Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

“Families that take foreign vacations also tend to own more televisions than those that do not. Is that second television causing families to be more adventurous?”

“Three hundred fifty parts per million,” he replied. “The number of carbon molecules the atmosphere can hold, and still maintain the ordinary thermal balance. It’s an important figure. I suppose they want to draw attention.”

“A trend is intangible, but real,” he said calmly. “A photo cannot prove a child is growing, but several of them show change over time. Align them, and you can reliably predict what is coming. You never see it all at once. An attention span is required.”

As long as we won’t commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing.