Précis

Rambunctious Gardens by Emma Marris

Contributor: Taylor 

Emma Marris begins her essay by breaking some sad news to naïve conservationists fighting to preserve so-called “pristine” land. We have already “lost” good amount of nature, there is nothing pristine to preserve. She elaborates on the term “lost” in two ways, one being the fact that we literally destroyed things in nature and replaced it with our own structures, another meaning that we have somehow hidden nature from ourselves. The latter sense is much more abstract and possibly even more damaging than the first. We believe that nature is something that has not been tainted by human hands and therefore has to be sought out. According to Marris nature all around us, although the images do not always cater to the ingrained Western aesthetic of rare untouched beauty. “Nature is carefully managed national parks… It is also the birds in your backyard…or the jungle thick with plants labeled ‘invasive’ pests” (2). One thing that we must first come to realize about nature is that very few places can still be considered pristine. Instances of wildlife interacting within the human sphere such as bobcat families wandering into suburban areas are symbolic of this. “We are already running the whole Earth, whether we admit it or not. To run it consciously and effectively, we must…embrace it…and find room for the nuanced notion of a global, half-wild, rambunctious garden, tended by us” (2). In changing our ideas about what nature is, we can potentially reconstruct the way humans and creatures in nature interact.

            Marris begins chapter nine with her visit to Duwamish River, body of water rife with contaminants from the Part Two factory that held countless Boeing planes. Oil and chemicals from the planes eventually leaked into the soil, but Duwamish is not doomed to be wasteland. Marris focuses on a group called Superfund and their unique vision for the river. Instead of using a baseline to restore the river to the way it had looked in the 1850s or converting it into a park, they envision restructuring the landscape of Duwamish so there is a median between nature and the industrial man. The group collaborated with the Boeing Company to remove the contaminated sediment and a new habitat for salmon. It is projects such as this that greatly benefit both people and animals. The relationship Emma Marris describes here is what she calls an “eco-industrial vision” (134). Jobs are created for people, and animals have homes and better chances to populate. This relationship also entails “rewilding” the land to make it more suitable for animals and embracing all types of ecosystems. The goal is to make a natural haven of tired land.

            Marris later touches on the importance of connecting different landscapes in order to hold a more diverse collection of life forms. On its own, areas for preservation such as national parks are not big enough to sustain adequate populations of large animals. Issues of inbreeding and genetic problems are only a few examples of the devastation inadequate space causes. Marris states that highly protected areas like Yellowstone should be interwoven with other wild landscapes as corridors to create larger areas to sustain animals of varying sizes, populations, and ecosystems as well as ensure genetically healthy populations.  This is known as the species-area relationship (136). To further improve the quality of life for us all, conservationists propose extending these corridors so that it connects to not only national parks, but also other public lands, private lands, and even tribal lands. These areas ”should be...designed to achieve the goals agreed upon by interested parties while being sensitive to the needs of the people who now live or once lived on the sites in question ” (138). One issue we do run into however is the fact that humans can become very attached to their homelands. It is fairly complicated to get multiple parties to agree on what decisions are best for the landscapes when differing experiences and beliefs clash. In the aspect of expansion, Marris seems to prove Scruton’s theory of an oikophobic environmental community. This movement is pushing to connect landscapes on a regional level to encourage a holistic relationship between man and nature, yet it specifically takes into account the attachment individuals may feel about their particular environment.

            “If we fight to preserve only things that look like pristine wilderness, such as those places currently enclosed in national parks and similar refuges, our best efforts can only retard their destruction and delay the day we lose” (151). Although we will have to put an end to the fantasies of guarding remnants a golden wilderness, the change comes with positive outlook on the future of nature. Marris hopes that by putting an end to the notion of pristine nature humans can focus their attention toward mending the land that has already been touched. We only undermine the potential value of the wastelands we leave behind. By cutting lose our deeply engrained ideals we can ensure that we can create new and improved natural landscapes suitable for man and wildlife.

Questions:

·         Is a complete conversion to an eco-industrial existence possible?

·         How does Marris' outlook on the future of the environment challenge or complement past author's opinions?

·         In what ways would this movement be problematic?

Emma Marris, “Weeding the Jungle”

Contributor: David

            Marris in her essay entitled “Weeding the Jungle” gives a very different and contemporary view of nature in the context of the 21^st century.  She starts off the piece by saying that we as humans are losing nature in that much of nature has been destroyed in a physical sense.  But she also says that this is not the only way that we have lost nature.  Marris brings up the argument that we hide nature from ourselves because we dream of the idea of a pristine wilderness.  Marris believes that this dream is unrealistic and that there is no longer any such thing as pristine wilderness because humans have altered the environment so much that there isn’t anything left to be pristine and she give she concludes that there is no going back.  But despite this, Marris says that we must embrace our role and not look for pristine nature, but rather seek out the rambunctious garden.  The rambunctious garden is the idea that nature is everywhere and that we just have to look for it.  It doesn’t have to be huge expanses of untouched nature or large fields or forests.  It can be simple things that we can find in our everyday societies such as strips of land attached to rest stops.  She then argues that these gardens create more nature as time goes on and that this model of how to help rebuild nature is more effective than desperately trying to protect and save the nature that we have left.  The then speaks about how conservationists are starting to be more open in their definitions of what nature is and challenge the idea of pristine nature.  She says that this is effective because it gives conservationists more tools to use and helps them see that nature actually is everywhere.

            But Marris then goes into why this new change of ideas away from pristine nature can be so difficult.  She says that the main reason that the movement away from this wilderness dream is that it is too woven into society.  She then says that conservationists are trying too hard to restore nature to what is used to be and that we humans are responsible for this sickness that nature is experiencing.  Marris then introduces us to the ideas of baselines.  She says that these are goals that were basically created from how things were in the past.  In the context of conservation efforts, baselines basically mean that the goal of conservationists is to restore nature to the way that it was many centuries ago, ideally.  But Marris point out 4 issues that arise in creating baselines as the end goals.  First, she says that restoring nature to a set baseline still wouldn’t be considered to be pristine because there were still others who came before and altered the landscape by their own means.  Second, she says that ecosystems are always changing, regardless of human interaction.  But Marris says that this is hard for us to understand because humans have a limited grasp of timescales.  Third, we don’t always know what the places looked like in their pristine form, so conservationists would be trying to recreate something that they would not have any reliable knowledge of.  Lastly, she says that it is hard to form a reliable baseline because humans in one way or another have touched every ecosystem already.  Because we have already changed the entire planet, she states that it is getting more difficult to undo all of the changes that humanity has made on the earth.  Later on, after she gives a few of her own personal stories of her nature conservationist experiences, she states that turning back the clock on nature is not realistic and many conservationists know this.  After a few more stories, she concludes by saying that there is not one large solution for finding the “cure” for our sickened state of nature and says that creating many different smaller goals and incorporating them into each other is the best method of conservation for the future.

            Marris, in the end, seems to be more of a conservationists who is concerned with accepting nature as what it is now as opposed to how is was, and this affects the ways that conservationists attempts can be carried out.  But do you think that Marris is just simply trying to give hope in our modern society in regards to nature as opposed to actually doing anything to prevent the spread of society?  Is this just a justification to make mankind feel more connected with nature in a society where nature is “all around us” by her words? Is the idea of pristine nature really dead? And is Marris not looking at the big picture in regards to conservation efforts?

Roger Scruton’s “Heimat and Habitat”

Contributor: Katie

            Scruton begins by addressing the human motive to sacrifice, which he argues is rooted in both evolutionary and rational causes.  Some behaviors we find in ourselves—fear of the dark, revulsion toward incest—are innate.  Others—guilt, shame, love of beauty—come from our ability to reason (214).  It is through this joined influence that Scruton believes we must find a motive to correct our tendencies to “inflict the costs of our pursuits on those who have not incurred them” (214).  This motive, he argues, is oikophilia, or the love of home.  Scruton relates this concept to what he calls the conservative approach to environmental problems.  Three important ideas for him come from Edmond Burke, and they are “respect for the dead, the ‘little platoon,’ and the voice of tradition” (215).  Respect for the dead, for Scruton, comes from Burke’s idea of society as “an association of the dead, the living, and the unborn” (215).  By respecting and loving those who have come before us, we also develop a love for those who do not yet live.  This “transgenerational view of society” causes us to consider the effects of our actions on the next generation.  By understanding our role in relation to those generations who came before us, we effectively view the plight of the next generation as our own.  Our concern for them stems from our concern for ourselves.  The idea of the “little platoon” is that a society can only be truly built from the bottom up.  Top-down government, he argues, “breeds irresponsible individuals” and reactive refusal of citizens to act for themselves (218).  In starting from the bottom, citizens foster affection and loyalty, and they take responsibility for their environment.  He remarks at the power of the “volunteer spirit” in America, where communities get together to clean up parks, adopt highways, etc.  Traditions, for Scruton, are a form of knowledge—but not of knowledge that or knowledge how.  Traditions are knowing what to do.  Scruton gives the example of good manners—they cannot be taught through explanation but only by exposure, “yet the person who has not acquired these things is rightly described as ignorant” (221).  These three ideas, for Scruton “form the primary motives on which enduring societies are built, and it is in terms of them that any believable solution to problems of environmental management must be expressed” (221).

            Scruton goes on to discuss oikophilia, and he argues that conceptions of community and attachment come before one’s ability to make conscious decisions (like the decision to enter into a social contract), and thus the state and the family both also precede the individual.  He writes at length about attachment—oikophilia means not only attachment to one’s home but to the people in it and the surrounding environment.  Scruton demonstrates the Western love of home by listing works that illustrate man’s natural oikophilia.  He then considers this in relation to philosophy.  He argues that humans appear to live in two worlds—one in which everything is explained through scientific categorization and causality, and another that we seek not to explain but to belong within (228).  Science compels us to view one another as “by-products of processes that we do not control,” and we are tempted by these ideas, because they “simplify our commitments, void the world of responsibility, and enable us to drift without guilt on the current of our present appetites” (231).  These tendencies, though, limit our ability to orient ourselves toward the natural world and find within it our spiritual niche, “decked out by the personality and freedom of the one who occupies it” (231). 

