Do environmentalists unwittingly conspire against themselves? Curt White examines the effectiveness of environmental strategies in the new issue of Orion magazine, and wonders why, even when we are trying to aid the environment, we are not willing as individuals to leave the system that we know in our heart of hearts is the cause of our problems.
The idols of environmentalism
A new call to walk the talk 39
-
Posted 2:02 PM on 13 Mar 2007
by Erik Hoffner -
Posted in
Read More About
Erik Hoffner is the coordinator of the Orion Grassroots Network which supports the work of hundreds of grassroots groups and which connects the green leaders of tomorrow with good work today via the Grassroots Jobsource. Based in Massachusetts, he is also a freelance photographer.
Add a Comment
You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.
Comments
View as Flat
Gar Lipow Posted 6:35 am
13 Mar 2007
Ummm - I don't know what to say to that. But maybe I'm misunderstanding his point.
Permalink
SMLowry Posted 8:45 am
13 Mar 2007
I've had many conversations over the language we (activists) use and also over the proclivity of many nonprofits, and pretty much all of the bigger ones, to refuse to seriously challenge the system. It was okay to rail about corporate power and the bad guys but we still had to keep our "solutions" within the parameters of what the system would be comfortable with, i.e. the "rational", the "logical". There was no room for spirit or emotions, no room for a different way of perceiving nature or even the nature of change itself (except within Native organizations, of course), at least not in what was said and done publicly. We are in an incredibly tenuous situation and we need to be willing to take drastic actions at every level (I wrote this yesterday elsewhere, sorry for the repetition). We absolutely need to take "the collective risk of leaving this system entirely and ordering our societies differently", as White states. It's like we're sticking the tips of our toes into frigid water, looking around to see if anyone has actually put their whole foot in, and waiting for that to happen before doing it yourself, and so on. It's very difficult to get wet that way. You just have to take a deep breath and jump in.
Unlike getting wet, I believe in the case of lifestyle transformation, we need a few people to jump in with us or we'll likely drown. But once a few brave groups/extended families/whatever do it, more and more will follow very quickly, I believe, and at that point the system itself will be forced to change or face collapse. Happy thought, that.
Permalink
Shawn Posted 8:56 am
13 Mar 2007
I'd be interested to hear if I took the entirely wrong message from that and also other people's opinions.
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 10:05 am
13 Mar 2007
Just one comment. Those movements which have attacked Enlightenment thinking do not have such a good track record. Fascism, Stalinism, religious absolutism, witch-burning, etc. Those movements in the 60s and 70s which turned against Reason were unpleasant places to find yourself in.
A better approach is one that absorbs the best of our Enlightenment heritage and goes beyond it.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 10:08 am
13 Mar 2007
I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info. I am a proud liberal, who stands on the shoulders of giants.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 10:35 am
13 Mar 2007
And carbon taxes and trading schemes are the best way to combat climate change. If the author thinks we've been failing at getting our message out so far imagine what it would be if we start telling people that the whole "system" needs to be scrapped. That would doom environmentalism to permanent marginal status, at just the time we're making some progress.
J.S.
I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info. I am a proud liberal, who stands on the shoulders of giants.
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 2:16 pm
13 Mar 2007
This issue of disregarding reason comes up again and again. And I cannot relate to such people. I'm especially curious about why they are using the "the system" at all. How can they tolerate working with the publishing industry to get their message out? Shouldn't they just walk from door to door, sharing the Good News? Or perhaps just send out thought waves through the sub-cosmic ether?
So, someone despises the system. Then go off to your little utopia, like so many before you, and set an example for the rest of us to follow. We will see how happy you are and change your ways. If you fail, we will celebrate you courage to try a new way of living.
Oh... wait... your solution only works if everyone else goes along with it. Funny how that always happens to be the case. Communism would have succeeded, if only a larger area of the world were converted? The neocon fantasy of an absolute free market would work, if only the entired world adopted their methods? There would finally be peace, if only everyone were Christian? Or Muslim?
