Environmental Ethics: Questions Sep 20

Friday, September 16, 2022

Questions Sep 20

WB -347 (Citizenship and Conscience… The Rise); Assign midterm report presentation topics (indicate your topic & date preference in comments under Midterm Report Presentations).

Do you care more for your household than your town, more for your town than your county (etc.), but not more for your country than for the world? How do you balance "doorstep and planet"? 296-7
What forms of civil disobedience do you support, or would you engage in? 298
Was Don Pratt a noble exemplar of virtuous protest? 300
Do too many activists expend themselves in the service of abstractions, and sacrifice themselves to politics? 302
Is the "American disease" uniquely American? 304
Is it obligatory for those who reject the violence (etc.) of our society to "take up some permanent dwelling place"... ? 306
Do you "experience hours when [you are] deeply happy and content"? 309 When, where, why, how...?
Do you agree that environmental destruction is not inevitable, except by "our submissiveness"? 311
Have you also noticed that the centers of large older towns are aesthetically superior to their "corporate outskirts"? 313 Do you agree with WB's analysis of why that is?
Can all of us "regardless of party... rise above the greed and contempt of our land's exploiters"? 316
Is Richard Dawkins superstitious about brains and the future" 318
After reducing minds to just two in the essay Two Minds, WB expands the kinds of knowledge in The Way of Ignorance to include many more. Do you agree? Is he being consistent?
Can we afford not to "work or think on a heroic scale" when confronting climate change etc.? 334
Is it fundamental to living well and loving life that we occasionally get "utterly outside the lives we live as usual"? 347
Post your concluding comments on WB, we'll begin Paul Hawken's Regeneration Thursday

6 comments:

AbbySeptember 19, 2022 at 2:31 PM
Do you "experience hours when [you are] deeply happy and content"? 309 When, where, why, how...?

The saying "time flies when you're having fun" is still applicable to me today. Often, when time passes faster than I think it should, I am with friends whether it be out at dinner or at home playing card games or giant Jenga. I think as I get older, the hours spent deeply happy and content are often with loved ones. Oddly enough, time also gets away from me when I do creative activities such as painting, tie-dyeing clothes, or making blankets. I feel like when we are proper humans, visiting with each other or developing new habits/skills, even just spending truly meaningful time with ourselves and nature (versus doom-scrolling on social media), and our time is genuinely being well spent, that is when we are deeply happy and content. Perspective is also a key player in this. Berry exemplifies this in how romantically he speaks about his farm. He is in a mindset of respect, admiration, and reception of all things beautiful. Doubtlessly, this allows him to spend hours in deep contentment because he allows himself to.
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Gary WedgewoodSeptember 20, 2022 at 8:33 AM
1. Do you care more for your household than your town, more for your town than your county (etc.), but not more for your country than for the world? How do you balance "doorstep and planet"? 296-7
But it begins at home. Its meanings come clearest, it is felt most intensely in one’s own house. The health, coherence, and meaning-fulness of one’s own household are the measure of the success of the government, and not the other way around. My devotion thins as it widens. I care more for my household than for the town of Port Royal, more for the town of Port Royal than for the County of Henry, more for the County of Henry than for the State of Kentucky, more for the State of Kentucky than for the United States of America. But I do not care more for the United States of America than for the world. I must attempt to care as much for the world as for my household. Those are the poles between which a competent morality would balance and mediate: the doorstep and the planet. The most meaningful dependence of my house is not on the U.S. government, but on the world, the earth. No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms.
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (pp. 296-297). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

It is a fairly recent phenomenon for people to have a concept of caring for the whole planet and not just their nation or “doorstep”. Pictures of the earth from space taken during the first trips to the moon seem to have changed the perspective of most people. Still, many people are myopic and only care about what is most immediately in front of them or what is in their self-interest to care about: “bread and butter issues” or nationalistic movements.
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Gary WedgewoodSeptember 20, 2022 at 8:35 AM
14. Is it fundamental to living well and loving life that we occasionally get "utterly outside the lives we live as usual"? 347
With the uproar of the water still in our ears, we had as we entered the house the sense of having been utterly outside the lives we live as usual.
Berry, Wendell. The World-Ending Fire (p. 347). Catapult. Kindle Edition.

WB’s account of his canoe trip on the Kentucky river was deeply moving for me. I spent many years exploring the Buffalo river in my Grumman canoe. At one point a retired school principle and myself made it our goal to canoe the Buffalo River from its headwaters near the Natchez Trace all the way to Perry county. We did achieve this goal. Along the way, we had one wild ride on the headwaters during flood stage in the spring where people sitting on the bank of the river just shook their heads as we went by…
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Matt DelfendahlSeptember 20, 2022 at 3:12 PM
Do you care more for your household than your town, more for your town than your county (etc.), but not more for your country than for the world? How do you balance "doorstep and planet"? 296-7

I do believe that I care more for my house than town, town than county, etc. etc. I think that is a natural response for most people, as you need to be aware of what is most impactful in your life. People are going to be most receptive to their environments in their life that most directly impact their life. However, the discrepancy for caring of the world more than the United states makes sense, in the sense that we are on one world. The world is equally dying for everyone and getting equally harmed by climate change. Some places obviously suffer worse consequences from this, which is even more a reason to care more for the world than the United States.

I think to balance "doorstep and planet" you need to first take care of your doorstep. As Wendell has spoke about many times, you need to plant your flag and work from there. So, I believe once a person has established their doorstep and began to improve that, they can begin to improve the world.
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Matt DelfendahlSeptember 20, 2022 at 3:19 PM
What forms of civil disobedience do you support, or would you engage in? 298

I agree very much with Wendell along the lines of civil disobedience. I believe civil disobedience is necessary in our society. There is too much prejudice, oppression, and unjust matters that need to be checked and protested. However, i do not believe doing so in a violent manner is correct. Once someone turns to violence I believe it becomes more of a revolt or revolution, which I very much believe also have their place, any American I feel cannot really deny that. Some injustices, like tyranny and dictatorship, do deserve to be revolted against and violence is probably necessary. There is a stark difference in that and civil disobedience in my own opinion. CD is defying wrongs in an imperfect system or institution, and to turn to violence could have the opposite effect of countermobilizing groups. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in nonviolent civil disobedience, and he fostered and created such amazing and necessary change for our country. His legacy and the legacy of CD still carry on today.
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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 16, 2022

Questions Sep 20

6 comments:

Peripatetics