Learning @ Lawrence Marcia Bjornerud

Geology addresses not only pragmatic questions - where to find groundwater, how to protect people from natural hazards - but also deep, even philosophical ones: Where do we come from? Why is the Earth the way it is? What factors favor stable, resilient ecosystems and societies? Both kinds of inquiries are important to humans, and both require a keen sense of temporal proportion - the relative and absolute durations of the great chapters in the planet's past, the characteristic rates and timescales of natural phenomena. But as a society, we are largely time-illiterate - shockingly ignorant about how our activities intersect with the Earth's long-established habits. Developing the practice of 'Timefulness' - the geological capacity to see our place in time in proper perspective - may be a way to spring ourselves out of the polarized mindsets in which we have trapped ourselves. The narratives of natural history are a heritage we all share as Earthlings, and expanded awareness of that legacy may liberate us from self-destructive tendencies.