Environmental Ethics: Ecotopia Final

Monday, November 19, 2018

Ecotopia Final

Quiz

1. Where does William stay during his time in Ecotopa?
2. Who is his main Ecotopian lover?
3. Why is the population of Ecotopia declining?
4. How has Will's attitude towards Ecotopia changed?
5. Where is William taken when he is "kidnapped?"
6. What is the Ecotopian attitude towards lumber/trees?

Discussion Questions

-What are some positive and negative aspects of Ecotopia?
-Do you think William is a likable character?
-What do you believe the point of "War games" is? What kind of "war games" can be found in today's society.
-What do you believe may have influenced Callenbach's ideas surrounding race, gender, and sexuality?
-Would you want to live in Ecotopia? Why or why not?

2 comments:

PhilNovember 23, 2018 at 6:04 PM
I definitely would not want to live in an ecotopia that still perpetuated racist and sexist practices and attitudes, and that engaged in barbaric death-sports. But I'd love to live in a place that had weaned off of mass consumerism and death by fossil fuels. Clearly, Ecotopia's still evolving - and in some ways we've evolved a bit since Callenbach's time.
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Nicole RondeauNovember 28, 2018 at 10:20 AM
There are positive aspects of Ecotopia that I believe are something to strive for - sustainable living practices, more females in leadership positions (equality), recycling, living with "nature" instead of in spite of it, etc. Many of the ideas that Callenbach was trying to portray in Ecotopia are very commendable. Although I did have some issues with aspects of Ecoptopia as well; and I think these mostly came about as a result of the time period in which this book was written. I believe some of the more ignorant views that came across in this book (i.e. issues relating to race, sexuality, and gender roles) I think are most likely because they were the norm in that time period.

I do always find it fascinating how things like this play out. I still can't tell if Ecotopia is a utopian or dystopian view of the future - I think a mix of both - but it is interesting to see how a lot of these environmental sustainability practices that Callenbach wrote about in the 70s came true.
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First things first--a proper education

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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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

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― 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/
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Monday, November 19, 2018

Ecotopia Final

2 comments:

Peripatetics