Friday, October 2, 2020

Next Steps

No intense policy analysis this week folks, just my take away from The Story of More. I was struck by how future-oriented Hope Jahren seemed in her concluding chapter. If you read the appendices, Jahren argues that each individual can change the world in their own corner. This was a refreshing change in tone in contrast to the staggering scale of the systemic issue exacerbating the environmental issues. When facing the sheer scale of an issues like climate change, systemic corruption, and late-stage capitalism it is easy to shut down and ignore the issue. On a personal level, the more aware of we become regarding an issue, we simultaneously become more aware of our shortcomings. Public discourse tends to relish in the conflict--if it bleeds it sells. Every day we take in a bleak, depressing vison of the world. We can revert to apathy, cynicism, or loose ourselves in fantasy or nostalgia. Whoever said "ignorance is bliss" wasn't lying!

The words of Gandalf, from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (arguably my favorite book), illustrate how we ought we cannot choose to when we live, but how we live. The One Ring has been found, foreshadowing the rising powers of darkness, and Frodo, the protagonist, laments he lot in life:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Despite facing down monstrous global issues, it is important to never loose sight of our role--the role of the individual. If we believe that our actions will not change anything, we risk nihilistic paralysis. Several of the discussion questions asked the class to consider their values, priorities, and lifestyles. What could we do to address the issue? What issues are worth sacrificing comforts for? The world is what we make, so what kind of world do we want? We must ask ourselves these questions. We must never forget that we do have a chance to pull back from the brink of disaster.

In conclusion, one of the DQ's asked how much longer can we accurately say that we are controlling our demise. So long as we never lose our cool, and--as my grandmother says--"run around like a headless chicken" we will be fine. Take what time you have, do not underestimate your likelihood of failure nor overestimate you capacity for success, and move forward.

Semester score: 28

-Weekly essay

-Commented on Allena's 10/1 post

-Commented on Phil's 10/1 post

2 comments:

PhilOctober 5, 2020 at 12:06 AM
Sane and sensible thoughts, Levi. John Dewey didn't know Frodo and Gandalf but he also knew and said that we must live in our own time, make what contributions we can to ameliorate conditions and transmit a habitable world and heritable legacy. So long as we're keeping our heads, as your grandmother says, we have an opportunity to do that.
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Carolin EngelhardOctober 7, 2020 at 3:01 PM
I love that you bring up the quote from The Lord of the Rings, certainly very fitting to the situation we are in right now!
Maybe also the reason why people choose to ignore it, because our time is limited, because one single individual is not responsible for this. How many people are willing to have some inconveniences in their life so they can make a small impact or maybe not even an impact at all. In many things we are selfish, because our time is limited. Our goal might be to leave a better world for our kids? Future generations? But who really cares if we are not here to witness that anyways and how easy is it to give the responsibility that is put on us, to the next generation?
Many questions that everyone needs to think about themselves, but we are obviously not at the point where the majority of the people has found the right answers.
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NOV 5 GT 5.15--5.21 (thru Mending...Earth). McK thru Terry Tempest Williams. Final report presentations begin... NOV 7 GT 5.22 (Hope... What Next?). McK thru Ellen Meloy... NOV 12 MacA Part I-The Long View. McK thru Jack Turner... NOV 14 MacA Part II-Trajectory Changes. McK thru David Quammen... A NOTE ON OUR TEXTS. This is an ambitious reading schedule. Read what you can, prioritizing the texts in descending order: first-listed assignment for each class gets top priority, second gets 2d, and so on... Fall 2024: HONORS BUILDING 116, T/Th 4:20 pm

TEXTS Fall '24

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

Friday, October 2, 2020

Next Steps

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

2 comments:

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

Friday, October 2, 2020

Next Steps

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo."So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

2 comments:

Peripatetics

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”