            This argument is reminiscent of (and even considers) Heidegger, and his argument that technology has taken on a mind of its own, and as a result, everything, including nature and humans become resources and potential energy.  Scruton cites Heidegger’s concepts of dwelling and building as articulating the way in which humans are home-ish, fixing ourselves to the world and making it our own (233).  He addresses later on in the reading the modern belief that all problems can be solved through technology, as well.  He argues that oikophilia must win out against technophilia through “the cultivating of the love of beauty and the sense of piety” (246)

            Similar to his point about transgenerational views of society, Scruton explains that men yearn for a time “in which the dead and the unborn are also present” (234).  We have a “desire to live as an enduring consciousness among things that endure.”  This also seems to reflect some deep-ecological concept of holism – being home-ish, we desire a connection to the world, and by seeking this sort of time, we seek another connection to it.  It is this desire, Scruton argues, that helps to bring about a sense of stewardship – we understand that our present is someone else’s past, who does not yet exist.  Concerning the home, Scruton also suggests that it is something that lies in the past, and so it can be viewed as a place where one is not, but a place that is to be rediscovered.  We leave home but wander until we find a new home where we may fix ourselves.  Scruton cites more illustrations here of man’s ongoing search for home.

            Scruton’s most important point seems to be the suggestion that current leftist environmental groups neglect every one of these fundamental ideals, and this is why they are, as he argues, counterproductive (235).  They seek to make changes through top-down bureaucratic means.  They lack oikophilia, which Scruton argues is the only concept that makes territory a shared possession among a society of strangers.  It is an important concept, because it develops the idea of a homeland, to which very different people can belong and feel compelled to defend.  Oikophobia is a massive problem of leftist environmental movements—“political correctness,” he argues, is the “repudiation of rooted American values (248).  We are too ready to blame America for all that is wrong with the world.  He writes that it is tempting to view oikophobia as an “enlightened universalism against local chauvinism” (249).  It is the conservative environmental movement, Scruton argues, that promotes change while maintaining oikophilia – the most important belief if we are to see real care for the environment.

Questions:

Environmentalism seems to be a movement owned by liberal groups.  What might conservative groups do to show that it is not simply a liberal concern? 

In what ways is Scruton right/wrong that current environmental movements are oikophobic?  Can an environmental movement be as narrowly focused as concern for one’s homeland?

Can environmental change be feasibly enacted through “little platoons”?  Or does it necessitate top-down change?

 A Declaration of Sustainability by Paul Hawken

Contributor: Susanna 

            Paul Hawken’s essay on sustainability specifically outlines the issues with economic dealings between large corporations and the environment. He addresses corporations as “dominant institutions,” and as such they are the beast that must be tackled in the fight for sustainability. Hawken identifies a number of corporations--including Ben & Jerry’s, Body Shop, Patagonia, and more--which he calls “socially responsible,” particularly referring to their management of funds. Socially responsible corporations are defined by their involvement of disadvantaged persons, donations, and progressive natures. The most forward-thinking companies, those that are socially responsible, are incorporating social, ethical, and environmental sections into their official codes of conduct.

            One of the main problems that these companies face is providing for a growing population; furthermore, the “exponential breeding” of the human species overtakes the earth’s natural resources. Additionally, the wealth that is created by these large corporations is unevenly distributed, causing areas of extreme wealth that contrasts against larger areas of extreme poverty. After highlighting these issues, Hawken poses the question: “How does one honorably conduct business in the latter days of industrialism and the beginning of an ecological age?” Corporations, even if they are socially responsible, must find a method of maintaining success and profitability while avoiding abuse of the natural world. Hawken then makes a chilling statement, asserting that even if all large companies in the world were to become socially responsible and cease harming the natural world, the future would still be entirely unsustainable and intolerable. He suggests that the cause of this issue is the design of our sustainability efforts rather than the management of them. Sustainability is designed as a cause that people promote rather than something that is essential to human livelihood; Hawken refers to this method as a “fantasy.” Products that are environmentally friendly are now considered posh, and companies that meet these requirements experience significantly more profit. However, as Hawken points out, this is ironic for many reasons which go unnoticed, the main one being that the transportation of any good--regardless of whether it is organic or trendy--harms the environment.

            The solution to the unsustainable deterioration of the natural world by way of necessary business, according to Hawken, is to change the current system of commerce to which the world subscribes. This current system prevents corporations from being able to fully commit to their endeavors to protect the environment because they must exploit it to keep themselves afloat. As part of the system revision, each action must help the restorative effort. Father than commending each other for their good deeds, people must assume the roles of environmental advocates as if it were second nature to them. Humans must create a system of commerce that attempts to protect and prolong human existence. 

            After concluding that a new system of sustainable commerce is necessary, Hawken lists eight purposes of the system. These purposes include but are not limited to: the reduction of energy and natural resource consumption, stable employment, improved standard of living, restoration of ecosystems, and aesthetics. From this point Hawken dives forward and lists twelve strategies of sustainability. Hawken is basically informing readers what to do to solve the issue of sustainability, and how to employ these concepts.

            One of Hawken’s most clearly defined and sensible strategies is number two: “Adjust price to reflect cost.” Hawken states that one of the main issues behind the current dysfunction of economies is the dishonest relationship between the market and the consumer. Sustainability relies on honesty, and people must be fully informed on what they are purchasing as well as its true value compared to its price. Hawken mentions cost in terms of the consumer’s purchase of goods, but also defines cost as the toll that production of goods takes on the environment. Each manufactured product purchased by a consumer was once part of a process that either waged war on the quality of air, land, or water. Almost all current methods of production are destructive in one way or another, and create waste and debt. If sustainability is the goal, society cannot produce goods by lying to consumers and destroying their surroundings.

            Another strategy outlined by Hawken is number five: “Change linear systems to cyclical ones.” Hawken illustrates a very clear picture of the flaws of linear industrial society compared to the cyclical structure of the environment. Linear production systems stifle sustainability by reaping benefit solely for the companies distributing the product. The waste harms the environment and consumers’ wallets are abused because the products are not worth the price paid for them. Cyclical production patterns are more successful because all parties benefit from them. There is no waste and no abuse of power. Hawken gives the example of a New York architect, Bill McDonough, who combined efforts with glass makers and the city of New York to create a cyclical production system. The windows are entirely energy efficient, and the factory producing the windows would create hundreds of jobs for unemployed persons. This exemplifies the all around benefits of imitating nature’s cyclical patterns.

            Hawken’s proposed methods of sustainability seem to answer the questions posed by authors such as Bacon and Leopold. The method with which Hawken presents his ideas mimic the layout of Bacon’s work in that it is organized, systematic, and concrete rather than abstract. Hawken suggests actual strategies to increase sustainability just as Bacon listed his intended experimental processes. Where Bacon and Hawken differ, however, is their moral concepts. Bacon abandoned all things abstract, especially concepts of morality and ethics, whereas several of Hawken’s strategies of sustainability are abstract suggestions like respecting the human spirit. Leopold’s Land Ethic aligns with this aspect of Hawken’s work, especially in his discussion of the fast-paced change that humans thrive on and its affect on nature. Although Hawken supports change, he is wary of the carelessness with which humans progress and would agree with Leopold’s call for a new moral standard.

Questions:

Is Hawken’s proposal of an entirely new system of commerce feasible?

How difficult would it be to employ Hawken’s strategies?

Have people furthered society’s shift away from a sustainable future by popularizing sustainability as a movement rather than a necessity?

Does Hawken’s presentation of ideas (similar to Bacon’s work) legitimize his work or are we too easily impressed by well-written, organized thought? 

The Ecuadorian Constitution

Contributor: Mary

The Ecuadorian Constitution sets out for complete equality among men, women, and the environment. They want to promote the rights of nature in order to preserve it for future generations. In the preamble they state that they should “celebrate nature, Pacha Mama (Mother Earth), of which we are a part and which is vital to our existence’. They state that they are a part of the environment and that without it they could not exist and for this reason they must give it rights. Ecuador was the first nation to include environmental rights in its constitution.

In title two, chapter seven they go more in depth on the rights of nature. Since nature reproduces and supports life, it has a right to be protected. This protection must become a duty of the government. The government needs to encourage society to help protect nature. Not only does nature need to be protected, but it also needs to be restored. Where there has been permanent damage to the environment, the government must decide and enforce the proper and necessary measure that will eliminate or help better the consequences that have taken place. This means that the government can apply laws that will restrict and prevent the extinction of a species, because these species are a part of the ecosystem. The government must also makes laws the forbid the introduction of new species into an environment. All of these measures will be regulated by the government.

            Title VII chapter two, explains the use of natural resources and the importance of biodiversity. Overall the government must create a sustainable model that protects diversity among people and the environment for future generations. The government will enforce laws to protect the environment and biodiversity and it will also help its citizens in planning actions that will help the environment. If there is ever a grey area in which it is hard to define laws, the laws will always lean towards what is favorable for nature. Any one who violates efforts to maintain ecosystems will have to suffer penalties as well as being obliged to restore the ecosystem, There will be proceedings held to determine the punishments of people who damage the environment. There will be public servants who are to monitor the environment and makes sure everything is restored. Among this the state gives the right to any citizen to sue for environmental custody or for preventative measures. The government promises to enforce measures that will help control pollution as well as the use of natural resources. The state will also help control hazardous materials. They will also makes sure to conserve biodiversity and regulate certain areas that are meant to be protected. Not only is the state responsible for all of this, but before making any permanent decisions it must communicate with the public and make sure that these decisions are alright with them. If the majority of the public opposes to a certain act by the government a resolution will be found.