Several questions for the author of the article... if scientific reason, economics, and democratic consensus are not going to be employed to decide how natural resources are used or protected from use, WHO WILL DECIDE? Which Holy Text will guide us? Who will be the self-appointed leader? What information will you use for making your decisions?
And what will you do to the people who disagree with you? Yes, what will you do with those who happen to believe that there is a different and better way?
It is fine to criticize "the system". We all know it needs some tweeking. But before one goes on at length about an imaginary need to bring it down -- to severely reduce our use of reason, to get rid of our monetary systems, to put an end to the concept of "job" -- how about providing some specifics regarding what you want to replace it with?
Or are you just following the example of G. W. Bush? You know YOU are correct and if you just destroy the enemy everything will be okay? Or perhaps you are following the example of Adolph Hitler? Or every despot before, between, and after them?
Forward!
Permalink
JMG Posted 2:21 pm
13 Mar 2007
Oh, yeah, there was no rationality in public discourse until the economists arrived. And we all know that economists are not influenced by biases or self-interest, and they are always able to overcome their own preconceptions . . . .
It's good that you're a proud liberal who stands on the shoulders of giants. It would be even better if you didn't crap on them so much.
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 2:32 pm
13 Mar 2007
Seriously... it is very important to find means of putting a proper value on natural resources and minimize externalization of costs. It would also help to find reasonable means of reducing the gap between the poor and wealthy. I probably didn't use these terms correctly, but I hope you understand my crude attempt to communicate my view.
The only problem I have, I think, is that I find it difficult to believe we can assign a maximum value to a natural system and use that information to determine how important it is to preserve it. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, there are too many unknowns we don't know about as far as natural systems are concerned.
Forward!
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 3:04 pm
13 Mar 2007
"Rely not on the teacher, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. BUT AFTER OBSERVATION AND ANALYSIS, WHEN YOU FIND THAT ANYTHING AGREES WITH REASON AND IS CONDUCIVE TO THE GOOD AND THE BENEFIT OF ONE AND ALL, THEN ACCEPT IT AND LIVE UP TO IT [emphasis mine, of course]."
- the Buddha
OBSERVATION
ANALYSIS
REASON
LIVE
Yes... my latest interest of many, especially since Sam Harris pointed out the compatibility of Buddhist Philosophy --grounded in rationality -- and science. Contrast this with faith-based religion's rejection of science. Siddartha was one smart fellow and he did not expect anyone to accept his philosophy without conducting their own experiments... indeed, they are encouraged to question its validity.
Forward!
Permalink
Steven T Posted 11:29 pm
13 Mar 2007
The message I get from his Orion essay is that environmental destruction won't be stopped by half measures. Global warming is merely one symptom of a SYSTEM that is out of control. You can't "solve" global warming without dramatically changing that system. And it isn't likely for that to happen as long as we largely enable it in our daily activities.
That argument makes sense to me. However, it is easier to talk that walk. I understand White is a professor; if so, is he willing to give up such a comfy job to join a militant activist group?
I don't say that to pick on him. One way or another we all face the same kinds of choices. Do we do what is most convenient or what is most needed? Very often that involves career choices, but on more subtle levels it can also involve which lines of thinking we accept (or reject) on enviro blogs like this one.
Rationalism DOES have its limits. Just because someone explores them doesn't mean he or she is an escapist nutcase.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 11:35 pm
13 Mar 2007
"Face it, we all have a bit of the robber baron turned philanthropist in us. We're willing to be generous in order to "save the world" but not before we've insured our own survival in the reigning system."
Maybe that's too cynical, and doesn't apply so well to Gristers. But it's an interesting opinion that many ought to consider.
The Orion Grassroots Network is a meeting place for 1000+ great grassroots organizations working for conservation and more: http://www.orionsociety.org/ogn
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 12:13 am
14 Mar 2007
"Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs. We are willingly part of a world designed for the convenience of what Shakespeare called "the visible God": money. When I say we have jobs, I mean that we find in them our home, our sense of being grounded in the world, grounded in a vast social and economic order."
