Necessity amid possibility

Discoveries in recent years have have led me to intense awareness of possibilities among impossibilities. What is sustainable? What is meant to be on earth? What are human possibilities at our stage of evolution? Every culture is a "gamble with nature." (Marshall Sihins) This is a gamble with necessity, that the entire field of possibilities will remain stable. But, a middle ground exists among possibilities. "The middle ground is the place between in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the non state world of villages...On the middle ground diverse peoples adjust their differences through what amounts to a process of creative, and often expedient, misunderstandings...They often misinterpret and distort both the values and the practices of those they deal with, but from these misunderstandings arise new meanings and through them new practices of the middle ground." (Richard White)

A fifteen minute walk from my host home on the Near West Side of Cleveland at the edge of the Cuyahoga River is a memorial to Standard Oil, founded by John D. Rockefeller and his partners. This is where the mega oil world began, where they concentrated the refining capacity to form the basis of energy power. This is what brought on anti-monopoly laws. This is what enabled the auto industry and our love affair with cars. This is where the river burned in the 70's.

Now, we prepare for a middle ground of sorts between energy intensive technology and a more primitive way of life. At this writing, the oil companies lobby for diluting the legislation to reduce global climate change. The question is open about whether or not humans will find a middle ground among the possibilities of necessity.