Section two speaks more specifically of biodiversity, The constitution states that conserving biodiversity is of public interest and therefore is a responsible for it. Genetically modified seeds are only allowed if they are approved by the President and National Assembly. There will be no granting of property rights to synthetics. The state will never try to amend this constitution in a way that will hurt the conservation of biodiversity.

Section three and four talk about ecosystems and natural resources. There will be ecological zoning and planning that complies with the entirety of the constitution. The system of protected areas will help promote all ecological systems. These areas will be protected by the states as well as the communities, and the state will provide funding to help with the financial stability of this project. Land deeds will no be given to people for the protected areas. The state will regulate the conservation of threatened ecosystems. No extraction of non renewable will be permitted in protected areas. Natural resources that have to be extracted belong to the state and not private companies. The state will use these in a limited manner and only in compliance with the environmental laws of the constitution.

            The next three sections are about soil, water, and the biosphere. Soil is a national priority and the state will reduce pollution, erosion and desertification of the soil. The state will also promote reforestation for places that have already undergone damage with soil. It will also help farmers have sustainable plans for the soil. The state is also responsible for the management of water resources. Any activity that can effect the quality of water will be regulated. The main purpose is to help ecosystems and humans.  The state will also look for energy efficient and clean energy practices. It will limit greenhouse gas emissions and conserve forests in order to decrease global warming.

This is the most practical step we have seen in class so far. Many of our readings have been theoretical, but in this constitution we see the implementation of actions that will help the environment. Although this is a real step towards change, do you believe that it can be implemented effectively? Do you think that the constitution is too vague to deliver the main purpose that it wants to?

            

The Earth First! Movement

Contributor: Rachel H

            This assignment focuses on the controversial Earth First! Movement. Activist Dave Foreman explains that the movement is “radical in style, positions, philosophy, and organization in order to be effective and to avoid the pitfalls of co-option and moderation” (Foreman 330). He begins with a description of the early American conservation movement, which at one time mainly included members of the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and the Wilderness Society, or the so-called “wealthy pillars of American society” (327). He explains that the environmental activists learned that it took “a suit and tie” as well as a more moderate opinion in order to gain support from members of Congress and industries, since many environmentalists knew that extremists were mostly ignored by the government. Yet even as environmentalists gained important positions in political offices, the author claims that “something seemed amiss… Conversation still lost out to industry” (328).

            This realization began with the government’s decision on RARE II (the second Roadless Area Review and Evaluation), which was a plan by the Forest Service to determine which National Forest lands should be protected. Out of sixty million undeveloped acres of National forests, the Department of Agriculture was recommending that only fifteen million of those stay protected (328). The program had lost to industries after these environmentalists had already compromised much of their agenda in order to gain support from politicians. It was after this major blow that Foreman recognized the major changes that occurred within the Environmentalist movement. Now working for conservation groups was more than just a volunteering job, it was now a profession. This change led to more disagreements over money and less focus on environmental issues by environmental groups.

            After receiving personal criticism for the RARE II decision and after the Sagebrush Rebellion, a move by Conservatives in Congress and ranchers to claim federal public lands to turn into private lands for industry, the author completely abandoned his old outlook on how the movement should run. He became frustrated with decisions made by the Reagan administration, claiming they “were more interested in corporate black ink than human lungs” (330). Upon their first meeting in Wyoming, the members of the movement outlined their objectives, including: “to state honestly the views held by many conservationists…to return some vigor, joy, and enthusiasm to the allegedly tired environmental movement…to fight, with uncompromising passion, for Mother Earth” (330). In sum, earth should be considered first, not humankind.

            In order to solve the major environmental problems, Foreman lists a number of solutions. Firstly, the group felt that big areas needed to be restored to more natural conditions, away from modern civilizations. Civilians should only live in big cities, leaving the rest of the land untouched. Secondly, new tactics were necessary including using civil disobedience, media stunts, and music. To those of the movement, “action is key” (331). “It’s time to get angry, to cry, to let rage flow at what the human cancer is doing to Mother Earth, to be uncompromising. For Earth First! it is all or nothing. Win or lose. No truce or cease fire. No surrender.” (331).

            In a preceding article, author Eugene Hargrove criticizes the movement and the movement’s major source of influence: a novel called the Monkey Wrench Gang which “recounts the adventures of three men and one woman filled with ‘healthy hatred’ who decide to sabotage construction projects which they find environmentally distasteful (333). Firstly, the author believes that an inherent danger exists since the movement is not based on any concrete philosophy, set of principles, or ideology. Secondly, while the movement claims to not condone illegal activities, the actions in the Monkey Wrench Gang are in fact criminal, which is equally dangerous to the United States. Thirdly, the author believes that no such plan to take away property from civilians will work, as Locke says “a man who destroys property declares  a state of war with society” (334). He concludes his article claiming that this use, or potential use, of terrorism is not necessary as he firmly believes that the environmental movement has been successful.

            Author Edward Abbey supports the Earth First! movement and attempts to discredit the claims made by Hargrove. He claims that the movement does not condone violent terrorist acts, just acts of peaceful civil disobedience. He defines terrorism as action with deadly violence that is used for a political purpose  and is action that is used against civilians and living things.  By this definition, the author claims that the government in fact conducts terrorism against creatures through habitat destruction. Abbey also argues that the novel the Monkey Wrench Gang is a work of fiction and, therefore, is not seen by the movement as a “program for action or a manifesto” (Abbey 335).

            In the final article, Dave Foreman attempts to clarify some perceived misconceptions about the movement. He emphasizes the importance of action arguing, “Too often, philosophers are rendered impotent by their ability to act without analyzing everything to an absurd detail. To act, to trust your instincts, to go with the flow of natural forces, is an underlying philosophy” (Foreman 335). He also disagrees with the claim that the environmental movement has been successful. He calls for more protection of land in order to preserve the wilderness.

Do you think that the solutions that Dave Foreman suggests would help solve the environmental problems we face?  If this movement were to succeed, would it be damaging and/or dangerous to mankind? 

Nature and Freedom: An Introduction to the Environmental Thought of Bernard Charbonneau

Contributor: Karissa 

The essay Nature and Freedom: An Introduction to the Environmental Thought of Bernard Charbonneau in Daniel Cerezuelle’s “Rethinking Nature” calls for yet another shift in our ideology towards ‘nature.’  Although we are accustomed to and perhaps tired of this kind of call to action, Cerezuelle undoubtedly makes a good case as to why a shift is necessary.

            For one, he clarifies the problem.  We set out in life with an “obsession with production and economic power” which directly conflicts with the human need for freedom (317).  To achieve this “economic progress,” we give up “personal freedom and responsibility” in exchange for “impersonal kinds of discipline” (317).  Charbonneau acknowledges that humans are social creatures (318), and therefore make systems of organization for themselves, but what is often overlooked is humanity’s very essential natural nature as well.  We are creatures who must (and do) “translate [our] values […], which are essentially spiritual, into the reality of this world” (322).  He states that humans need nature to experience its “otherness”, “their own freedom”, and “the richness of the world” (322).  We try to escape our role as natural beings—who live from and live in the natural world—by setting up “social constraints which are as impersonal as natural forces and even more difficult to resist, because their working takes place in the inner life of each of us—that is, they are interiorized” (318).  These systems that we set up are much like Heidegger’s concept of enframing in that they take on a power of their own, and we become subjugated to the system in the way we form our personal values.  This particular internalizing takes a toll on our freedom.  In denying that we are natural creatures and ascribing a merely utilitarian and impersonal value to nature, we give up a form of freedom as individuals.  The “collective power over nature has a price: it is paid for by political and economic power over the individual” (318).  The ideology is pervasive, and it is based on a mistaken concept of “indefinite development” which is both impossible and incentivizes more and more restrictions on personal freedom (322).  Such an ideology does not allow humans to actively acknowledge that “nothing on Earth is given for free” (318). 

            In attempting to fix our ecological problems, we have typically employed the very ideology that is at the root of those problems.  First of all, we tend to separate ‘nature’ from humans and from human culture, as Cronin also pointed out in “The Trouble With Wilderness.”  Our modern concept of “nature” as some sort of vacation spot or even a secluded resort to get away from problems is a product of modern exploitation of it (318).  “Cultivated and human-managed nature” is just as (or more) important to protect because it ensures nature is integrated into our lives and routines, “[defines] our daily relationship with nature,” and does not just “set aside” nature as a subject solely to exploit.  Because we do not fit agriculture into our consideration of nature, the agribusiness industry—the “over-technicization of the land” (324)—causes us to lose more than we gain.  There should be a more intense focus, according to Charbonneau and Cerezuelle, on “agriculitral policy” (325).  Modern ‘ecologism,’ too, has “a concern for a nature totally distinct from culture” which “suits perfectly our social organization, which excels in division of function and in zoning” (325).  Even the organic farming movement focuses on keeping things completely “natural” as if that is a possible and desirable distinction.  Pursuing protection of nature within industry means “protection of nature becomes a flourishing branch of the very society which destroys nature,” and since “industrial society protects itself,” it “allows the continuation of the process of destruction” (326).  Another problem with our dealings with ecological problems is our obsession with science and technology.  “Since human knowledge is limited, since our goals and behaviors are far from being reasonable—not to say rational—the growth of our technical power results in fatally disorganizing effects on both nature and society” (319).  This touches on how we increasingly try to calculate everything and how there are very definitive, crucial aspects of our lives as humans that are not calculable that we overlook as we increasingly commodify, count, and measure what is around us more and more ‘accurately.’  This kind of obsession with measurable ‘facts’ actually contributes to the disorganization and destruction of the landscape, societies, and cultures (319).  To make the matter worse, the rapidity and consistency of the changes we enact mean that we never have time to “direct our technology and enable us to put our values into practice” (320).  Again, this is similar to how enframing takes on a power of its own over us instead of vice versa.  Heidegger’s call for destining as a way to combat enframing is similar to Charbonneau’s call to take control of our systematic and purely social way of thinking.

