Environmental Ethics: The Pendulum

Thursday, October 15, 2020

The Pendulum

Are you confident that "the pendulum will swing back the other way" against poverty, inequality, and injustice"? 85

I both agree and disagree with this sentiment. Yes, there will always be reactionary responses to political movements. We can see this in times like now. With the growing neo-fascist, Trump lead movement, there is a simultaneous radical left movement. When there is a rise of working class struggles, history has shown us that there is typically a rise in fascism as well. So, yes, there will always be pushes against a movement, but to frame it as a swinging pendulum is not exactly accurate either. The book explains the other side of the pendulum as equality.

The Trump administration has given way to a growing progressive movement. Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and the other supporters and politicians pushing for “radical” progressive policy could be considered the other side of the pendulum beginning to swing, but they didn’t succeed in the election. The DNC would not allow this, and intentionally propped Biden up to the top. So, the two sides of the pendulum we have are Trump and Biden. Trump, one of the most vile humans to live: a racist, sexist, billionaire. Biden, also a vile human: racist, pedophelic, dementia ridden (would like to clarify that the dementia does not make him vile, but I think we should take that into consideration if we are choosing a literal leader). I would also like to pose that having 30 people or 300 people ruling the entire country is still the same side. Obviously, a decrease in the people starving to death or living without basic needs is a good thing. I would never argue the opposite. But on either side of the pendulum, thousands of people are suffering because of the system that the two sides are running. The democratic party does not work to help us. It’s the same side, just arguably not as evil as the current president.

Weekly total: This essay, comment on Caroline's post, comment on Stuart's post

Overall points: 35 I think?

2 comments:

Kathryn McCanlessOctober 15, 2020 at 9:13 PM
I find myself often saying that the democratic and republican party are two sides of the same coin. If we truly wish to change this country, it will not be following the same formula that has made us arrive at this situation. While considered the 'lesser evil' party, Democrats can not be trusted to make any forward momentum without much pressure from the public by any means necessary.
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Kate PhillipsOctober 15, 2020 at 9:15 PM
I think you made a very good point with this post. I agree that when it comes to our two options right now being representing the side of the pendulum, there is not much of a difference. I hate that we have been put in a situation in which we just have to go with the lesser of two evils instead of actually being excited and hopeful for a new leader. I guess I would just say at this point we just have to push the pendulum to the other side instead of expecting it to swing.
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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

	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

Thursday, October 15, 2020

The Pendulum

2 comments:

Peripatetics