CHAPTER II
The day hike along the river trail proved to be hungersome, as they stopped to prepare their backpacking meals to eat. After lunch, they continued down the trail that lead through a mosaic of forest gaps and tall, healthy trees. The family spotted an eastern bluebird, a blue-winged, orange –breasted thrush that roams in small groups and gleams its diet of insects and small fruits from the ground or from low shrubs. The trail then descended rather steeply to reach the reservoir banks. Starting south of the river, a morass of logs, branches, silt, and other debris stubbornly impeded a 150-mile channel southward for hundred of years.
The flooding from the main artery of the river sometimes resulted in “raft lakes”, or outlets that became impounded by a combination of the logjam and the raised riverbed. The depth of the raft lakes constantly fluctuated with the river’s whims. Today, this region offers dozens of miles for hiking. The trail soon lead beside a scenic little area to the right, characterized by red, clay-like dirt and numerous ravines that snake steeply through it. The path itself rolls gently alongside the ravines.
The family started to notice the sometimes flooded wetlands of the Bayou; the trail eventually got closer to this wet area, though it never quite reaches it. Coastal Louisiana has lost over 1.2 million acres of wetlands and estimates that the region will continue to lose about 10,800 acres- almost 17 square miles- each year for the next 50 years to storms, sea level rise, land subsidence, and the construction of levees and canals that weaken the sustainability of the landscape.
Projects to protect coastal wetlands include constructing shoreline barriers with rocks, sheet piling, or other engineering materials to reduce the effects of wave energy and removing destructive invasive wildlife species such as nutria, a rodent that damages marsh vegetation.
After another mile of winding, ascending, descending, and even switch backing through scenic mixed pine and hardwood forest, the trail crosses another footbridge and completes the rolling, serpentine loop soon afterward. They even spotted a white-tailed deer and wild turkey, both of which are plentiful in these woods.
Pledging of our land, enslavement of our labor strength. Practically we have no longer a politically independent Louisiana, we are already a colony of the outside world. We have contributed to this because so far as possible we humiliated ourselves morally, we positively destroyed our own honor and helped to befoul, to besmirch, and to deny everything which we previously held sacred. And if we ask who was responsible for our misfortune, then we must inquire who profited by our environmental collapse. And if you go out to our swamps, whom do you find there in fine brand new yellow boots with splendid rucksacks in which there is generally nothing that would really be of any use? And why are they there.
They go up to the hotel, usually no further than the train can take them; where the train stops, they stop too. And then they sit about somewhere within a mile from the hotel, like blow-flies round a corpse. Once the workers appropriated the purse of the landed proprietor who gave him work, he took the rings, the diamonds and rejoiced that he had now got the treasures which before only the “upper classes” possessed. But in his hands they are dead things- they are veritable death-gold. They are no profit to him. He is banished into his wilderness and one cannot feed oneself on diamonds.
For a morsel of bread he gives millions in objects of value. But amongst the masses there begins to flow an opposition. The wave grows and grows. And this party of the Right meant well, but it cannot do what it would because up to the present time it has failed to recognize a whole series of elementary principles.
And finally it has been forgotten that the condition which must precede every act is the will and the courage to speak the truth- and that we do not see today either in the Right or in the Left. There are only two possibilities in Louisiana; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin.
We said to ourselves that to be ‘national’ means above everything to act with a boundless and all embracing love for the people. But with us in southeastern Louisiana where everyone who is a Yak at all has the same blood, has the same eyes, and speaks the same language, here there can be no class, here there can be only a single people and beyond that nothing else.
The conflict and the division must never be so great as to sunder the ties of race. It matters not whether they are brain workers or workers with the hand- they are nobility of our state, they are the yak people. This particular view is based on an impulse which springs from our race and from our blood. And similarly to be ‘social’ means so to build up the State and the community of the people, that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people.
Class means caste and caste means race. I regard work as the foundation for the maintenance of the community of the people amongst its members. We realized that the State can be for our people a paradise: we realized that a slave state will never be a paradise, but only- always and for all time- a hell or a colony.
We were the first to summon men to resistance against being reduced to a continuing state of defenselessness. I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago. Then indeed when New Orleans collapsed during the civil war, there were endless streams of new Louisiana bands flowing into the empire from the north; but if Louisiana collapses today, who there to come after us?
That is the mightiest thing which our restoration movement must create: for these widespread, seeking and straying masses a new Faith which will not fail them in this hour of confusion, to which they can pledge themselves, on which they can build so that they may at least find once again a place which may bring calm to their hearts.