            So what needs to be done?  Charbonneau calls for a balance between chaos and organization.  Basically, people give up excess freedoms in exchange for social (and related) organization units.  Total organization is when freedom is constricted. It is critical to acknowledge that to gain one kind of freedom, one must give up some other ’freedoms’ found in intensive organizing (321).  In fact, humans “must consciously decide to limit their powers in order to retain a delicate balance between freedom from nature and freedom in nature” because it is unavoidable that we “act against nature and rely on nature” (323).  The key is to find a balance and have human development under control.  Of course, this essentially is a call for “reorientation of our civilization” (328) to “set limits to scientific, technological, and industrial development” (328).  The systems we have in place are ultimately destructive to ourselves but disguise themselves in terms of ‘productivity’ and ‘progress’ and ‘growth.’  Specifically, an example of this new thought would be to rethink of agriculture as not just an economic or utilitarian or exploitative activity but as a human activity that “creates landscapes” (324) as well as cultures and meaning.

Why do we want to escape our dependence on nature? Are we just replacing it with a dependence on an economy?  What aversion do we have against interdependence?

Also, when Cerezuelle states that “Writing [the modern sentiment for nature’s] history amounts to searching out why some forms of progress in this civilization conflict with our essential needs” (317), what is meant here?  In what ways do needs of communities, individuals, women, the poor, the natural world, and others go unmet?

Heidegger: "The Question Concerning Technology"

Contributor: Ben

In the opening lines to Heidegger’s essay, Heidegger informs us that “Questioning builds a way” (3). His methodology is one which analyses language as a provider of insight into the relationship between human existence and the essence of technology. In a style reminiscent of Socrates and other ancient thinkers, Heidegger begins by discussing and rejecting the colloquial and common definition of technology as incomplete; he tells us “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological”(4). He tells us that this approach is rooted in the ancient view which stated that “the essence of a thing is considered to be what the thing is”(4). This view which emphasizes the material or the what of a thing leads us to think of technology as means to an end and as a human activity; he calls this the instrumental-anthropological definition of technology. On this understanding, technology is a tool; it is the collection of machines, instruments, and devices we invent, assemble, and utilize. It is something we control. Heidegger argues that this instrumental-anthropological view is correct in a trivial sense but it is also inherently incomplete and limited. Heidegger claims that the essence of technology is unaccounted for in the everyday understanding. Because of his beliefs about language and truth, Heidegger proposes that in order to encounter or discover the essence of technology we need to describe a technological mode of being. Through analysis of his native German language and ancient Greek, Heidegger arrives at the claim that the essence of technology has everything to do with revealing(12). This “revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology…. is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such”(14). Heidegger’s main point here is that the modern technologically influenced revealing understands all phenomena—animals, atoms, plants, people, etc—as nothing more than energy resources to be put as means to an end. Heidegger presents the Rhine and the trend of renaming personnel departments as ‘human resources’ as evidence for his claim. Heidegger wants to show that the technological mode of being reduces the natural beauty of the Rhine into a mere resource. This revealing has led us to think of conversations with new people as “networking opportunities” instead of a chance to enjoy the company of other beings. Heidegger’s claim is that our naïve-instrumental understanding of technology is blinding us to the actual case where technology builds a deeply reductive view of the world. Heidegger is arguing that this ugly,reductive view defines modernity as a way of being and understanding the world. He claims that this view follows once one realizes that mathematical or exact science “demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve” and requiring that “nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information”(). By showing that modern-technology’s mode of revealing only reveals beings as solely the measurable and the manipulatable, our thinking reduce beings into not-beings; existing things into data points and quantitative descriptions . I think Heidegger is trying to point us towards two ideas here. The first is that the kind of technological revealing either ignores or destroys the wonder and marvel in beings like the Rhine; and secondly that we are unmoved by loss. I think Heidegger would say that we respond to the loss of natural wonder by substituting a technological feeling like the drive for information and consumption of entertainment.

                However, it would be a misunderstanding of Heidegger to only think of technology as a negative and perverting thing. Heidegger himself states that “It [technology] is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth”(12). Heidegger recognizes the urgent danger that technology presents but he also understands that it is a stage in the unfolding of Being. This leads us to the question: is technological revealing is something humans are responsible for? Heidegger tells us that humankind is the active agent of technological revealing so we must have some part in the responsibility. Yet on the other hand, he says “Since man drives technology forward, he takes part in the ordering as a way of revealing. But the unconcealment itself, within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork”(18). In effort to shed more light on this point, we must dive into Heidegger’s own terminology; specifically his concept of Enframing. Enframing is that challenge which drives man to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve(19). He also describes it as “the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e, challenges him forth, to reveal the real….(20). Enframing is a particular ordaining of Destining.  Where Destining is “what first starts man upon a way of revealing”; it is an apriori transcendental aspect of our Being and thus, it is beyond our control. Technology then is a manner of the essential “swaying of being”; it is of Being’s own unfolding.

                Unsurprisingly Heidegger has more to say and Heidegger leads us farther down the rabbit hole as he develops his previous claim that technological thinking defines our age. To see this let us return to the previous example of the Rhine. Heidegger sees the old wooden bridge as an example of Poiesis. Poiesis is a process of gathering natural materials in a way where the anthropological purpose brings forth the essence of the materials and the natural environment it is in. But does this not suggest that technological thinking existed before our age? If so how can it be the defining trait of modernity? Heidegger answers this in his discussion of Poiesis. He is suggesting that our age is dominated by technological thinking and Enframing. Heidegger is arguing that Enframing “drives out every other possibility of revealing”, and that it blinds us from the concealing-unconcealing nature of knowledge and forces us into one reductive viewpoint. 

                                Now remember the discussion of our apathetic stance towards loss that Heidegger identifies. This happens because we are Enframed by technological thinking. We have forgotten the fourfold nature of causation. Importantly, one must not hear Heidegger’s words as calling for a radical abandonment of technological thinking or for environmental radicalism. Heidegger warns that we should neither “push on blindly with technology” nor “curse it as the work of the devil” (330). Heidegger is not advocating for an end to technology but rather a reconceptualization of  it and our interacting with it.

What do you think of Heidegger’s heavy reliance on linguistic analysis and appeal to definition? Is it a good way to get at the truth? Does Questioning build a way? What about concerns about Greek being a dead language? How can we know we are correct in our understanding of the language?

How is Heidegger’s understanding of truth as a process of revealing related or different from other author’s understanding of truth and nature? (Ex. Bacon, Nietzsche, Callicot, Aristotle, McKibben?

Is Heidegger’s analysis of modern science accurate? How could he account for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle or the indeterminability of quantum systems?

How might Heidegger’s suggestions alter our political policies toward nature and is it possible for modern society to accept and embrace them?

Prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra 

Contributor: Amro

            Throughout Nietzsche’s story called “Zarathustra’s Prologue”, it is about a man who seems to ask many questions that he tries to seek the answers to. The story starts off with Nietzsche telling the reading about Zarathustra who is a thirty year old man when he left his home to live in the mountains (p.121). While he was living in the mountains it seemed that he did a lot of reflection about himself and the human race.  He left the mountain to help his fellow man understand what is really going on in the world. While he was on his way to the nearest town, an old man who questioned Zarathustra encountered him (p.123). Zarathustra tells the old man that he loves man and that he brings men a gift (p. 123). The old man replies, “Give them nothing! Rather, take part of their load and help them to bear it” (p.123).  Well Zarathustra goes to the city to help his fellow human race only to be ridiculed and watch a tight roper fall to his death. As he goes back into the forest to bury his companion he realizes that all along he never needed dead companions but rather companions that were alive (p.136).

            That was a very broad synopsis of the story but now it is time to evaluate the main points of this story in the eyes of Nietzsche.  Zarathustra believing that God is dead (p. 124), he goes into town to teach people about the overman. The overman in Zarathustra’s eyes is “the meaning of earth” (p.125). The main argument of this reading is for humans recognize nature that is when humans will know true happiness. Until that mentality can be achieved then there is no hope in the human race. Zarathustra says, “Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is not the most dreadful thing” (p.125).  Nietzsche in this reading is saying that disbelief in God is not the biggest sin anymore but mistreating the Earth and the natural world is the biggest sin. We have learned throughout the semester from many thinkers who say that humans should take care of the Earth such as Abram and Singer. Even in Nietzsche’s time he realized the importance of nature and how humans even at his time were mistreating the Earth. To understand nature one must become nature in Nietzsche’s eyes. He says, “Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean” (p.125). This quote states that humans have to be one with nature. Humans cannot continue to harm nature and the environment because they can or for their own benefit. To achieve full happiness one must treat the Earth well and enjoy the pleasures that Earth provides. Without achieving this status, a human will forever be a beast who is no better than the apes of which he or she has evolved from. Nietzsche in this reading is saying that humans should not be the last man for the last man believes that human invented happiness (p.130).  With the death of the tight roper, Zarathustra takes the dead body into the forest to bury. He falls asleep and the next morning he wakes up and realizes something new. He realizes that he does not need to be one with his fellow human race to be one with nature but rather his soul needs to be one with nature and that is the only thing needed. He says, “An insight has come to me: companions I need, living ones-not dead companions and corpses whom I carry with myself wherever I want to” (p. 135).  Zarathustra realizes that the creator does not seek more bodies but rather he seeks people who bring new values to society (p.136). Nietzsche with this story is telling his audience that for a person to fully appreciate nature and the Earth one must come to that understanding by themselves. It cannot be forced upon other humans because many of those humans believe so deeply into their own beliefs that when they hear something new they are quick to reject it.

