Environmental Ethics: Art in Ecotopia

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Art in Ecotopia

Hello! For my Blog report I have decided to discuss with the class "art" in a society similar to Callenbach's Ecotopia.

First I would like to start by talking about Plato's "attack on art." In the Republic, Plato attacks art but it truly seems to be misinterpreted and what he really is attacking fake art, precisely art that takes the form of amusement or entertainment. He is not attacking true art at all but just this fake art. If one recognizes this it is easy to see why Plato would attack entertainment and entertainers. To be amused or entertained allows the entertainer to create a feeling inside his audience and then the audience discharges the feeling. However being amused has no use in practical life. One would like to be entertained simply for the sake of being entertained. Therefor it has no true value in itself. This amusement is not even true art because it is just skillfully constructed and not a true expression of emotion or imagination.

Soon people cannot feel any emotion from ordinary life because they are so addicted the being amused, and the amusement is all fake. This causes people in a society (like ours) to put a massive emphasis on entertainment. Our entertainment industry is massive and still growing rapidly, while entertainment itself seems to get more insane in order to entertain the people that have become numb from the endless amusement.

So even in Callenbach's Ecotopia he still has a lot of entertainment. And even though it seems like the Ecotopia is a great stable place, it could be possible for it to spiral out of control and lead to another society like ours that is built upon consuming and being entertained at all times. Even the chapter dedicated to music and art in the book is short and does not describe with much detail what kind of art is produced. Maybe since Ecotopia isn't real it would be impossible to even try to imagine this kind of art?
And I'm talking about true art that is from the expression of emotion and imagination.
Basically entertainment is not useful at all, so is it still necessary to have so much of it in the new world of Ecotopia? Instead of entertainment like the "war games" we would need more true art.

So my questions for the class to be discussed is,
"Would Callenbach's Ecotopia produce more art that is not just for "amusement"?"
"What kind of art do you think an "Ecotopia' like society would create?"
"Would is be a good idea to have very little amusement and entertainment in this new society, focusing the entertainment part on true art or philosophical discussion or something that is useful for the society."

Feel free to discuss .. thanks for reading!! =^..^=

1 comment:

PhilDecember 5, 2012 at 11:04 AM
Very interesting, David. But I worry whenever distinctions are bandied between real or true and "fake" art, or High and Low, etc. How do we draw them without begging questions or flirting with an oppressive conformist elitism? How do we acknowledge the art of the "folk"? There does seem to me a risk of encouraging an ecotopian version of PC that might really be stifling and anti-democratic. That wouldn't have worried Plato, presumably, since he trusted his Guardian Phil-Kings to get these distinctinos right. But shouldn't we be wary?
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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

	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

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Art in Ecotopia

1 comment:

Peripatetics