It is easy to criticize the current system, but what is the alternative? Everyone knows there are serious problems in the world, much due to a dysfunctional economy that fails to consider the full value of each element of the biosphere. But if 6 billion people are going to stop pursuing jobs -- and White does suggest he means this literally -- how will the new system be organized? How will we decide what is important and what is not important?
Forward!
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 12:22 am
14 Mar 2007
It is not going to happen. Most of the religions currently dominating our culture did not spread because people found value in them... they spread when "the system" found value in them and exploited them as a means consolidating power and controlling people. There is one glaring exception, but I will leave it for someone else to discuss.
Rather than wish for a massive shift in human thinking, environmentalists are better off gently restructuring what we already have to work with. And they can start by setting an example for everyone else to follow.
Forward!
Permalink
zacaroni Posted 1:21 am
14 Mar 2007
I'm curious: what is the one "glaring" exception?
"The idea of revolution coming from outer conditions, in the industrial field or the so-called reality of economic conditions, can never lead to a revolutionary step unless the transformation of soul, mind and will power has taken place." -Joseph Beuys
Permalink
geep Posted 1:42 am
14 Mar 2007
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 2:19 am
14 Mar 2007
It's just that jettisoning the Enlightenment heritage is never a good first step.
Emphasizing the complicity of individuals is not helpful. Why not emphasize the many actions that individuals can take?
Voluntary simplicity, raising one's own food, doing things with family/community, volunteer work. There are so many rewarding opportunities... One does need time, however, and to get that one has to get off the consumerist treadmill.
Ted Trainer, a professor in Australia, is an example of someone who's gone all the way.
The Way I Live
The Simpler Way (website)
Sharon Astyk also ties together simple living, global warming and peak oil: Getting Over the Cash and Carry Mentality.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
Permalink
SMLowry Posted 3:16 am
14 Mar 2007
Re: jobs, White promises a follow-up article addressing that issue in the next issue of Orion, so it will be interesting to read what his thoughts on this are. But so many jobs in this society are mind-numbing, cog-in-machine type jobs, the products of which add to our woes. Dealing with climate change and other problems will mean creating thousands if not millions of jobs doing things that desperately need to be done for human and Earth well-being.
And yeah, I would love to go off into my own little utopia but as there is no such thing I'm left to advocate for creating one out of present reality. And I know I don't have the answers but I also know that business-as-usual isn't working and will never work. We cannot solve our problems using the mindset of business-as-usual, it needs more than a bit of tweaking. Whether you're concerned primarily about the environment or human welfare, massive change is required.
One of the problems those of us who have struggled for years trying to be "visionary" face (and how many times have you heard, "what we need is a clear vision"?), is critics demanding that we somehow be able to define how everything will by, how every decision will be made, and what the exact results will be. But there is no way of painting a complete picture. The best one can do is start the process and carefully take it step by step, integrating concerns and needs as we go, dealing with the crap that will invariably come up as it comes up. As I see it, we need people to work within the system and to create alternatives at the same time. The way we live today is not the way it always was just as the worldview we have today is not the worldview that has always existed. There are things about how we see and understand the world today that are far better than the past, and there are ways that we see the world that are detrimental to our future wellbeing. It's time to move beyond where we are to bring the best of what we think and know forward to the next level that will have more dimensions that what we're dealing with now. We live in a living, dynamic universe, the Earth is a part of this, we are a part of this, not separate. Truthfully, my hope is in what we don't yet know about consciousness, about matter, about being human, about being alive.
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 3:30 am
14 Mar 2007
Also, he seems to take some of his ideas too incautiously to their logical conclusion, for example in the unfortunate reference to the Enlightenment. I entirely agree with Bart, that many of the ideas produced during the Enlightenment, especially those involving the correct understanding and regulation of authority, have been great blessings. And the age's most timeless writers have been the social critics and skeptics: Pierre Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire and the Encyclopedistes, and David Hume are at the top of my list.
