Being patronising will not help your (ahem!) "argument" — charleton

I replied over there.

I have no objection to anything you said in this post.

Stewards are a subspecies of managers (one with special responsibilities). The issue is "how should we act"; and the sooner every individual realizes his stewardship and his duty to minimize externalities, the better.

Here's some homework in case anyone's interested.

A land ethic expands the definition of “community” to include not only humans, but all of the other parts of the Earth, as well: soils, waters, plants, and animals, or what Leopold called “the land.”

https://www.aldoleopold.org/post/understanding-land-ethic/

Consider orthodox Western forestry. Too often it has assumed that activities that fall outside the realm of commercial fiber production are less important than those that fall inside that realm. Yet the latter are precisely the activities that rural women in many parts of Africa and India engage in on a daily basis. Failure to understand the importance of these activities often makes women “invisible”. This invisibility helps explains why many orthodox, Western foresters

literally do not see trees that are used as hedgerows or living fence poles; trees that provide materials for basketry, dyes, medicines, or decorations; trees that provide sites for honey barrels; trees that provide fodder; trees that have religious significance; trees that provide shade; or trees that provide human food.

Because many foresters literally do not see the enormous variety in the use of trees, they frequently do not see the vast number of species that are useful … that men and women may have very different uses for the same tree or may use different trees for different purposes. (Fairfax and Fortmann 1990: 268–9)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-environmental/

The ecocentric valuation perspective says that the vast majority of reasonable people--today's politicians, business leaders, educators, bureaucrats and other decision makers are in fact unreasonable or "unsound of thought and judgement...lacking sense...unsensible, extreme, insane...unable to listen to reason or acting according to lack of reason. This is because their policies of development, growth and progress are destroying the very basis for life on Earth.

http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/MosqFearfulNotion.html

Lessons wot I have learnt.

There is a prudential environmentalism, based on human needs and human desires that seems to me inadequate, because it is merely reactive to disaster - 'oh, perhaps we shouldn't be killing all the insects, because we need them for pollination of our crops.' - dependencies are discovered only when they are lost, because a radical (moral) separation is presumed between man and nature, even though it is 'scientifically' denied.

A critique of this enlightenment presumption, modified by the subsequent death of God, involves a rethinking of identity, a rethinking of the thinker as embedded rather than disembodied. This means that there is a close connection between environmental politics and identity politics. It's all the white man's fault as usual.

So there is an interplay of religion, identity, and science that needs to run to a depth of the human psyche that is beneath rationality at the same time as reaching beyond the psyche through rationality to deal with, ahem, the facts on the ground. Science likes to remind us that we are just aggressive monkeys at heart, but I would urge caution in taking the word of an aggressive monkey about things like that.

Love and respect come naturally to people who spend time in the wilderness. It's people who live in cities who may lack love due to nature-blindness. Their visual language is cars and buildings. Put them in a forest and they literally don't see what's before them. More exposure would correct that, but who wants hoards of city people roaming around putting lives in danger?

Love and respect come naturally to people who spend time in the wilderness. It's people who live in cities who may lack love due to nature-blindness. Their visual language is cars and buildings. Put them in a forest and they literally don't see what's before them. More exposure would correct that, but who wants hoards of city people roaming around putting lives in danger? — frank

There is some truth in this, but if it was so simple, farmers would behave differently than they do. Remember that it was the industrialisation of farming that fuelled the growth of the city and depopulation of the countryside as much as the reverse.

A farm is not the wilderness. The forest has to be completely leveled to grow a crop.

Well you contrast city dwellers with wilderness dwellers, it seems. I have no dispute about the psychological benefits to humans of living in the wilderness for a while. But as you say, the wilderness may not benefit. One of the questions that might be addressed, therefore is whether in addition to National Parks, where city folk can learn to love, we should not also have human-free spaces, where the wilderness can manage itself for itself, without having to be a resource for the human psyche.

Well you contrast city dwellers with wilderness dwellers, it seems. — unenlightened

It didn't even occur to me that you didn't realize that farms don't count as wilderness. If you spend a lot if time in the wilderness your senses adjust to it. When you come back out things like billboards and roads seem weird. If you go from the desert into Las Vegas its possible to have a visceral reaction of abhorrence to the excesses. You've adjusted to the sparseness of the desert. Shades of Dune. But farms are likewise jarring to wilderness senses. Ciity people are just the furthest away from wildness. Farmers who hunt know about the wild.

we should not also have human-free spaces, where — unenlightened

We do in the US just because some parks are so huge. Isaac Asimov floated the idea of humans going underground to leave the surface entirely wild. I love that idea, but part of me needs the wild.

part of me needs the wild. — frank

Me too, but another part needs the dentist. I do know the difference between farm and forest, I'm just struggling to work out what your point is in relation to eco philosophy.

I'm just struggling to work out what your point is in relation to eco-philosophy — unenlightened

Ah. That physical separation is a factor in emotional disconnection. One doesn't love and respect what one can't even see.

I really don't know what you are trying to say. I lived for 5 years in the Pyrenees in a community in some isolation and surrounded by mountain and forest. When you have to slaughter the pig that you have brought up for a year and that roamed with the wild boar to have food for the winter, your relationship to nature is different. These days I make it a rule never to eat anyone I haven't been introduced to, and that means I am vegetarian at the moment.

There is understanding, empathy, insight, that one can only gain from close contact. But then,

The issue is "how should we act"; — Mariner

So, whether you are connected or disconnected, how will you act?

