Nature & Society--A Final Learning Synthesis

 
           

I just recently returned from a trip to Jackson Hole, WY—a place not unlike scenic Missoula, filled with outdoor enthusiasts, proud dog owners, and beer connoisseurs. In an effort to spark inspiration for this paper, a final learning synthesis, I inquired with individuals whom I encountered as to their choice in living locale. I was greeted with an almost unanimous answer— “uhhh, have you looked around,” pause for a smile or a swig; “the nature here man, I tell you it’s where the magic happens.” The environment of Teton County truly is magical— moose troll around your backyard in the shadow of insurmountable jagged peaks, while national forests, parks, and private preserves border the township. Yet what makes places like Jackson Hole so special is the vibe in which its inhabitants connect with raw nature.  

            On my drive back up to Montana, I was contemplating the similarities between Missoula and Jackson—the folk are likeminded and wilderness abundant. However, the most salient similarity I found was the deep connection people feel to the environment in which they live. Coming from Colorado, I have always defined myself as a mountain girl—there is something about the safety of deep river valleys nestled between rugged peaks that gets under your bones.  Perhaps it is the crisp air, or the fresh headwaters; maybe it’s the infinite trails less traveled or the encounters with forest creatures, going about their lives in no rush above 12,000 feet. Spending a smidgen of time in nature enlightens you as to its true intrinsic value.

            It wasn’t until I traveled a bit, poked my head around, that I recognize what a blessing my ‘home’ has been in the formation of my ecological worldview. I have always lived in a place where wilderness is accessible and life laid back. It is only through recurring jolts of historical contextualization and bare-bones reality checks that I can acknowledge the extent of my multifaceted privilege. I interact with my surroundings with a new consciousness, one laden with socio-historical breadth and geopolitical depth. And as I have found with many intellectual endeavors, once the pot is stirred, questions of contradiction arise: how is it possible that so many individuals, myself included, adulate their natural surroundings also participate daily in a system that is destroying the very object of their ardor?

            The drawing of these parallels, adjacent tangents from the relationship between nature and society were etched in a darker shade after exploring ‘the explaining story,’ as laid out in Professor Spencer’s course, instigated with the intriguing novel, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. The book Ishmael provided a framework of key terms and ideas to siphon through the convolutions of history, philosophy, religion, and science flushed out through the semester. Ishmael poses many critical questions whose nascence lies in the labyrinth of environmental thought and action. And while the depth of this tale will not be given due course within the confines of this essay, I will seek to identify the key turning points in Euro-American history that led us to our current ideological and behavioral setting. While contemplating and elaborating on the historical bricks laid in the path to our modern Western paradigm, for the sake of brevity I will fast-forward through thousands of years of humanities’ dynamic relationship with nature and focus on paramount shifts.

. Many revolutions mark the history of our species: Neolithic, urban, industrial, technological, globalizing, etc. What they all have in common is their ecological complexity that can be viewed through the sociological acronym, POET, which stands for population, organization, environment, and technology (Palen 76). To use the Neolithic revolution as an example: the technology of food storage allowed for a surplus of food, the surplus in food enabled an increase in population, which created a space for new social and political organization into hierarchal city-states, which all in turn had numerous effects on the environment such as soil degradation and pollution. This model is useful for examining the complexities between nature and society; where advances may occur in one letter may proliferate impediments in another. Such is the paradoxical nature of our world’s current predicament. Many people benefit from the current organizational system ruled by corporate monopolies; technological advances continually raise the bar on desirable living standards; population soars, providing a cheap workforce for the production of more goods for the privileged; the environment and ‘Othered’ individuals, rendered morally obsolete by the powers that be, are heinously exploited.

            Call it philosophy, mythology, religion, or pragmatic reasoning, it is essential to unearth the cerebral nuggets of the aforementioned system, which can be understood as an amalgamation of Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment rhetoric. I have come to understand Christianity as a mélange of Hebrew biblical values and Classical Greek philosophy. While it is difficult in modern times to recognize the extent of Christian influence on our worldview, many key themes persist— particularly those of dominion, transcendence, and dualism. One specific theme from Hebrew texts is the ‘p-story’ of the genesis—in which God entrusted man with the duty of dominating the earth (Genesis 1). This theme was reflected in Ishmael with the myth, “the earth was made for man, and man was made to rule it (Quinn, 61).” The notion of dominion is a prodigious base for our modern Western paradigm and will be examined through a feminist lens later in the essay.