            The main two questions from this reading I ask are “Why is Nietzsche so abstract in the message he is trying to convey of the overman? Why is it so important for the reader to understand the concept of the overman?” and the second question is “Why is Nietzsche’s thought in Zarathustra so different than Beyond Good and Evil?”

“The Old and New Tablets” (excerpt from Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

Contributor: Arthur 

            The beginning of this reading defines Nietzsche’s criticizing view towards the “tablets of the old” which have confined our perception of virtue under the ordinances of past poets, philosophers, and writers. He calls for us to denote the teachings of the past for the present if of greater importance and has more to offer. The institutions of religion and government (democracy) have only contributed to what Nietzsche would define as his “archenemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that he created: constraint, statute, necessity, and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil”. The metaphor of gravity is used to describe the limitation of life that institutions of past time continually enforce upon humanity. Therefore he resists the teachings of past philosophers because it not only differs from the present world, because the world is constantly changing, but constrains us from the enjoyment of life and the further potential developments life has to offer. Rather than focusing on after life or the virtues that are prescribed in the teachings of past writers, he explains that we are creatures of flesh and blood so therefore those who wish to turn attention elsewhere are fundamentally opposed to life and the joy that can spring from living for the present day. I would say his ultimate motto is carpe diem.

            Nietzsche defies the teachings of old philosophers by explaining that the world is indeed full of vanity, but to harp on this notion and continue to explore and try to define the vanity of human beings brings nothing to the table but rather contributes to the vanity of idleness and mere weariness that Nietzsche criticizes. He says that “All is vanity. But eating and drinking well, O my brothers, is verily no vain art. Break, break the old tablets of the never gay”. While the notion of a vain society might have been considered “wisdom” then, Nietzsche finds no benefit in continuing this perceived notion. He calls for a new understanding of the world that does not focus on the filthy but rather the enjoyment found in life. In doing so we must “break the maxims of those who slander the world”.

            How do we break away from these maxims? Nietzsche tells us that an old tablet that we must break from is the idea that “whoever learns much will unlearn all violent desire”. The risk of continuing this perceived goal of learning is two-fold. The goal of the old tablet of learning takes away from the joy of creation along with contributing to the idleness, thus weariness, of man. “To gain knowledge is the joy of the lion-willed”. Nietzsche compares life and wisdom to that of dancing women: constantly changing, always seductive. To have a healthy attitude toward life and truth will allow us to enjoy our constantly changing nature. People who see truth as fixed have grown tired of life. “We already know what is good and just, and we have it too; woe to those who still seek here”.

            Nietzsche explains that all beings in nature have a will for power. We as humans should not look at this will for power as damnation like the teachings of the old but rather strength for humanity in terms of a means to a joyful end. There is a healthy will for power that differs from that of the barbaric and religious teachings of the old. The barbaric and Christian perception towards humanity’s will for power that is best defined by Aristotle in our earlier readings lacks trust in humanity and our god-given instincts. Rather we should embrace our lust for power and selfishness because it captures the essence of the human spirit and as long as it is a “healthy” lust for power we will find happiness in doing so.

            Nietzsche teaches us how to diverge from the teachings of the old tablets and focus on the healthy will to create and learn not only to find enjoyment of life but also to deter idleness and thus the potential “last man”. Nietzsche believes that once the era of the “last man” comes upon us no longer can we find enjoyment in life. The Last man is defined as the epitome of scientific and materialistic acquisition. The culture of the last man idolizes the already inherited surplus of wealth and power, thus constraining us in a state of weariness and contempt for life because happiness is found in creation and the healthy will for a new virtue or knowledge. This promotion for the will to create and learn, would you say has a very close correlation to the Baconian quest for knowledge and thus experimentation? Nietzsche calls for a healthy pursuit of knowledge and the will for power. As we have learned the Baconian method is not healthy in regards to the treatment of nature but would Nietzsche agree that it is healthy moreover because it serves for the lion-willed who seek knowledge and creation? Would you say that our modern day era of consumption is very close to a perfect example of Nietzsche’s description for the culture of the “last man”?

Selections from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

Contributor: Cecil

Synopsis

Nietzsche begins with a blatant critique of the intentions of every great philosopher. He asserts that the works of great philosophers are an “involuntary and unconscious memoir” of the author. Rather than viewing the works of philosophers as valiant and impartial attempts at uncovering “the truth,” Nietzsche believes that another motive explains these attempts. Instead of philosophizing because of a “drive to knowledge,” there is a drive to be master that serves as the father of philosophy. Essentially, philosophers have an underlying desire to represent their way as “the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all other drives.” A desire to master is sewn in the nature of man and just as it is evident elsewhere, it is also evident in philosophy. The main drive of philosophers is to utilize philosophy to assert their way as the ultimate way. Therefore, philosophy is wide open to incorrect interpretations. Furthermore, the fact that it aims more at justifying the philosopher’s own personal will to power, rather than an effectual truth, is problematic.

            Philosophy is often rooted in appeals to nature as the point of which the resulting expressed thought derives. Philosophers see in nature what they need to support their argument and use it accordingly. Nietzsche writes that philosophers “read the canon of [their] law in nature” even though they want something opposite and mocks how some, such as the Stoics, say they desire to live “according to nature (Nietzsche 205). Philosophy simply “creates the world in its own image (Nietzsche 206).  In this manner, morality is imposed on nature. Nature is thus being used as a tool to serve an agenda, as opposed to being considered for how it actually is.

Nietzsche offers, however, his own conception of nature as distinctly amoral and indifferent. Nietzsche describes nature as follows:

Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and  considerations, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power – how could you live according to this indifference?

Nature, as described here, has no relationship with morality or consciousness. How ludicrous it then seems for various philosophies to desire to want to live according to nature. Especially considering how most philosophy is concerned with living contrary to the description of nature that Nietzsche espouses.  In his critique, Nietzsche is only using Stoicism as an example. He intends for his critique to apply to all of philosophy. At a certain point – once philosophy starts believing itself – all philosophy becomes beholden to this problem.

            Next, Nietzsche developments more fully his will to power doctrine, which is the ambition and need to master that is the driving force of humans. The view of human life he develops is quite dark; in fact, it’s an almost nihilistic view of human morality. He describes life as fundamentally having a constant need for domination and exploitation. The will to power is the will of life, but the will to power naturally requires continual growing, seizing, and domination. The “incarnate will to power” is neither moral nor immoral, but it is natural.  The consequence of the will to power is that domination, suppression, and exploitation is “basic organic functions” (Nietzsche 259).

Previous Material/Value to the Course

Nietzsche’s view of nature, which is where we should direct our attention, contrasts strongly with our recent readings. On the one hand, he does view nature as quite strong and powerful, but the rest of his philosophy stands in contrast to the push we’ve seen since Rousseau.  He makes no considerations for nature as a nurturing or motherly entity. Nature, in this context, is cold, inconsiderate, and indifferent. While nature is without justice, I do not think Nietzsche would say it is unjust. It’s simply is so uncontrolled and indifferent that in its randomness it has no consideration for justice. Life mirrors nature in its amorality. Perhaps most problematic for our consideration is that Nietzsche asserts that life requires “domination, suppression, and exploitation.” We have clearly seen humanity do all three of these things to nature, yet environmental ethics seeks to eliminate, or at least severely curb, these actions. If both of these assertions about nature and humanity are taken at face value, then several problems become apparent. Humans must actually turn away from living “according to nature” in order to actually extend any moral considerations to nature. Any belief in environmental ethics would require this. Finally, the rhetoric Nietzsche uses to describe nature makes it abundantly clear that nature does not care about “us.” Nature may be very significant to us as humans, but we are insignificant to nature. Nature extends no moral considerations to us. Perhaps Nietzsche’s assertion of the struggle for domination has some in common with anthropocentric hierarchies in Aristotle and Bacon and the resulting consequences from those thought processes.

Questions

If Nietzsche is correct, would his conception of nature and humanity make any disregard for how we exploit nature justified?

In the selection, does Nietzsche present and identifiable distinction between nature and humanity? Is there a difference between them? They’re both described in dark and bleak terms but is Nietzsche showing a fundamental difference between the two or are the “basic organic functions of human life” – domination, suppression, and exploitation – contained within nature itself?

Do you believe Nietzsche? The selected reading is fairly small, but do you find any of this thoughts true and of value? If so, what?

Finally, if Nietzsche is correct, what would this mean for how we treat nature? Would it change anything?

"Preserving Wildness"

Wendell Berry

Contributor: Rachel S.

The author begins by detailing the two different arguments concerning the relationship between humanity and nature. Berry says that there is "bad talk on both sides", and believes that both opinions are too radical. The first extreme is that of being completely on the side of nature. Those who adhere to this believe that humans and nature are essentially the same, that human good and the good of nature are one and the same, and that nature should not really be used at all by humans. Though this description is far more radical than anything we've read yet, I believe it is similar in part to Rousseau and also to .. The second extreme is that humans have the right to conquer nature; the human world is entirely separated from the natural world, and the goal of everything is for the good of the human species. We have seen this opinion frequently, in Bacon, Locke, and Machiavelli. However, Berry does not ascribe to either of these views and instead sees the middle ground as the correct place. The rest of the reading is based upon his views of what this middle path is, and how humans can coexist with nature.

Berry then defines what he means by the middle of these extremes. He asserts that we live in a wilderness and that we are both dependent upon it and endangered by it. Since it both gives us life and is able to harm us, both of the extremes will not work. We have to find a way to live in harmony with the natural world; however, Berry says that this will never perfectly be achieved, but that it will remain the unfinished purpose of human life. Finally, humans cannot choose whether or not to use nature-- we cannot live without it. The real choice is how much we use and how we use it.