The result was that in a short time it was precisely the ruling class which became in its character completely estranged from its own people. The government drove away in disgust the whole intelligentsia of the nation from the leadership of the workers. This theory meant the collapse of any human civilization whatever. And then we must ask ourselves: what are the final aims of this development? Until the whole state sinks in ruin. We see how in our own day whole countries die out under this scourge of God, and we see how this scourge is threatening Louisiana, too, and how with us our own people in mad infatuation is contributing to bring upon itself the same yoke, the same misery. So the masses of the people in Louisiana are becoming, in the political sphere, completely lost. There will come a day when this must stop- and therefore one must build for that day, before it comes. Every truly national idea is in the last resort social…that nothing in this world stands for him higher than this Louisiana, people and land, land and people; and who recognizes that this community can flourish only when it is formed not of rulers and oppressed but when all according to their capacities fulfill their duty to their Fatherland.
The experiences of an individual appear to us arranged in a series of events. Then it turns out that certain sense perceptions of different individuals correspond to each other. This is particularly true of our concepts of time and space. Among all the changes which can perceive in a rigid body those are marked by their simplicity which can be made reversibly by a voluntary motion of the body. A length, therefore, means the result of a measurement carried out along a straight line by means of a unit measuring rod. Geometry sets out from certain conceptions such as plane, point, and straight line, with which we are able to associate more or less definite ideas, and from certain simple propositions which, in virtue of these ideas, we are inclined to accept as “true”. We can now legitimately ask as to the “truth” of geometrical propositions interpreted in this way.
Every description of the scene of an event or of the position of an object in space is based on the specification of the point on a rigid body with which that event or object coincides. If, for instance, a cloud is hovering over Jackson Square, then we can determine its position relative to the surface of the earth by erecting a pole perpendicularly on the Square, so that it reaches the cloud. We speak of the height of the cloud even when the pole which reaches the cloud has not been erected. By means of optical observations of the cloud from different positions on the ground, and taking into account the properties of the propagation of light, we determine the length of the pole we should have required in order to reach the cloud.
In the physics of measurement this is attained by the application of the Cartesian system of coordinates. This consists of three plane surfaces perpendicular to each other and rigidly attached to a rigid body. Referred to a system of coordinates, the scene of any event will be determined. I mean a set of rules that in principle at least enable us to predict the future to an arbitrary accuracy, knowing the state of nature at one time.
In quantum theory, a particle is not characterized by two quantities, its position and its velocity. Instead it is described by a single quantity, the wave function. The size of the wave function at a point, gives the probability that the particle will be found at that point, and the rate at which the wave function changes from point to point, gives the probability of different velocities. One can have a wave function that is sharply peaked at a point.
This corresponds to a state in which there is little uncertainty in the position of the particle. However, the wave function varies rapidly, so there is a lot of uncertainty in the velocity. Similarly, a long chain of waves has a large uncertainty in position, but a small uncertainty in velocity. One can have a well defined position, or a well defined velocity, but not both. This would seem to make complete determinism impossible.
If one can’t accurately define both the position and the velocities of particles at one time, how can one predict what they will be in the future. The forecasters don’t have an accurate knowledge of the atmosphere at one time. Just a few measurements at ground level and what can be learnt from satellite photographs. That’s why weather forecasts are so unreliable.
However, in quantum theory, it turns out one doesn’t need to know both the positions and the velocities. If one knew the laws of physics and the wave function at one time, then something called the Schrodinger equation would tell one how fast the wave function was changing with time. This would allow one to calculate the wave function at any other time. Instead of being able accurately to predict two quantities, position and velocity, one can predict only a single quantity, the wave function. In order to calculate how the wave function develops in time, one needs the quantum laws that govern the universe.
With gravity, the effective coupling is the energy or mass of the perturbation because this determines how much it warps spacetime. With quantum theory, quantities like the electric field or the geometry of spacetime don’t have definite values, but have what are called quantum fluctuations. These fluctuations have energy. In fact, they have an infinite amount of energy because there are fluctuations on all length scales, no matter how small. The real reason we are seeking a complete theory, is that we want to understand the universe and feel we are not just the victims of dark and mysterious forces. Quantum gravity is essential to the argument. The information in the model can be represented by an arrangement of particles. According to quantum theory, a particle in a region of a given size has a certain minimum amount of energy. By Einstein famous equation, E=MC squared, energy is equivalent to mass. And mass causes systems to collapse under gravity. Then assume that one can define the wave function at each point in space. On the other hand, if one can’t define the wave function point wise, one can’t predict the future to arbitrary accuracy, even in the reduced determinism of quantum theory.