Environmental Ethics: Questions SEP 8

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Questions SEP 8

SEP 8 WB -218 (Two Minds... Faustian Economics)

With the 9/11 anniversary coming soon, what do you think it should have taught us about what WB calls the cultural landscape? Have we learned anything valuable from it?
WB offers strip mining as an example of disregard for the cultural landscape that leads directly to destruction of the physical landscape. What other examples come to mind? 178
COMMENT?: "The dominant faith of the world in our time is rationality." 179
WB distinguishes Rational Mind from Sympathetic Mind. 180ff. Does he mean Rationalist and Empiricist? Does he neglect to distinguish Rationalism from rationalism? Is Rationality as he characterizes it a caricature? (Or a description of Vulcans?)
Do the "optimists of scientific rationalism, which is scornful of limits" (183) sound more like the relatively marginal techno-utopians and trans-humanists who want to live forever?
Can we properly balance our "creatureliness" (184) with scientific inquisitiveness, and thus achieve a Rational AND Sympathetic Mind?
Do you see significant similarities between WB's worldview and Buddhism? 187
In light of the "implicit contradiction between tall buildings and airplances," how can we manage the contradiction, still fly, and still have tall buildings? 192
Is there no "good use of destructive power"? 193
Are rationality and spirituality compatible? 197
Is the idea of "nature preserves" anti-environmental? 198
Is WB a Luddite? Are country people generally? 201
"The idiocy of rural life" was not originated by The New Republic, but by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. " COMMENT?
COMMENT?: "The real names of global warming are 'waste' and 'greed'..." 207
COMMENT?: "The world-ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning in our furnaces and engines..."208
COMMENT?: "For those who reject heaven, hell is everywhere..." 211 (My comment: you coulda fooled me.)
What do you think of "community economy" and the "sharing of fate"? Is it socialism? 214

1 comment:

AbbySeptember 8, 2022 at 1:25 PM
COMMENT?: "The real names of global warming are 'waste' and 'greed'..." 207

I agree with Berry's statement that the real names of global warming are waste and greed. Waste primarily can be witnessed in industrial/commercial agriculture. Big agribusiness farms have large machines that require fossil fuels and are used daily. The food yielded is either sent to grocery stores or restaurants where if not consumed/bought within the shelf-life is thrown away- not given to soup kitchens or given away on the side of the road or preserved, but wasted, thrown away.
Greed is often connected with technological advancements rather than agribusiness (though some may say agribusiness farmers trying to grow as much as possible constantly represent a greed with natural resources and capacity of land they're using). Thinking of celebrities that have their own private jet that they use regularly, or even companies like Apple that come out with new products every year and as soon as a new product is released the previous version of the same product starts having bugs and not working properly forcing the consumer to buy a new product.
Then there are the hyper-rich that have the ability to buy island, visit space for fun, or host yacht parties every weekend that are greedy for status but the methods in which they're trying to achieve a higher status or detrimental to our environment.
In short, yes, greed and waste are the the reason for global warming. Greed to advance and to possess excess; waste of natural resources and opportunities to lift up those that need help in the community.
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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

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Questions SEP 8

1 comment:

Peripatetics