Environmental Ethics: Questions Sep 13

Friday, September 9, 2022

Questions Sep 13

WB -259 (Quantity v. Form... Feminism, the Body, and the Machine)...

What's the difference between a whole life and a long life? Is our culture confused about that? 220
Have you achieved "ripeness"? Do you have any role-models who have? 223
What do you think of Wendell's remarks on the failures and futility of the civil rights, women's, and environmental movements? 229-30
Are we a nation of fantasists? 232
Does writing with a computer (or even just electrical lighting) make you complicit in "the rape of nature"? 234
Do you know anyone who does not own a TV set? 235
If "most electrical power comes from strip-mined coal" [still more than half, according to my research], are we in too big a hurry to electrify everything (as Paul Hawken urges)? 240
Should we expect women to exert a "civilizing influence" on the workplace? 248
Is "industrial education" now mostly a form of "baby-sitting and career preparation"? 251
Do "educated people" now know more about sports than history?
Is writing "of the body"? Is writing with computers "flirting with a radical separation of mind and body"? 257
Add your questions and comments...

6 comments:

Gary WedgewoodSeptember 12, 2022 at 12:57 PM
• What's the difference between a whole life and a long life? Is our culture confused about that? 220
My purpose here is only to notice that the ideal of a whole or a complete life, as expressed in Psalm 128 or in Tiresias’ foretelling of the death of Odysseus, now appears to have been replaced by the ideal merely of a long life. And I do not believe that these two ideals can be reconciled.
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (p. 220). Catapult. Kindle Edition.
Psalm 128:1-6 (NRSV)
1 Happy is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways.
2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
4 Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD.
5 The LORD bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
6 May you see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel!

I have been present with many people who were dying. Few of them begged for longer life, some begged for death to come quickly, most expressed their love for family and friends and appreciation of the care they were receiving, and many spent time in their final days joyfully recalling the experiences and stories of their life.
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Gary WedgewoodSeptember 12, 2022 at 12:57 PM
• What do you think of Wendell's remarks on the failures and futility of the civil rights, women's, and environmental movements? 229-30
It is readily evident, for example, that you can’t conduct a relationship with another person in terms of the rhetoric of the civil rights movement or the women’s movement – as useful as those rhetorics may initially have been to personal relationships. The same is true of the environment movement. The favorite adjective of this movement now seems to be ‘planetary.’ This word is used, properly enough, to refer to the interdependence of places, and to the recognition, which is desirable and growing, that no place on the earth can be completely healthy until all places are…The environment movement has not changed our parasitic relationship to nature. We have failed to produce new examples of good home and community economies, and we have nearly completed the destruction of the examples we once had.
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (p. 228-230). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

An opinion piece in the NY Times 9/12/22 states rhetorically “All Biden has to do now is change the way we live”. That is our dilemma. Many of know what needs to be done but are not sure how we can do our part in changing things locally, in our own homes. Should we get a hybrid car, electric car, or wait for hydrogen? Should we invest in solar panels? Should we dig up our yard and plant a garden after we fight the rules that forbid this now.
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Gary WedgewoodSeptember 12, 2022 at 12:59 PM
• Is writing "of the body"? Is writing with computers "flirting with a radical separation of mind and body"? 257
…in using computers writers are flirting with a radical separation of mind and body, the elimination of the work of the body from the work of the mind. The text on the computer screen, and the computer printout too, has a sterile, untouched, factorymade look, like that of a plastic whistle or a new car. The body does not do work like that.
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (p. 257). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

My Dad wrote his entire book on legal pads by hand. He said he could not write any other way, the thoughts just would not flow for him. I have worked on a book for many years now on my computer. It is hard for me to get into the flow of writing and I feel overwhelmed by the information I so easily collect for the book. I keep hoping someday I will dream the book in its entirety and it will flow out of my the next morning when I will type it out on my computer.

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AbbySeptember 12, 2022 at 4:33 PM
What's the difference between a whole life and a long life? Is our culture confused about that? 220

A whole life is one where you have made many mistakes as well as great memories, one where at the end you are truly at peace with the life you've lived and everything it entails. A long life is one according to medical professionals, one where the individual is trying to slow the clock, simply "last" longer, whether that includes a quality experience or not.
I do think our culture is confused about it, it's obvious, especially in the media, the society is (or should be) obsessed with remaining young and not looking your age, as if the goal is to live forever. I really enjoy Berry's perspective regarding his friend Lily and the respect in which he speaks about her life. He knew her personally for years and years, ups and downs, and he said that in the end she had accepted her circumstances with grace and comfort even. It was later revealed that her doctor took her off of pain medicine before she passed in order to "get her on her feet again," so when she passed she was in immense pain. This is Berry's problem with the current medical industry, always trying to squeeze out more time regardless of the patients quality of life.
Ideally, we would convert our thinking to that of cherishing life in all aspects rather than hack it for more time. This passage has definitely made my brain think differently about my own perspective about life and how I think about and handle things.
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Matt DelfendahlSeptember 13, 2022 at 3:25 PM
Have you achieved "ripeness"? Do you have any role-models who have? 223

I would say that I have not achieved "ripeness" in my life. There are many things and places and people in this world that I have yet to experience, and I would like to experience them before I come to my own 'ripe' conclusion on my life. I am not afraid of death in the sense that I know it is inevitable. I believe that our impending death is what makes life special and worth living because we know that none of this is permanent, we will die one day.

I obtained this outlook after reflecting on the death of my grandfather in April of this year, for he was a man who had obtained ripeness. He had live to 79, had seen much of the world, experienced wars and conflicts, dealt with trauma, and loved more than anyone I had ever known. On his death bed, he was not scared or dismayed, he was curious. Curious to know what was beyond the veil. As far as I am concerned, he had lived the truest definition of a whole life that could ever be known
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NOV 26 MacA Part V-Taking Action. McK Paul Hawken, Rebecca Solnit...THANKSGIVING BREAK... The EXAM 2 AUDIO REVIEW (Parts 1 & 2) links have been posted... If you want to post an EARLY DRAFT of your final report BLOG POST (for use during your PRESENTATION and for constructive feedback), you need to SIGN UP to become an AUTHOR on our site. Scroll to near the bottom of this page to see blog post instructions, under "Final report blog post"... DEC 3 Last class. Exam 2 (NOTE: Exam 2 is not a "final exam," it is the exam covering material since the first exam)... DEC 6 Final blogpost (final draft) due (post earlier for constructive feedback)... 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

	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, September 9, 2022

Questions Sep 13

6 comments:

Peripatetics