So, whether you are connected or disconnected, how will you act? — unenlightened

How will I act in response to what problem?

I don't know, do you have a problem? Do you need a problem to act?

Love and do what you will.

So, whether you are connected or disconnected, how will you act? — unenlightened

As said earlier, with some added emphasis:

a. Reduce, as much as possible, externalizations. In other words, people who are responsible for X must pay the costs for X; people who benefit from X must be responsible for X.

b. When externalisation is (still) inevitable due to technical shortcomings of our engineering and scientific practices, act as if it could be reduced by the individual. This is an ethical imperative. People must increase their awareness of costs and benefits derived from their surroundings. Costs and benefits are not solely (or even mostly) economical in nature; the pleasure from a waterfall, the feeling of wellbeing from a well-preserved urban forest, etc.

If you are aware of some benefit accruing to you, take responsibility for it. If you are aware of some cost imposed by your activities, try to pay for it.

Summing up, if you are an agent (negative or positive) of externalization, be aware of it, and adjust your behavior so as to minimize externalization.

If you are aware... — Mariner

I have no disagreement with you. But everything, from the flush toilet to plastic packaging, to the extraordinary complex of transport system, seems by design to make one unaware. Whether the sewage treatment plant x miles down the road is adequately dealing with my waste or pumping it half treated into the sea, is not only invisible at my end of the pipe, but I am not even competent to judge at the other end, supposing I knew where it was and was permitted to investigate. I put my food waste in one bin and cardboard in another, as I am instructed, and then I have no idea what happens. I rinse out the tins and the bottles, but am unsure whether I am wasting water or saving glass and metal.

Such is the disconnect. And the wind farm out on the horizon, even that is controversial, not just for the view it spoils, but for the resources it consumes in relation to the power it produces. Even the experts disagree. I think I have also a duty to make myself aware, but it ain't easy.

I think I have also a duty to make myself aware, but it ain't easy. — unenlightened

Amen.

One major beef -- rather, the greatest beef -- I have with mainstream "environmentalism" is that it mostly replaces one ideological discourse with another, rather than encouraging awareness. You are supposed to like wind power even though it harms thousands of birds and bats. You are supposed to hate nuclear just because. You are supposed to recycle just because. Etc.

These simple-minded rules dull one's awareness rather than enhance it. And they have a nasty habit of hitting you back in the derriere when someone does the gritty math -- which only devalues the "environmentalist position" in the eyes of Everyman, which is a very, very bad thing in my opinion.

One major beef -- rather, the greatest beef -- I have with mainstream "environmentalism" is that it mostly replaces one ideological discourse with another, rather than encouraging awareness. — Mariner

But what else is there? I cannot do the gritty math, and I am myself reduced to ideological aphorisms; to eat local when possible to use public transport and travel less, to consume less, to recycle up down and sideways, to live frugally, to share facilities when reasonably possible, to heat one room rather than the whole house, to insulate. And then to support my best but unsure guess at what policies and industries will externalise the least.

But the situation is rather like the notion of a healthy diet; received wisdom changes its mind from one year to the next about butter, or wine, or carbohydrates, and that's without the cranks and weirdos. Stay off the beef though, it's full of hormones. :wink:

My view is in line with what Pseudonym said earlier in the thread. Humans appear to be in charge now. It's temporary. Balance has a way of being restored regardless of what thrashing about an individual might do.

But what else is there? — unenlightened

Besides awareness? Humility, I suppose. When we don't know the answers, we look for them; if we can't find them, we still try to minimize externalities (a.k.a., "ecological footprint"), keeping a fairly open and critical mind about the ways we are trying to do that.

But that is not a prescription for environmental issues only, of course. The beauty of environmental issues is that they are so complex that we cannot really pretend that we know all there is to be known -- at least, not if we are remotely honest with ourselves. It is good practice for humility.

Humility...

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.” — Gus Speth

Talking of selfishness, I take from what you said that you and I both know what it's like to live without electricity. We both know how easily the need for it can drop away. Yet we both use it now (if not, how are communicating?)

How do you justify it? Or do you? What action should you be taking?

How do you justify it? Or do you? What action should you be taking? — frank

I don't justify; I have been an explorer of ways to live, to an extent, and what suits a young man in a warm climate is less suitable when bringing up children, and so on. There is no special virtue in living without electricity that I can see; living without the world news for a while certainly sensitises one. If I was justifying, I'd probably go for urban, squatting running a whole food co-op, alternative schooling, and generally undermining society. A bit more getting amongst the problems rather than escaping from them.

Makes sense. You've inspired me to go back and dwell with the stuff Gandhi said. Be the change you want to see, and other stuff...

OTOH, we might be just as well off eating, drinking and being merry, for tomorrow...

I never liked soya much, anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/01/argentina-new-river-soya-beans?CMP=fb_gu

An ancestor of the image of St George slaying the dragon is Horus attacking Set (depicted as a crocodile). Horus was god of arable soil while Set was god of the desert.

It signifies the victory of order over chaos, rationality over irrationality, culture over lawlessness. Might that be a problem if we're looking to religion for an appropriate ethical outlook? Animosity toward nature goes deep?

I came across the above video. It's an interesting view. The concept of dominance is entirely a product of the human perspective?

I don't buy it. It is not mere fantasy or projection that we talk about a 'pecking order.'