Other contributions the Hebrew religion made to our Western paradigm were notions of monotheism and transcendence. Due to recurring displacement in various environments, the Hebrew people came to see overarching patterns in nature; this was reflected in their belief of a monotheistic god who was transcendent from the natural world. This separation of the ethereal from nature played out in numerous ways, most importantly casting anything reminiscent of the natural world in a pejorative light. Since nature was not of god, it was devalued as a mere instrumental object of satisfaction in the present physical world before eternal rewards in heaven. And due to contributions from Socrates and Aristotle, definitions of nature were expanded to include anything beyond pure reason, such as emotional subjectivity (an obvious micro-insult at feminine comportment), which was conveniently a capacity only possessed by privileged [white] men. Therefore, the mistreatment of animals and ‘beastly’ humans alike was morally legitimized by Judeo-Christian doctrine (Marshall 189).

This separation also inspired another influential ‘split’ as laid out by Descartes cogito, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes’ fascination with reason finds its roots in the work of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. This dualistic mind-frame as reflected by Hebrew notions of transcendence is vital for understanding our Western ‘story’ because it defines humans in terms of the mind, as separate from the body. This step-back, to extol mind over matter so to speak, led to a deleterious logic well-articulated by Metropolitan John of Pergamon, a modern eco-theologian and priest; “Since the human being may be conceived without its relation to the natural world, in the final analysis it matters not at all whether or not the natural world surrounding him will be annihilated,” (Pergamon, 2010).

 Cartisian thought also contributed to the exaltation of objective truths, which brings us to the current arbiter of nature and humanity: science. The idea of an overarching god also segued into early scientific pursuits for absolute laws of nature. Science and technology quickly became the new religion as people sought to become masters and possessors of nature; this was due to the growing consensus that, in the words of Francis Bacon, ‘knowledge is power.’ Note nuances of the dominion story as articulated by the genesis; it was seen as human’s moral duty, “to improve and perfect fallen nature through…science,” (184).

With the advent of science, nature became something to be studied to further manipulate and control resources for the benefit of humans. This utilitarian view of nature is very Aristotelian, who attributed value to nature insofar as it could benefit the flourishing of humans; I daresay many humans would still agree with this statement. And even though Darwin significantly de-centered humans from the main evolutionary stage, notions of man’s superiority and right to ‘dominate,’ remain entrenched. Currently, the scientific paradigm is two-faced; science can be used for further destruction of the earth and each other, or science can realign humans with nature by enlightening us with new information and/or technologies for a sustainable future.

Despite histories’ tendency to bog down students in calamitous ruts, I will shift the focus of this essay towards great American thinkers to whom we owe our unremitting gratitude for cumulatively spearheading any notions of environmentalism. Thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau totally reshaped our vision of nature. It was made beautiful again, something to be appreciated, protected, glorified, and revered. One could even go so far to say that without Thoreau, environmentalism would have never emerged with such vigor, for all subsequent environmental students or enthusiasts surely quote his work: Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, Rachel Carson and the like made colossal progress to protect, promote, and preserve nature through top-tier interventions. These environmental advocates politicized the degradation of the natural world and put the value of nature at the forefront of generalized discussions of justice.  

            During the decades of consciousness-raising with the American public, as well as with elected officials, an ecological mind-frame emerged. Ecology as described by Nash, “enables [us]…to conceive of nature as an intricate web of interdependent parts, a myriad of cogs and wheels each essential to the health operation of the whole,” (195). This was particularly salient for Aldo Leopold, who took it a step further in extending ecology’s reach to the ethical realm, which this quote fluently encapsulates:

 “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” (Leopold, A Sand County Almanac).

I currently find myself in that ‘world of wounds,’ as Leopold describes— sifting and melding my personal ecological worldview to balance many tracks of consciousness. While I have a personal affinity for the promotion of social services, books like Ishmael, along with countless other readings from this course, have allowed me to recognize the ecological nature of my actions—that I cannot be concerned with the trials of humans without connecting them to the tribulations of nature. In the words of Peter Marshall, “[the earth] is a living whole,” and in an ever Gestaltian manner I must proclaim that the sum is greater than its individuals parts—that is, holism must be central to the way we identify, define, and approach social and ecological problems alike (Marshall, pgs. 391, 406).

Something to keep in mind while digesting this sweeping panorama of Western ideological history is that humans are a fairly young species in terms of Earth’s history. And although we act, as though our existence on Earth has been the headlining performance of evolutionary bravado, there is hope in humility (Quinn 56-58); we don’t have all of the answers, and there much to learn from the very forces we have been attempting to dominate. As our guest lecturer from BioMimicry Institute, Briony Schwan, related, “everything we need to do [to reverse the damage we have wrought] has already been done in nature,” (5-3-2013).