On the other hand, the important Enlightenment idea of constitutionalism has been too often a clumsy and destructive instrument. And it seems that most critics of the Enlightenment have in mind the abuses attending the imposition of universal regulatory systems.
Is modern science such a system? Well, it can look like that, sometimes. White does not at all sound as though he is ready to discard the faculty of reason. And yet he makes some very interesting criticisms in the paragraph following the one in which the Enlightenment was mentioned:
<<
But many babies went out with the bath water of Christian dogma and superstition. One of those was morality. Even now, science can't say why we ought not to harm the environment except to say that we shouldn't be self-destructive. Another of these lost spiritual children was our very relation as human beings to the mystery of Being as such. As the philosopher G. W. Leibniz famously wondered, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" For St. Thomas Aquinas, this was the fundamental religious question. In the place of a relation to the world that was founded on this mystery, we have a relation that is objective and data driven. We no longer have a forest; we have "board feet." We no longer have a landscape, a world that is our own; we have "valuable natural resources."
>>
Just because some readers of Gristmill may find this all too mystical-seeming, and suspect that White shows himself to be dangerously irrational, does not make them right. All they are revealing is that they are unable to conduct a reasonable conversation, on matters the importance of which they narrow-mindedly -- even, dare I say it?, inhumanely -- deny, but which really are important, in spite of what they think.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
Stentor Posted 4:00 am
14 Mar 2007
It's not science's job to tell us why we ought not to harm the environment, or to answer any other moral question. That's the job of moral philosophy -- and there's a great deal of secular moral philosophy out there (done by laypeople and professionals). Christianity, on the other hand, has historically not just failed to provide a justification for environmental protection but has actively exhorted people not to care about the environment (though luckily this is changing now).
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 4:25 am
14 Mar 2007
Similarly, I agree, Christians do indeed have a lot to answer for, in countless matters, including their self-entitled sense that God wants them to exploit the Earth and its community of living creatures. Just to be clear, though, it is Christians who are at fault, especially those fallible and self-interested few who have found themselves in positions of authority as interpreters of God's will, and NOT Christianity per se.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 4:25 am
14 Mar 2007
Please share an example of Christian morality -- displaced by the enlightenment -- that helped preserve the natural world. To the contrary, science has clearly demonstrated how truly interconnected we are and how we are approaching the limits of our habitat. Morality now sits on a firm rational foundation.
And what has replaced our relationship to the world based on mystery? A recognition that we are very dependent on the natural world. A recognition that the more we learn, the more mystery there is just beyond the horizon. We no longer feel we have all of the answers recorded on a scroll. We are very aware of the fact that we must procede with caution. Some folks just have not recognized this.
Regarding forests now being "board feet" and the landscape being "valuable natural resources"... that so 19th and 20th century. Science has progressed beyond such utilitarian assessments. We now realize that the entire forest, the entire landscape, the entire biosphere is essential for our well-being. We now realize it is more than "board feet" and "resources". It is essential for our physical and psychological well being. We do not live outside nature. And as a result, we must be concerned aobut the physical and pschological well being of the organisms who live along side us. We are ALL traveling through life together, as single Being.
We know we should not destroy the biosphere, not because of religion or spirituality, but because of our rational scientific approach to learning about the natural world.
Forward!
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 4:31 am
14 Mar 2007
It is sloppy to keep up the habit of confusing all those terms so easily and thoughtlessly.
Also:
<<
We know we should not destroy the biosphere, not because of religion or spirituality, but because of our rational scientific approach to learning about the natural world.
>>
No, you do not know anything, if you are waiting for your scientific approach to teach you on this matter. You are just shifting the question. If you have a sense of what is right and what is wrong, aside from pure cynical robber-baronish self-interest, good, I am glad to know that. But I submit most respectfully that you did NOT get that from science.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 4:51 am
14 Mar 2007
"But many babies went out with the bath water of Christian dogma and superstition. One of those was morality."
This suggests to me that White feels Chrisianity was our source of morality. Or is he suggesting that Christians in general, having discarded dogma and superstition, have also discarded morality?