As with the two extremes, it is a fallacy to believe that the human and natural worlds are entirely separate. However, it is also a mistake to believe tat there is no difference between them. As humans, we are both domestic and wild creatures. We are drawn to participate in human society and are able to discipline ourselves and learn, yet we can only survive because we are also wild. Berry continues this theory of our species containing both domesticity and wildness. He says that we must never forget or neglect the wild nature of our species, because as with overused soil or domesticated animals, the results will be disastrous. He concludes this argument by saying that we cannot be divided against nature because we would then be divided from ourselves.

However, there are also large differences between our species and the rest of nature. This difference manifests itself in the difficulties we find in coexisting with nature. Storms, oceans, and wild animals can kill us, while the earth can be difficult to farm or game difficult to find. However, humans are also set apart from the natural world because we depend so much on our culture and because we have the capacity to mature and change in a way that no other species does. We have always been the most powerful of earth's creatures, and we can now do more damage than any natural phenomena or wild creature. In our natural state, we are not peace-loving and quiet creatures, as Rousseau would have us believe, but savage and bloodthirsty. A unique quality about humanity is its capacity for evil, but we prove ourselves by fighting against this for the moral good.

To live harmoniously with nature, we must measure our culture both by nature and by the diversity of other cultures. Our culture must be intrinsically tied with nature. Thus, we cannot only preserve nature by making wilderness preserves. We have to start using resources in a more utilitarian way by conserving them and using them to their full potential. For example, to conserve forests, we must begin to make wood products that last, rather than cheap ones that have to be replaced often. Berry likens this idea to the Shaker societies which took great pride in their craftsmanship. In this way our economy must reward the proper and conservative use of the wilderness.

We must begin to find a balance between living for ourselves and living for nature. When creating a society in any given place, Berry says that three questions must be asked: What is here? What will nature permit us to do here? What will nature help us to do here? In this way a culture is able to flourish and progress while continually respecting nature's wishes and bounds. Berry says that he does not argue for true selflessness; an earthworm only lives for itself, as does the bird that eats it. However, as humans, we have the ability to do far more for our own good than does any other species, and so we must learn to temper this.

Berry says that we should not focus on the problem of overpopulation, but rather on what the population itself is doing. A society may be able to support more people than live there, but if they are not living their lives to their full potential, they are rendered useless. We also need to start envisioning economically sound solutions to problems instead of overspending, or worse, remedying a problem that does not actually exist. Berry ends the narrative by envisioning a world where humans live in harmony with nature rather than in the monocultural landscape technology has created.

Questions for discussion:

Do you think that this "middle ground" is feasible? Politically, economically? Do you agree with Berry's views?

I think this is feasible, but only if the citizens as a whole commit themselves to a change. Politically, it might require a lot of legislature that some would rebel against, but opinions could also be changed by educating people. Economically, using less resources would actually be useful in the long run, though in the short term it might cause a loss in jobs of the myriad products made today that we don't really need. A commitment to using less and respecting the environment while still leaving room for human goals is ideal to me. We can't adhere to either extreme because our nature rebels against both.

What do you think of Berry's opinion that all men are monsters in their natural state? Do you agree with him or do you agree with Rousseau, who saw natural man as a peaceful and ape-like creature?

The Trouble With Wilderness – Cronon

Contributor: Landon

William Cronon’s piece, The Trouble With Wilderness, describes the struggle the understanding of wilderness in the era of intense technological and industrial growth and progression. Like many of the other readings were have analyzed this semester, Cronon states that, unfortunately there is very little untouched nature left in the world and that the “wilderness” of the frontier has been romanticized into a “pristine myth” of the natural world. Upper class elites, who have a very little understanding of why it would be almost impossible for the wilderness and urban industry to coexist, regard the natural world as a place to be preserved for their own enjoyment and exploration.

While it is very true that the preservation of nature is important, the ulterior motives of thrill seeking urbanites only further encroaches on the wilderness they want to save. A quote from the text that summarizes the overall message well is, “wilderness can hardly be the solution to our culture’s problematic relationship with the nonhuman world, for wilderness is itself a part of the problem.” As we look to the material to come, this passage can help up to understand how complex the issue of “true nature” is. Is there any “true nature” left in the world? Or is everything, including national parks, simply a western recreation of wilderness? Cronon uses a comparison between a tree growing in a garden and a tree growing in the wild to try and explain these questions. He notes that both should be regarded as wilderness even though, to people who are disconnected with the natural world, the tree is the wilderness holds much more mystique than the domesticated garden tree. It is this common conception of wilderness that Cronon, as well as many of the other environmentalism writers we have read, warns against. Forgetting that the wilderness and human industrial progression are inextricably linked will only further deteriorate the natural world because by regarding it as something “Other” or mysterious, people are enticed to explore and tame it.

The only way to truly attempt to preserve the nature we have, pristine or not, is to learn to understand and honor it. This sentiment is echoed in many of our previous readings such as Aristotle where the linkage and understanding between nature and civilization is stressed.

According to Cronon, “if wilderness can… start being as humane as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the world…” It is through this merger of the natural and urbanized worlds that people will finally be given an opportunity to

understand wilderness in a clearer more accurate light rather than through the lenses of the pristine myth and the mystery that it holds.

Only through this understanding will people truly ever be able to respect nature as a component of human life and the progression of civilization and in this way be motivated to protect it. Like our other readings have mentioned, humans have depended on, used and being influenced by nature since the very beginning of their existence. Despite the fact that in recent generations, as cities grow and technology advances, this connection has started to be forgotten, the link between our civilization and the natural world is still as important as ever and something we need to protect as such.

All Animals are Equal – Peter Singer

Contributor: Laura 

In “All Animals are Equal,” Singer argues for a further expansion of our moral domain to include the animal world. Anticipating those who might suggest that his views belittle the advances gained in greater equality among classes of human beings, Singer notes that in the past advocates of race and gender equality were similarly parodied, and suggests that we should be careful to remain open-minded and not to scoff at the unfamiliar. After all, the point of philosophy is to challenge what is given, to try to understand our cultural prejudices and arrive somewhere more thoughtful.

Anticipating those who would assume that when he speaks of equality Singer means equality of rights, he clarifies at the outset that by equality he means the “basic principle of equality,” by which he means “equality of consideration” (170). He makes clear that he is not attempting to eradicate difference: “equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and to different rights” (170).

Singer doubts that calls for equality can be made on the basis of factual equality, since individual differences are ubiquitous and equality is therefore always an ideational concept, or moral ideal (170). His suggestion is that sentience, or a being’s capacity for suffering and enjoyment, is the only defensible boundary for discrimination (172). Recognition of this new standard (as opposed to others such as intelligence or moral awareness) will mean significant lifestyle changes for human beings around the world. It requires that we stop preferring our own species over others (the habit of speciesism), which has immediate implications in the following three areas:

1) Meat-eating (172). There is no justification for the consumption of other sentient mammals once we recognize them as morally considerable – especially given that we can get essential nutrients elsewhere. Meat production practices cause unnecessary suffering for the sake of our own “trivial” interests. Singer analogizes between giving up meat-eating and giving up slavery.

2) Experimentation (172-173). Singer is against animal experimentation on the grounds that the lines we use to justify the distinctions between animals and higher-order mammals are arbitrary. It is simply not true that apes are less cognizant or intelligent than any human baby, or than many severely handicapped human beings, and yet we would not advocate experimentation on these vulnerable human groups.

3) Speciesism in contemporary philosophy (173-174). Contemporary philosophy is disingenuous when it comes to the boundaries it draws between species. It rests on a simple preference for our own that is morally arbitrary and fails to examine its own assumptions about the superiority of human beings over other forms of sentient life. Similarly we are bound by notions about human equality, which can only be grounded on what is universal and low (“pitched so low that no human lacks them,” 174), and yet the qualities that ground human equality also upset the notion of superiority over other beings.

 “Once we ask why it should be that all humans – including infants, mental defectives, psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, and the rest – have some kind of dignity or worth that no elephant, pig, or chimpanzee can ever achieve, we see that this question is as difficult to answer as our original request for some relevant fact that justifies the inequality of humans and other animals.” (174)

When we make hard and fast claims about human equality, this collapse of distinctions undermines the human-animal distinction, and fundamentally undermines our claims to superiority over other beings.

So, what do we do with this problem? Singer claims we have to go the way of expanding equality. Is this based on unexamined assumption/preference for equality? Or, maybe we need to learn to better articulate which kinds of equality we favor, and which we don’t?

Uncanny Goodness of Being Edible to Bears – James Hatley

Contributor: Laura 

Singer takes issue with our eating and using other beings; Hatley’s essay calls our attention to the implications of the fact that we are caught up in a web of nutritional relations: of eating and being eaten; we evolved in the midst of organic relations with other beings, and we should preserve that reality: it is valuable to preserve and recognize this ‘uncanny’ truth – that is at once very familiar to us, and a given, and yet is also very unsettling. We know that we eat other beings and that our bodies will eventually return to the “cycle of life” – and yet we still are made profoundly uncomfortable by wild animals, and are rather fastidious about keeping the corpses of our fellow human beings apart from these cycles of nutrition for as long as possible.

I. Intimate Incongruence: The Humane and the Inhumane in Predatory Space

Hatley notes that human beings create cushions of domestication around our communities, within which we try to eradicate the possibility of interference, victimization of human beings by animals and plants and even natural occurrences (14). At the same time, we preserve spaces where the predatory is preserved, where we “willingly enter into the risk of being killed and eaten by wild animals” (15). We experience this sort of risk as something good for ourselves, and Hatley wants to explore why this is the case.