Thoreau once said, “in wilderness is the preservation of the world,” (Marshall 403). To follow this rumination, I look to nature for a metaphor to encapsulate my idea of what human’s relationship with nature should look like. There is a well-known biological phenomenon in nature called mutual symbiosis; this is a particular type of long-term interdependent relationship can be thought of as a ‘biological barter,’ in which each tradesman behaves as to enhance the well-being of the other. We need to find our mutualistic balance with nature. We need to transform our culture so that people organically act in sustainable ways. Having a little brother has taught me that if you try and tell him what to do, he may grudgingly partake, but if he is inspired to act, it is a beautiful thing. We need to be inspired to act on the behalf of the environment and our fellow humans. I think everyone has a particular chord that need to be struck. For me, it is the linkage between social and environmental oppression as illustrated by the environmental justice readings. 

To paraphrase the ever eloquent Jack Turner, who fortuitously echoes ideas in Ishmael, the current environmental crisis is one of character, not social or political crisis—and the paradox of this conclusion is that we have yet to determine what a ‘modern character’ is, “and since character is determined by culture, [we face a] crisis of modern culture,” (Turner, 1996). I believe this crisis to be institutionalized patriarchy in a society where the ‘highest good’ is equated with masculinity and masculinity is defined by dominance and control.

Yet, I believe many individuals are hesitant to recognize the connection between ecological, institutional, and interpersonal violence and our western conceptualizations of masculinity. Environmentalists and women’s advocates alike often confront defensiveness when they speak out about the crisis at bay; this is because humans do not see themselves as active participants in pernicious behavior and seek to separate themselves from the ever-insidious blame game often observed within petitions for change. Here I will once again take from Ishmael to reiterate that humans themselves are not the problem, it is the system in which humans operate and the ‘stories’ we enact that perpetuate men’s violence against women and/or ecological destruction.

            Taking from a lecture I attended last fall by feminist advocate Jackson Katz, we must recognize how norms go unquestioned. Katz articulated this in reference to the pervasiveness of men’s violence against women—that we have become to accustomed to hearing about a man committing an act of violence and don’t even pay attention to the gendered nature of the crime. Similarly, we have become desensitized to the atrocities committed against our natural world as a result of cultural norms. We experience the destruction of nature in a similar way we experience a bout of psychological illness—it is something statistically common, almost expected. We take a pill and continue with business at hand without ever stepping back to question a society that profits off pathology or condones the decimation of our mother earth.

Given the depth of philosophical frameworks for viewing nature, I suppose I am now equipped with the language to identify myself as a radical ecologist; as described by Marshall, I am calling for, “a fundamental reorientation in the way we think and act in the world,” founded on (what I would prefer to be) a moderately holistic view of the self as, to contradict biblical ideation as Ishmael does (John 17:6-16), in the world and of the world—not partitioned by Cartisian dualism or deemed superior by reasoning metabolics. We must also begin to shift our views of humans towards a more humanist understanding of individuals as inherently good. Simultaneously, to resonate with eco-feminist demands, we should seek to dissolve entities that promote the four pillars of patriarchy: sexism, racism, class exploitation, and ecological destruction.

I believe that for the human species to move forward, we have to start protesting what is normalized in seeking to build a world where social, political, and environmental justice is possible and in fact, quotidian. Martin Luther King once said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  I truly believe our society is capable of change; if anything, to name a few examples in a stupendous stockpile— courses like Nature & Society available at the University of Montana, bestselling books like Ishmael, Walden, Silent Spring, the mere exponential growth of farmers markets, and the coining of phrases such as ‘local is the new global,’ are all testaments to the fact that culture is capable of transformation and indeed is currently undergoing dramatic shifts.

The ‘explaining story’ is one of patriarchal dominance; much of the suffering we cause one another and to the environment is the result of systemic oppression and institutional violence. And while many psychological studies support the notion that violence generalizes, that is the violence we perpetrate against nature can be correlated to intra-personal violence, psychology also claims that violence is a learned behavior. There is hope in that all of our dysfunctional behaviors and worldviews can be unwritten and reconditioned in future generations to come. From Jackson Hole to Missoula, Montana, I sense a new ecological consciousness with which we towards the future, thankful for the current spaces we inhabit, yet invigorated to amass and contribute to a collective awareness that will prove the impetus for a final bend in that arc towards justice for Earth’s community.

References- (beyond course readings)

Pergamon, John. Address of Metropolitan John of Pergamon at the Sixth Ecological Symposium on the Amazon River, "Humanity and Nature: Learning from the Indigenous" Accessed May 7, 2013 http://www.patriarchate.org/documents/humanity-and-nature

Turner, Jack. (1996). The Abstract Wild. University of Arizona Press.

****ask me for the references to class texts if you are curious!!!