Nevada desert the size of a mountain. The project was dubbed by Brian Eno: “The Clock of the Long Now“. The goal of the project is to "creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."ii In a culture that is obsessed with up-to-the-minute twitter feeds, checking emails constantly, and not finishing their sentences prop----, I feel this new time perspective is sorely needed. Danny Hillis, the projects dreamer and creator, wants to do for time what the “photographs of the Earth from space have done for thinking about our place in the universe".iii In a world of ever increasing computer power and speed, he wants to ground us in the slow tick of time. His project also includes plans for a Long Now Library, which would collect and store invaluable data about the Earth's climate and population over vast stretches of time. In the future, scientists may be able to use the data for further research.iv The project would help regular people, through both the library and clock, recognize that we are facing an issue that spans thousands of years. The clock will help us to think about large timescales, and contemplate the big picture. Imagine walking into a hollowed out stone cavern the size of the SLUH auditorium.

Before you stands a clock nearly sixty feet tall, with its pendulum beating back and forth as it has done for hundreds of years. You suddenly find yourself in a world where "now" is not measured in days or weeks, but hundreds or even thousands of years. It would give a face to the time we have lost, the "long now" that our ancestors had discovered centuries ago.

We need to recognize our fallibility as humans and work to understand it. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke and author of The Upside of Irrationality, works to discover how we truly behave. The blatant fact, he points out, is that humans are irrational. All too often, we do nothing in the face of a vital issue. We are often not highly concerned, on average, with the thousands of deaths from flooding, genocide, or war that we hear about in the news everyday. Instead, we are concerned with the serial killer who has killed a handful of people.

While not in any way belittling the latter, Ariely points out that we fail to act when presented by large figures, ideas, or timescales.v We cannot empathize with the headline "thousands killed in flooding," but we can empathize with the headline "father and dear husband shot and killed." We are simply not built to deal with large issues. That is why, Ariely points out, global warming is dangerous.vi It has no "face," there is no one group contributing to the problem. It is on such large timescales that it is nearly impossible to perceive in our lifetimes, and it requires trading the pleasures of the moment for very, very long term benefits. In addition, global warming does not illicit an emotional response from us.vii We do not feel the necessity of action that we do when we hear that a child has gone missing. It is something for somebody else, somewhere else, to deal with on their own time. We ask the question, "everyone else is polluting, so why shouldn't I?" While none of these are complete solutions to the problem, I feel we need to recognize alternate paths to solving the problem of Global Warming and other long term issues. Too often we find ourselves beating our heads against the proverbial wall, trying over and over again to make old solutions fit new issues. We, as a race, have never faced a problem as large as global warming, and it will require a new set of solutions. We need to focus not only on how we can improve the gas mileage in our cars, but how we can encourage people to begin to think about time and consequences beyond the next week, month, or year, and especially beyond their lifetimes. All of these projects would help steer people on the 2

So let’s try to get a sense of eternal life.

If we really are eternal souls choosing through our lives either eternal happiness or despair, how important are our lives on earth? Let’s think in terms of quantities. Since we can’t (really) understand an infinite quantity now, let’s imagine an extremely large number. Now take another, say 42. What fraction of your hypothetical super-number is 42? It must be very small. Now if you compared an even larger number to 42, your 42 over whatnot would become even smaller. With larger numbers, 42 becomes relatively smaller, until you reach a point that it’s practically nothing. The same principle applies to our own earthly life. When we compare eternal life to our earthly lives, we see our earthly lives are nothing.

“But our lives do matter, don’t they?” you might say angrily. Love, politics, the economy—these things do have meaning, don’t they? We really reduce them to an infinitely tiny point? To that, I would say “Yes, we can, but life is still not meaningless.” Life on earth is infinitely important. Yes, infinitely, for the very reason I say so much of it is meaningless— because when we die, we’ll be judged on whether or not we lived our lives for God. And as you know, we have two options, heaven and hell. One is infinitely good, the other is infinitely sorrowful. Because infinite happiness depends on our decisions, our decisions have infinite weight.

Now I see two apparently reasonable reactions to this argument. First, you might argue that God loves you, forgives you, and never would abandon you. Consider, though, the nature of love. Love is freely-given. If God didn’t allow us to reject him, we wouldn’t be free. As a result, we couldn’t love him. Hell exists because a choice exists, and the choice exists because love does. Also, examine Christ’s dozens of references to hell (Gehenna, Sheol, etc) in the Gospels and ask yourself: why would He mention something nonexistent? Does an infinitely good God lie?

The second way I suspect you may react is with the reasonable hope that God will judge us lightly. It makes sense that God might turn someone else down, but to reject me? He loves

right path to simply thinking about the issues.

They are not the solutions, but rather steps to implementing the necessary technologies and innovations that will lead us to solutions.

Thousands of generations before us have left us with a a rich planet to explore, develop, and discover, so I think we owe the thousands of generations yet to come a place to leave a mark on the beautiful, lonely, and incredibly special planet we call Earth.

i. Zimbardo, Philip. “Philip Zimbardo - The Secret Powers of Time.” RSA. http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/vision-videos/philip-zimbardothe-secret-powers-of-time (accessed August 14, 2010). ii. Hillis, Danny. “About Long Now.” Long Now Foundation. http://longnow.org/about/ (accessed August 15, 2010) iii.Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 3. iv. Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 8. v. Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 183. vi. Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 115. vii. Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 116.

The Infinite Importance of God David Farel, writer

As we get back into the routine of school, of work, and thought, I challenge Christians at SLUH to examine the implications of what they believe—specifically of eternity and God’s infinite goodness. Now both of these ideas are pretty heavy ones; to an extent, both ideas are beyond our comprehension. Because we directly perceive only a limited world, one without physical infinites, only relative sizes, amounts, time, etc, we can’t fully grasp infinity.

However, we can begin to understand. To put aside the infinite goodness of God and the eternal nature of our souls simply because they’re confusing would be, to put it bluntly, idiotic. The stakes are high, and if we don’t have a sense of the weight of our eternal life, we’re senseless in our temporary one.

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me! Won’t God forgive? Yes, he will. We worship a loving and merciful God who will forgive anything if truly desire forgiveness. Still, with this point in mind, ask yourself whether you really desire forgiveness. Do you really hate your sins because they displease God, or do you merely want to avoid punishment for them?

Do you really regret your sins? I know this line of questioning can lead you down a dangerous path, away from asking for forgiveness, so I must clarify: always ask for forgiveness, but keep in mind you must also repent.

I’d like you to consider one last point as we start back at school. Consider the sum of your choices. We must make choices every day, lots of choices, and I think that as Christians, it’s infinitely important that we consider what our choices amount to. Maybe we don’t reject him completely, but do we accept him? Love him? Live for him? If we hope for eternal life, we must choose God. So find him, embrace him, bring him into your life, and most importantly, always try to do his will, because if you’re not, you’re doing nothing.

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