He offers three definitions of the inhumane (16-17), and concludes that, somewhat surprisingly, the way in which we commonly understand “inhumane behavior” is that which human beings exert against each other. Wilderness is inhumane in the sense of being animalistic (bears are inhumane in that they will eat you) and amoral (bears are inhumane but not “guilty” for having eaten you) – but what is especially inhumane is murder and torture: humanity’s inhumanity against man.

II. Eating and Being Eaten: Food is not Merely a Means

In contrast to human-on-human inhumanity, the inhumanity of the wilderness is something else – and it is important, according to Hatley, not to impose our moral definition of the inhumane onto wild nature (nor, perhaps, to expect ourselves to behave altogether “humanely” towards all of nature). He uses the notion of eating and being eaten to make this argument more vividly. For Hatley, recognizing the fact that we eat other creatures and that they eat us is one way of recognizing the limits of the kind utilitarian approach that identifies nutrition with instrumentalism/exploitation. For Hatley, the fact that we need to eat means, in a sense, that we have an amoral relationship to nature, and vice-versa. We are “intractably enmeshed” in the flesh of other beings – their flesh is not simply a means for our own life, just as we are not merely flesh for theirs: “One does not use one’s food – one partakes of and in it” (18). 

To expect not to eat is to  introduce a strange kind of abstract moral idealism into our lives: as if we were the sort of beings who could survive without ingesting other life forms. “Eating makes goodness queasy... In a world shorn of ingestion, life itself would cease to exist.” Eating and being eaten is a basic condition of life, and especially of complex life (19). All of this serves to remind us that we are not abstract bodily moral beings – we are “somatically kindred” with the other beings of the natural world (20).

III. The Uncanny Gaze of Edibility

Again, the lines between different beings are blurred: we are dependent on other beings, and this is not an altogether comfortable relationship – because we want to survive as independent beings. It is uncanny, unfamiliar to think that our flesh is nutritive to bears, is in some ways very compatible with being a bear, just as our flesh originates also in our parents – and especially in our mothers.

We are stuck in these relationships, they define us: this is the plethoric: “before conscious assent could even be posed as an issue, let alone be given, one has already assented to the articulation fo every other living creatures flesh within one’s own– as well as one’s own flesh within that of every other living creature… very structure by which one can come to exist as a particular, living being.

IV. Making Human Sense of the Uncanny and Uncanny Sense of the Humane: The Goodness of the Carcass

Humane ethic is exceptional. We are capable of a different kind of reciprocity – we are capable of more than bears.

To approach the wilds with a sense of reverence, since they can remind us of our fleshiness, the plethoric character of our being, our deep naturalness.

Wilderness puts us in touch with plethoric; different modes of life; different from holism because it takes more account of the actual experience of human mortality and individuation.

  

Whereas Singer takes issue with our eating of animals because our moral concepts, especially that of equality, properly conceived/truth be told, bleed into the so-called “animal realm.” There is no reason not to extend basic considerability to other sentient beings – on the basis of their very sentience, they are owed inclusion in the moral sphere.

Hatley wants us to confront the boundary between the human/moral sphere and the world of wilderness, the world that is not domesticated; his suggestion is that out there among the grizzlies our moral categories really don’t make much sense. But this does not mean that the wild world is evil. On the contrary, it forces us to confront certain truths about the foundations of life: like the fact that we are caught up in hierarchies of nutrition of some sort, and that many animals do not care at all about our moral categories: there is a different sort of reciprocity that is owed to an animal than to a fellow human being. We can have patience for a bear, compassion even, and should not consider a wolf evil because it eats a deer. It is innocent, and dangerous. But it is also good in that it reminds us of our own naturalness and vulnerability, and the precariousness of life. Is this conclusion overly sentimental? 

Making Peace with Nature: Why Ecology Needs Feminism

Contributor: Erik

Hallen’s paper supports the value of using feminism to transform humanity’s modern understandings of and relationship with nature. Hallen introduces humanity’s understanding of nature by using descriptive phrasing such as the “convenience of man” and the “control of nature” (198). As such, our perceptions of the environment in dealings with science produce a similar domination-minded outlook to the natural world. Hallen argues that this perception of nature as a lifeless realm to be studied, quantified and ultimately altered to benefit humanity is rooted in the masculine frameworks of our society. Therefore, Hallen’s thesis supports the connections between modern ecological destruction and society’s masculine pyscho-sexual roots.

Hallen’s argument is rooted in an understanding that our society glorifies the domination of nature. This glorification is a reflection of inherent masculine traits of aggression and competition in our society. In contrast, feminism is characterized more by cooperation, intimate understanding and appreciation. As such, Hallen continues on by supporting the principles of deep ecology. What’s more she supports the capitulation of masculine frameworks of thought to effeminate views of nature to achieve an intimate understanding of the intrinsic unadulterated values of the environment.

Yet, in order to apply feminism to our society’s understanding of nature it is first necessary to state the central tenets that define modern feminism. First, men and women are equal in every way. Second, traditional qualities associated with women are equally valuable to those associated with men. Third, that traits associated with women such as cooperation are just as important in the public realm as those traits associated with men. The argument for the incorporation of feminist principles should begin with a more wholesome incorporation of women into science.

The modern scientific field is a prime model for the masculine basis of society and while women do actively participate in science they are disproportional segregated to more menial positions. Yet the root of the problem is not grounded in an insufficient number of women participating in science. Women do not just want to be equals in a masculine world but rather redefine the constructs of how the philosophy of science is grounded in traditionally masculine qualities to incorporate more feminine qualities. Qualities that define how science has been conducted since the 17^th century such as detachment and domination should be replaced with a more effeminate psychosexual approaches that emphasize the personal, emotional and intimate.

Hallen favors the adaptation of humanity’s exploitation of nature to a relational view of nature. This process requires the incorporation of feminine principles. Hallen argues that because the role of women in society is “more in touch with necessity” (204) and values holism and harmony, these traits are essential to reversing the prevalent qualities of science that value “reductionism, domination and linearity” (204). In conjunction, deep ecology understands the Earth as being deeply interconnected with humanity. Furthermore, Hallen believes this level of connection is more easily attainable through feminine qualities. Whereas, masculine qualities that are defined by detachment and separation may by threatened and emasculated by with connection with nature. Hallen describes the destruction of nature as being rooted in these detached empirical qualities to modern science.

Incorporating and adapting modern scientific approaches with feminine idealism would pacify humanity’s hostility and progressive erosion of the natural world. Furthermore, masculine understandings of nature create a classism based upon a hierarchy within the environment and organisms. This hierarchy is defined by evolutionary, competition based principles relating to survival of the fittest; rather than symbiotic relationships that result in mutual benefits between organisms. Masculine perspectives of nature and society therefore necessitate the existence of “other” (206) inferiors to validate the position of those among the upper echelons of the classist system. Feminism branches away from this conception of classism. Together, both deep ecology and feminism value an egalitarian classless perspective of humanity’s participation and dealings with nature. Feminism in particular welcomes rather than denigrates differences among people in society and organisms within nature. This framework of thought builds upon the importance of cooperation and participation in the evolutionary roots that emphasize necessity and survival in nature. Hallen then moves to her next stage of adapting ecology and feminism into science by discussing reciprocal intimacy between humanity and nature.

This new perspective of nature is to transcend all classical Baconian tenets of subduing nature. Rather than objectifying nature as lifeless and obedient, feminist thought sees nature as resourceful and abundant. In order to preserve these qualities in such a way as to balance the natural web of life within nature and in addition humanity’s own benefit, nature needs to be protected and appreciated for its complexity. This adaptation of perspectives transcends the Baconian anthropogenic approach that applies draconian and utilitarian uses of nature that eventually lead to ecological destruction. Yet these anthropocentric constructions of modern science originating in the 17^th century, capitalize on the aggregation of power through the process of scientific discovery and achievement. For example, Bacon discusses nature as a realm to be “tortured” (208) and Descartes declares nature dead (210) and animals as simply machines (210). These views tie directly into the masculine perspective of human superiority within the context of a natural hierarchy. This hierarchy and scientific thought bring power to a masculine defined society. Therefore, feminism is perceived as a threat and “deep antagonist” (210) to this understanding of nature. As such, anti-feminist sentiments further stimulate the violence and destruction of nature by the masculine perspective.

This transformative understanding of nature into the current context in which it is viewed by the populous is rooted in the scientific revolution of the 17^th century. Nature came to be seen as “dead, discrete particles” and as such the moral obligations of our influences on nature were dissolved. Moral introspection questioning humanity’s harmful impact on nature was nonexistent. Humanity has lost its fundamental communication with the earth. For example, the western world has become so comfortable with the utilization of technology in addressing its predicaments that it has become less accepting of natural processes including death. Humanity needs a fundamental reconstruction of its relationship and understanding of nature that pre-dates the Baconian scientific revolution. This perspective of nature should emulate aboriginal appreciations for the simple intrinsic values of nature. Hallen argues that the appreciation and cooperation that are inherent qualities of feminism can reverse humanity’s contemporary distorted views of nature. These adaptions are critical to the eventual salvation of the natural world from a masculine defined scientific culture.

The Hallen reading is a critical reevaluation of our readings of Bacon earlier in the course. While Bacon is seen as a progressive and a founder of contemporary science, his thoughts also paved the path for what has become an unprecedented disconnect and destruction of nature. Hallen’s feminist perspectives also coincide directly with Naess’s philosophy of deep ecology. For example both feminism and deep ecology “share a non-hierarchical, egalitarian perspective” (205). Yet, most importantly Hallen’s interpretations of modern objective-based science and disconnected over-exploitation of the natural world will likely continue to resonate as common themes in further future readings in the course.

