Environmental Ethics: Labor of Thought Ethics Bowl

Monday, November 19, 2018

Labor of Thought Ethics Bowl

Hi all,

I started an event this time last year called the Labor of Thought Ethics Bowl, meant for Rutherford County high schoolers to compete by discussing ethical dilemmas. It is an extremely educational and rewarding experience that opens the minds of the rising generation to the relevant issues that complicate the world and are often discussed without proper knowledge. Last year's event was a total success and we are gearing up for this year's, scheduled to take place at Oakland Middle School on December 1st. Right now we are in the process of recruiting judges, which is one of the more difficult parts of coordinating this event. Being a judge is super simple and all you need to be qualified is be enrolled in school or have relevant experience. A judge will listen to the teams' presentations, pose questions that push the students' arguments even further and listen to their answers, and score the teams based on a scoring guide. For those of you who are familiar with her, Dr. Magada-Ward will be attending as a judge and as the keynote speaker. The ethics bowl will be from 9:30--4:30, but f we get enough judges we may not need everyone to stay the whole time. This would also be a great opportunity for anyone looking for a few extra volunteer hours or to expand their academic resume. If any of you are at all interested or have any questions about this opportunity, please let me know in the comments or in class!

6 comments:

mountainman_tanNovember 19, 2018 at 1:33 PM
Would you kill for any of your beliefs? Or die for them? Or do you think you're better red (or blue, or green..) than dead?

As a Christian..... Yes! I do have to say though, killing or sacrificing is a little outdated, like we do not even drink real wine (unless your Catholic, different story) in church anymore just blessed cranberry juice. Anyway, church back in the day was sacrificing a young animal or first-person child to show our committed they were to God. Now I have it would look freaking crazy for somebody to kill a baby lamb in the market in the United States compared to other countries where that is considered to be fresh! Back to what I was talking about, those religious views aren't as strong as they used to be! They dominated the way of free thinkers, started wars( literally any of the 7 crusades), or just cause a dilemma for societies to prosper with an effect on the hold the church has on people. That is why we separated church and state. They do not belong because one is dealing with rules and regulations that are constantly being renewed to fit societies standards. While religion is based on 2000-year-old morals that does not have the same effect as it did then. Now dying for their religion is a whole new level of commitment. In most religions, that person is awarded for their duty to God. Christians who die for God are claimed as martyrs which means witness or testimony in the Greek language. They would usually die of stoning, crucifixion, burning of the stake, and many more. I remember being involved with missionary trips and we would have to hide everything. Even praying was a crime. Especially a bunch of whites in a foreign country, with the nationality of being an American, so our chances did not look good at all but we did it!
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UnknownNovember 19, 2018 at 3:10 PM
Brandon Alston contact email. Balston1990@yahoo.com
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PhilNovember 23, 2018 at 6:11 PM
Good luck with the Ethics Bowl, Rosemarie, hope you'll give us an update on how it goes. Glad MM-W could help you again.
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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

Monday, November 19, 2018

Labor of Thought Ethics Bowl

6 comments:

Peripatetics