Environmental Ethics: More Speth Qs/Happiness is not for sale

Monday, October 1, 2012

More Speth Qs/Happiness is not for sale

Gus Speth’s Chapter Six 6 takes up one of my favorite topics (and courses), happiness. And Chapter Seven concludes with another manifesto to rival Speth’s, this one from Wendell Berry. [Backing off]

The clear message, if it can be heard above the cacophony of advertising and Jonesing in our frenzied consumer culture: the deep feeling of personal well-being and meaningful, purposive engagement in life cannot be bought, is not for sale. We must climb down from our hedonic treadmills, stop assuming that more is always better, start focusing on “things that would truly make us better off.” A sustainable planet, the precondition of real security, is the big one...

(continues at Up@dawn)

"Does economic growth make you happy?" Nope, says the TLS. "The case against making increased GDP per capita the overriding policy objective is that it doesn’t deliver the increased happiness or welfare if promises..."

More Speth questions (Exam #2, at the end of October, will begin with ch4):

When (according to Darrin McMahon) did happiness become a right? (127)
What was Jefferson's formula for happiness? What's happened to it?
Why is the advent of Positive Psychology a good thing?
What is "subjective well-being" and "flow"? Where is it highest? (130)
What's happened to social connectedness, trust, and anxiety since the '50s?
What is the hedonic treadmill? What are happiness "set-points"?
What bearing do age, gender, IQ, education, work, family, health, and freedom have on happiness?
What is Speth's objection to GDP? What are some alternative indices? (138f.)
[Your suggestions]
[ch7]
What's Speth's opinion of "the people who run corporations"? (167) What's his objection to "externalizing costs"?
How big is Exxon?
How do most Americans feel about corporations? (175)
Why does Speth say "government action is needed"? (178)
What's the central idea of the "corporation of the future"? (181)
[ch9]

And for discussion:

Is ours a manic, dysphoric society? Are Whybrow's and McKibben's analysescorrect? (137)
How should we measure national well-being? Do you like the Happy Planet Index or Gross National Happiness?
What are the "real issues" and activities "that would truly make us better off"?
Are there lessons for our time, and for the future of (eg) biotechnology and bioethics, in Shelley's "Ozymandias"? (158-9)
Would you sign Berry's Manifesto? Or add to it?
Can corporations really be "green" and "socially responsible"? Does green consumerism do any good? (174f.)
Do you reject any of Speth's six propositions? (194-5)

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First things first--a proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

“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.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
― Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“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

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― 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.”
― Martin Keogh, Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World

“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.”
― John May, The Greenpeace Story

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”
― Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

“We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“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
environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Aldo Leopold

“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
― 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

Environmental Ethics

Monday, October 1, 2012

More Speth Qs/Happiness is not for sale

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Peripatetics

	Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) http://michaelpollan.com/
5/14/15, 10:57 AM All the lectures and talks from Edible Education 101 are now online. All told, a great introduction to food politics bit.ly/1Fausvx