Discussion Questions:

(1)   Solely having women present is not grounds enough for the adoption of feminist ideals. Even with the horizontal and vertical integration of women into contemporary science, what more is needed for there to be a feminist revolution or transformation in a masculine based society?

(2)   The bottom of page 210 describes a “deep antagonism to women which men cope with by being violent towards Nature” (210). Where does this antagonism derive and how does it impact humanity’s relationship with nature?

(3)   Hallen poses the possible return of society’s perspective and relationship to nature to emulate a pre-Baconian time. Is this endeavor practical and is this possible while remaining in the context of a masculine society?

(4)   While Feminism relishes particular qualities such as compassion, deep ecology calls for radical measures that aim to reduce human impact on nature so far as to advocate for the reduction of the human population. How can advances in modern healthcare and human longevity be justified in both the context of both Feminism and deep ecology?

Naess: The Shallow and the Deep Ecology Movement

Contributor: Laura

The author of our first reading is Arne Naess, a Norwegian thinker (1912-2009), who is responsible for coining the phrase “Deep Ecology.” In this reading, Naess articulates the principles of Deep Ecology as they are to be differentiated from so-called “Shallow Ecology.” According to Naess, the concerns of Shallow Ecologists are primarily utilitarian and anthropocentric: they are concerned with pollution and resource management (pp.230-231; there is an echo here of the Conservation v. Preservation debate of the 19^th Century), but ultimately these are grounded in concerns about human communities and are “shallow” because they do not acknowledge the deeper sources of ecological problems in modernity. According to Naess, “the deep movement deals with causes and large-scale effects” (230).  The bulk of the article is concerned with articulating the seven thematic principles and notions that unify the Deep Ecologists. Naess is explicit throughout that the Deep Ecology movement is radical in its goals, and seeks to contribute to a radical reorientation of human beings towards/within the natural world.

The Seven Principles:

1. Systematic Orientation – the idea that objects/beings in the world cannot be understood independently of their relationships with other such entities: each thing or being exists as an integrated part of a larger system (or “total domain”). This is another way of articulating the holism that we see in Leopold and it raises similar questions about the status of the “individual” (see 231, where Naess says that objects “lose their identity” when sought apart from relationships).  

2. Biospherical egalitarianism – in principle. Though Naess recognizes that a certain degree of exploitation is practically necessary (at least for the time-being), he posits that “the equal right to live and to blossom constitutes an evident and intuitively clear axiomatic value” (231). In future research and policy-creation, the well-being of all forms of life should be taken into account.

3. Principles of diversity and symbiosis – Diversity should be fostered, through the promotion of co-existence and cooperation. As an ecological principle, Naess recommends the slogan “live and let live,” and suggests that in nature predators exist in a harmonious relationship with their prey, as opposed to human beings who have often preferred to obliterate natural enemies (232).

4. Anti-class posture – Deep ecologists are opposed to all forms of oppression. As such, the principle of diversity cannot be used to sanction class diversity (i.e., you cannot say that a class system is important because it preserves a wider diversity of lifestyles: those of the rich and the poor).

5. Combatting pollution and depletion of the natural resources – Deep ecologists still promote these goals, but they need to be understood in the context of the other principles of deep ecology. 

6. Complexity, not complication – This seems to be Naess’ way of articulating a principle of conservative action/moderation. The thought seems to be that biological sciences have revealed the limits to comprehensive understanding and the extent of human ignorance. Naess embraces the notion of “integrated action,” and seems to advocate a pluralistic approach to ecological problem-solving that pays attention to various levels of analysis (and thus avoids fragmentation). 

7. Local autonomy and decentralization – Naess advocates local democratic decision-making and action in principle – the suggestion being that vulnerability of life forms is greater when decision-making occurs from afar. 

Conclusion: Naess concludes with a note about the epistemological grounds of Deep Ecology. Deep Ecology is not based on logic. Instead, it is inspired by the experience of the “ecological field-workers” – a subset of people who have “ecological insights”(233) which are “acknowledged implicitly to be good” (234).  The tenets of Deep Ecology are inherently normative and “ecophilosophical.” In other words, the principles of Deep Ecology are not value-free nor are they necessarily scientifically rigorous, but are meant to provide a practical base-line of agreement for practitioners.

Andrew McLaughlin: The Heart of Deep Ecology

McLaughlin provides us with an articulation of the eight-point platform that he hopes will serve to unite Deep Ecologists.

1. The well-being and flourishing of humans and non-human Life on Earth have value in themselves, intrinsic value, inherent value. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. Rejection of anthropocentrism, and advocacy of a more caring attitude towards all of nature.

2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. Advocates the expanding of wilderness, and suggests that we should think of diversity in a horizontal sense (rather than hierarchical, or in a way that favors “higher” species over “lower” ones).

3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. Anti-luxury principle, anti-consumerism. Prioritizing vital needs leads to “more enduring forms of happiness and joy” (236).

4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease in human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. Quality of life will improve with a decrease in the human population (236).

5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. Excessive destruction of wilderness and dependency on technology.

6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. 

7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. The modern consumption based way of life in the West is dissatisfying.

8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

Again: the goal here is not to provide a rock-solid philosophical foundation, but to articulate a baseline that Deep Ecologists can acknowledge and build upon. 

Discussion Questions:

What are some of the political implications of this outlook, and what would this kind of radical transformation demand of us? Deep Ecology seems incompatible with capitalism. As such, is it unrealistic? Does it require revolution?

What are the limits of biological egalitarianism, and what would such egalitarianism mean for the human individual? In America we have a hard time sustaining equal human rights: what is the likelihood of achieving broad-scale biological egalitarianism? Is there some middle ground here?

How much does philosophic integrity matter? How valuable is a political platform that is consciously open-ended and vague – or is this how all political platforms are? Is philosophical vagueness an invitation to ideological thinking and extremism? 

Leopold: The Land Ethic, ecological conscience, and individual responsibility for the health of the land

Contributor: Betsy 

Ethic

Ecological def:  limitation of freedom of action in the struggle for existence

Philosophical def: differentiation of social from anti-social conduct (p. 193)  

Summary/ Important Points:

I.                    Ethical criteria have been extended as our race has evolved

a.       First ethics: relation between individuals

b.      Next: relation between individual and society

II.                  Leopold argues that the natural third extension of our ethical criteria is to consider the relation between man and nature (land, animals, plants)

a.       Currently we consider them as property;“governed wholly by economic self-interest, just as social ethics were a century ago” (196)

III.               Leopold argues for sustainability: “a land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continue existence in a natural state” (194)

IV.               Trying to conquer nature is self defeating (194)

a.       See Diamond and McPhee below

V.                  “Obligations have to meaning without conscience”- we have no obligations to our land and its conservation without first considering it worthy of ethical consideration

VI.               We only value land in economic terms (plants for medicine, trees for wood, animals for milk, etc) but this excludes a lot of nature that we cannot use for our immediate gain (196)

a.       Need diversity to maintain the solidity of the pyramid

b.            Land is “a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals” (197)

c.             Circuit used to be more localized and the soil would take nutrients from animals that died in that area, but transportation has changed this process to a global scale

i.         Harkens back to discussion on introducing species to another part of the world as well as our talks on technology and how it has altered our world permanently

d.            Leopold summarizes this discussion as follows:

1)     Land is not merely soil

2)     Native plants and animals kept the energy circuit open; others may or may not

3)     Man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary changes, and have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen

b.            “the less violent the man-made changes, the greater the probability of successful readjustment in the pyramid” (198-9)

VII.             Two strains of thought when considering land:                               

a.             One regards land as soil and sees its function as a commodity or means for production

b.            The other regards land as a biota and sees its function as a system with many valuable

c.             Also draws the analogy out:                                                   

Man the conqueror vs. man the biotic citizen

Land the slave and servant vs. land the collective organism

Science the sharpener of his sword s. science the searchlight on his universe

VIII.          Obstacles to valuing the land, “philosophically”

a.       Men are separated from nature because of our technology and presence of middlemen in every sector

b.      Farmers who view the land as an adversary

IX.                Leopold calls people to stop thinking about land-use as an economic problem, but “examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (200)

X.                  Economics determines some land use decisions, but not all (200)

XI.                The land ethic is constantly evolving

   

Relates to Past Readings:

 Jared Diamond, The Ends of the World as We Know Them

-          Failure to take environment seriously has led to the collapse of many civilizations. It’s a force humans can’t control or overcome completely as evidenced by human populations who have died out.

-          Further reading : Collapse  by Jared Diamond is a longer work on these ideas

John McPhee, The Control of Nature, Cooling the Lava

-          The islanders on Heimaey fought to control the lava flow to protect their harbor à this arguably led to the “City Flow”, a separate flow that destroyed parts of the town

-          Raises questions about how far humans should interfere with nature

-          Relates to Leopold’s land ethic because he believes trying to conquer nature is self defeating… some would argue that the battle against the volcano was too costly and futile, others consider it a successful conquering of nature

Discussion Questions:

1.      Leopold states that the modern man is separated from the land because of middlemen who glean what we need from the land for us and we don’t ever have to interact with it to obtain food, for example. Technology further separates us from the land. So how should Leopold convince people to value the land and “love, respect and admire” it as he does?

Is there any way to counteract our need to technology and connect us to the land again?

Do we have to change our behaviors, turn away from some technology or grow our own produce to love the land as Leopold does?

2.      If “much higher education seems deliberately to avoid ecological concepts”, how should Leopold make the changes he wants to see in conservation education? He says it leaves a lot of ethics out of the curriculum, but how can value and ethics be taught? Do you think this would be feasible in a high school class setting?

3.      Our society constantly thinks in economic terms, so should we try and assign an economic value to nature and its systems? Is this a strategy that could help show people how much value water, land, and insects have? Is this even plausible?