(2) I believe I have some sense of what is right and wrong... like not inflicting pain on other beings, not killing other people, not stealing, not lying. One might toss in not worshipping false gods as well. Whether it boils down to cynical robber-baronish self-interest, I do not know. I suppose it is a reflection of how I prefer to be treated, so is self-interest. If I did not acquire this sense of right and wrong through observation and reason -- or through evolution -- where did it come from?
P.S., Thank you for politely trying to reign in my reckless behavior.
Forward!
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 4:57 am
14 Mar 2007
You've probably recognized this already, but I'm not the most literate troll here. I might have my moments, but it is a struggle to understand you folks. I'm a simple man with simple views.
Now I'm off to create a new frankenplant. I shall ponder this issue while I work.
Forward!
Permalink
SMLowry Posted 7:20 am
14 Mar 2007
Science is important, no argument there. But science has its own world view and it's only been until fairly recently that science has begun to understand that there is no way we can separate ourselves from whatever it is we are studying or experimenting on or researching. Just our presence, just the fact that we ask a question and seek answers has an influence on what it is we are seeking. We are participants, always, never just observers. There is no such thing as "objective".
Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? That's a mixed bag for sure. Our genes, our environment, our spirit, our soul (dare I say that?). As every parent knows, babies are not born blank slates. Each individual has a unique personality, character, innate intelligence, and even (I believe) a way of seeing and being in the world. For instance, I always wanted to "change the world". I had conversations with my mother about it when I was five and six years old. Even then I saw things that made no sense about how we treat each other and nature and animals and I thought that if people just knew . . . whatever . . . the truth as I saw it in my five year old mind?, that they would wake up, like an ah-ha moment. I can clearly hear my mother saying to me, "Susan, people are not like that. They don't change just because you want them to. You're going to have to have broad shoulders if you want to believe that." My mother was honest with me even then. And she was right, too. But I persist. And my shoulders are broad, but not as broad as I'd like them to be, metaphorically speaking.
In my experience environmentalists don't have much problem with ethics but they do with metaphysics and spiritualityl. It's okay to talk about spirituality and consciousness privately, among ourselves, but don't do it publically, not if you want to increase constituents, not if you want "them" to donate money to your cause. There's a fear that being overtly spiritual will be confused with being religious and being religious with religious fundamentalism. And I do understand why this is so. Which is why I think the language we use is so important. If we can somehow add a sense of spirit and mystery to our language, along with the facts and science and logic, that would be a very good thing. Again, synthesis.
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 7:23 am
14 Mar 2007
I agree, dear WiscIdea, that White jumps around a lot, and comes across as more evocative than substantial. As SMLowry has already observed, the second part of the essay will hopefully make his mind a bit clearer to us.
Also, I can see how the bathwater sentence might be confusing. The way I interpret it is: The Enlightenment removed the license from tyrannically assertive Christians to tell people what to think and do. And that was a good and necessary thing, and I highly approve of it. (Actually the job is still not done, is it.)
That is the bathwater.
The baby, which has nothing really to do with the bathwater, is the sense that morality -- wherever it comes from, from whichever religious or ethical tradition -- counts. And it includes much more than just the avoidance of the violation of rights.
Your question, "If I did not ... where did it come from?," is interesting, and very difficult. To answer it well, would require much more knowledge about you. "Evolution," i.e., we all evolved with a sense of fairness, justice, empathy, compassion, altruism, and so forth, for a good adaptive reason, is a fine answer, for starters. But "observation and reason" do not quite make it.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
geep Posted 7:40 am
14 Mar 2007
In a religious context, what about birth control or even imposed sterilization? I think it is clear technology or 'science' is not going to save humanity, only man's will and ingenuity can prevent an inevitable end.
Permalink
geep Posted 7:50 am
14 Mar 2007
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 7:52 am
14 Mar 2007
The real problem, contrary to White's suggestion, might be that there is a lag between scientific discoveries and changes in general views. It looks, to me, like White is prepared to give up on science just as it reaches a point where it will usher in a new respect for nature. He prefers to return to an earlier era, an imaginary Golden Age, which was really no better than what we have now.
