Environmental Ethics: Castles in the Sky

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Castles in the Sky

One of the questions I would like to address is about a quote on page 36 of Blessed Unrest regarding Thoreau and how activists should conceive their "dreams" or movements. He basically suggests that you should go big or go home. If you want something done you should build your castles in the air, "that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them," My question is whether or not you believe this is a successful technique for the environmental activist? Does this put off the "mainstream" or inspire? While many people during his day believed that Thoreau's endeavors at Walden were unsuccessful, his first book initially flopped,it is obvious that his time at Walden has been a major influence not only on literary world but also on the environmental movement. Does that mean we should all stop paying our taxes and live off the land? Will we change the world or just go back to making pencils? What do y'all think?

1 comment:

SchwarzwaldSeptember 9, 2012 at 11:42 PM
I personally believe in balance, for every dreamer building castles in the air, there must be 10,000 doers prepared to slave over the foundation, and a couple slave drivers and architects to make sure everyones in check, and that the foundation isn't built on a marsh.

Dreamers aren't worthless, they inspire, they cause the change, but don't facilitate it. Which means their words should be taken no more seriously than a pep talk before a football game.

Sure, when coach said go out there and steamroll them, it got you amped up, but A.) he doesn't actually expect you to wheel a steamroller out to the field, and B.) literally doing it wouldn't win you a football game. He meants get the intended goal accomplished, and thats all such dreamy flowery talk can be interpreted as "get the job done, make a change, accomplish the goal within the means you have."
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“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
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“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
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“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

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― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
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“When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.”
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“We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”
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“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the
single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this
world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the
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“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Aldo Leopold

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― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

“The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.”
― Ivan Illich

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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Castles in the Sky

1 comment:

Peripatetics