I suggest White consider finding ways of accelerating the transfer of new insight to the "ignorant masses", rather than returning to a time that never was. This will create the New Spirituality he desires so much. We might be at the edge of a new era. Why give up now?
Forward!
Permalink
geep Posted 8:01 am
14 Mar 2007
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 8:16 am
14 Mar 2007
For one thing, the numbers of secularists are dwarfed by the numbers of religious believers. Organized religion is powerful and influential.
It is only a matter of courtesy to learn something about the background of the people to whom you are directing your message. If you do not take the trouble, why should others listen to you?
The common arguments against religion are based on simplistic understandings. Christianity for example, has involved billions of people, multiple denominations, and more than a thousand years of history. Conflicts over politics and morality often were expressed in religious terms. How can you write off this history? Other religions have equally as rich a heritage.
If you look, you can find many examples of environmentalist thinking in the history of religions. One example, St. Francis. Or the recent message from the Vatican Pope calls energy alternatives a source of peace. (Disclaimer: I am not Catholic.)
One encouraging sign is the effort by religious environmentalists to find and reclaim the environmentalist threads within their traditions.
One strength of religion is that it can provide space for an alternative culture to commercialism.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 8:45 am
14 Mar 2007
For what it's worth, I don't think there ever will be. So if reducing materialism or consumerism is what we're pinning our hopes on, I think we're effed.
www.grist.org
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 8:47 am
14 Mar 2007
There was a very interesting On Point program on NPR last night, but I was able to listen to only a few minutes of it. I should see if it is available on the web.
Anyway...
The guest taught a course about religion -- I don't recall the specific nature of the course -- and was shocked by how little his students knew going into the course. So he design a test for measuring religious literacy covering most of the major religions.
One statistic stands out in my mind... only one in ten Americans can list all Ten Commandments! This is a Christian nation? The majority want a Christian government? There were similar statistics regarding other matters... large numbers of people who cannot name a single one of the Gospels in the New Testament or identify where Jesus was supposedly born.
People might say they are religious, but I wonder what they mean by this.
Bart is correct in that we should learn more about different religions, but it is hard to find the motivaton to do so when the adherents themselves do not make the effort.
An outsider can read volumes about a religion, but will never be permitted to correct -- for lack of a better term -- a certain religious person's view. Discussions of doctrine appear restricted to official members of the group, regardless of how much an outsider learns about a given religion. How does one have a dialogue under such circumstances?
Forward!
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 10:57 am
14 Mar 2007
Bart
Energy Bulletin
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 11:50 pm
14 Mar 2007
The story of usury is rather more complicated. It is declared sinful in the Hebrew Bible, because it was seen as an abuse of poor people who borrowed from rich people. In an agricultural, pre-capitalist society, that was apparently the only kind of money-lending; and the underlying ethic was that all Israelites should look out for one another. But in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, money-lending had a completely new, modern function, as rich people, or people with collateral, or anyway people showing promise that they could repay a loan, would borrow a lot of money to invest in a venture. So the Church's professional canon lawyers did their ingenious best in accommodating money-lending with interest, in spite of the biblical commandment against usury. Ironically, that often involved leaving banking in the hands of Jews, whose ancestors were the ones responsible for the anti-usury commandment in the first place.
I am solidly with all those who would like an introduction to the world religions to become a part of our standard liberal school curriculum. It ought always to have been a part of it, up there with math, two lab sciences (usually biology and chemistry), history both ancient and modern, literature, foreign languages (always pitifully neglected in the US), and music and the fine arts (just as neglected, but more prestigious), as belonging to the study of humanity, what sorts of things human beings are, and what sorts of things they do when they are being creative. But it has taken a while for the academic study of religion to emerge as its own discipline, independent of anthropology, history, world literature and art history.
The religion professor whom WiscIdea heard on NPR is Stephen Prothero. Here is the recent story on him in Newsweek, complete with the very easy 15-question multiple-choice quiz on religious subjects:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17439043/site/newsweek/
Jon Meacham, by the way, the new general editor of Newsweek, has a strong interest in religion, and has written a number of things on that subject from one angle or another. Newsweek now has a sidebar column attached to its front-loaded Periscope section, called Beliefwatch, dedicated to a religious subject. In the current issue, of March 19, the title is "Tree Hugger," and the subject is James Dobson's demand for the resignation or firing of the environmentalist Richard Cizik, something that has already been discussed in Gristmill.
WiscIdea, if you happen to meet ignorant, rude and bigoted Christians, well, that is not at all surprising (unfortunately), but that is no reason for you to be dissuaded from learning some things about religion, including biblical religion and Christianity, if you are so inclined.
SMLowry, thinking practically as ever, you appeal to the concept of "synthesis." I am pretty sure I know what you mean. But there is going to be a struggle to find acceptance for it, even though a well-regarded journal such as Orion runs essays, like that of Curtis White, that move in that direction.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
SMLowry Posted 1:27 am
15 Mar 2007
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 3:04 am
15 Mar 2007
I wish to communicate that my hostility toward religion is more specific than one might imagine based on my comments. When I refer to "religion", it is really shorthand for something like "faith in the validity of information revealed to a few special individuals and handed down through the ages via oral tradition and written texts, the original meaning of which could very well have been lost by now".
I have some respect for religion as a set of rules for governing one's PERSONAL life and voting behavior (one cannot exclude religion from politics). One might derive these rules from tradition, as described above, or from personal experience. However, there should be some skepticism if they are based soley on tradition. And one shouldn't be surprised if others resist the notion contructing an entire nation around ancient documents.
Spirituality, in my opinion, is a very different matter. It is much more personal... and perhaps rational. A person collects information about the world, but there are limits. At some point, intuition or instinct has to fill in the gaps. Deep down, we know there is more to the natural world than meets the eye and we find ways to incorporate that information into our decision-making process.
I find religion, as described above, standing in the way of improving the world... from a human and the planet's perspective.
I agree that spirituality can help save the world, but not because 6 billion people will suddenly "get it" and stop focusing on accumulating material wealth. It will happen because a few enlightened individuals, instead of preparing people for an afterlife, find means of motivating the masses to create a better life for all today, here and now. They should consider repairing or improving, not destroying the current system. If they also happen to persuade others to become more spiritual, fine. But I'm not sure it can be imposed from the outside. It appears to be more of a personal discovery.
I don't know where mysticism fits into this.
I actually consider myself spiritual, but there is no need to go into why I believe this.
Forward!
Permalink
imago Posted 2:53 am
26 Mar 2007
One of the aspects of the original essay that bothered me - which I haven't seen explicitly addressed here - is the apparent conflation of science and a passel of (related??, well maybe loosely) disciplines, entities, attitudes, etc. For me science is, at its core, a technique for discovering how the world/universe and its semi-infinite parts work: observation, hypothesis, experiment, and verification (or not).
To reject science (in this sense) is to reject a powerful way of knowing and understanding, and that's just foolish, seems to me.
Now, figuring out the boundaries of "science" in this sense is probably tricky (e.g. game theory? economics? other behaviors that involve variable human behavior? using mechanistic metaphors for ecological 'systems'?), but it certainly includes the verifiable understandings that evolve out of disciplines like chemistry, biology, physics, and the like. 'Science' is also generally distinguishable from engineering. There are no one-to-one relationships between being 'quantitative', being 'rational' and being 'scientific.'
I'd propose that, as a way of knowledge, science is about as pure and unassailable as a method/philosophy can be. If (even incomplete) truth is a worthy goal, then science is, in this sense 'moral'.
Something other than science seems to send us awry. And although science doesn't seem to be well designed to get at questions of value, it should be an invaluable tool if we can ever get those questions sorted out.
Bill Yake
Permalink