Spiritual Ecology

Spiritual Ecology is a slippery slope for me. I think that any time people decide to attach "greater meaning" to something, that thing can become too important or powerful.

As for the readings, I found Lovelock's hypothesis the mostly attractive. It is more like a scientific proposal that happens to be called the "Gaia" hypothesis. I can get behind the idea that the Earth is regulated by the life on it, such that the environmental conditions remain more or less stable for millennia. I am not convinced and am wary of contributing this phenomenon to some conscious entity. Personally, I have no use for latching onto some ancient deity to find meaning in the natural world or to find connection to it.

But maybe this is not what the spiritual ecologists and other "old" religions are getting at. Maybe the worship of animals, elements, and reproductive unity is simply a way to remind us of what is ultimately important - namely the preservation of the biosphere such that we - humans - are able to exist in it. Unless I missed it, the readings did not refer to that fact that if humans alter the biosphere enough - and we are not able to live here anymore - that life will go on. Life will evolve and eventually find a new stability that may or may not be amicable to human life or even the mammalian radiation itself.

A quote from Spretnak's reading was probably closest to what I believe. - "What we need now is the maturity to value freedom and tradition, the individual and the community, science and nature, men and women."

Deep Ecology

I think Deep Ecology is on the right track - as in I agree with basically everything Naess says in his essay. I think that humans really should be focusing on the overall health of the planet-wide ecosystem, mainly because the earth really is a closed ecosystem (excluding sunlight.) What I found most interesting was the absence of fossil fuels in the philosophy. It seems to me that the fuel, literally, for the explosion of human activity and population is oil, coal, and gas. Our indiscriminate use of these limited and dirty resources is the only thing that has allowed for the balance of the biosphere to get so badly out of whack. While certainly not the only problem humans need to address in regards to the biosphere, it is certainly the most pressing. We really should be making the transition away from fossil fuels our worldwide priority - not unlike the "space race" of the 1950s & 60s.

Blog #8

So I like this idea of consensus - I like the way Estes frames the idea and its potential.

I'm not convinced, however, that it is applicable to all situations in its traditional form. Mainly I am thinking here about the current &^$%& that the US congress in in, and the climate change debate.

Currently, congress actually looks a lot like a consensus based situation - as majorities and minorities seem not to matter. The president would seem like a sort of ultimate facilitator, if he did not have an agenda. The speaker of the house and the Senate majority leader would also seem like facilitators - and kind of paint themselves that way - if they did not have enormous interest in one opinion or another. Or...maybe the supreme court is the facilitator, except that - while they are not supposed to - they have interests in the outcomes of legislation as well. So maybe congress really isn't in a ^%$&%, but is experiencing growing pains related to a transition to forced consensus.

As for climate change - there seems to be a lack of facilitation here as well. Really, it seems that all nations know that climate change is the 3,000 lbs gorilla in the room, but a formal consensus process has yet to form. All the summits and protocols have had little effect on the issue at hand - radically and immediately reducing carbon emissions - mainly because the international community cannot agree on a consensus framework. In this situation, consensus really must be had, otherwise many members of the international community will not "comply" with the targets agreed upon............messy.

Maybe the answer lies in a more standardized social media that can allow for massive consensus decision making - where it would be impossible to do so in person at a conference.

Blog#6 - Social Ecology

So - I am back after having been pretty sick last week......

Social Ecology........= Ecological Logic?

After reading Bookchin and the other authors for my Social Ecology Teaching group, it seems to me that Social Ecology is essentially reorganizing society, using natural ecosystems' evolution as a model.

I think this makes A LOT of sense - on the one hand it ensures long-term viability because, obviously, natural ecosystems have been around for a while - and on the other hand, it satisfies the apparently uniquely human desire for organizing "the other," as Bookchin put it, in a complementary fashion as opposed to a hierarchical one. Natural systems, even in primate groups it seems, do not actually resemble modern Human ideas about dominance.

Indeed - I can agree with this because any individual that is an "alpha" in a social group only retains their position so long as they are stable and sufficiently competent - when they become otherwise, they are promptly dethroned.

So........this contrasts somewhat with my previous post stating that hierarchy is possibly innate in Humans........well, it still is, but the Hierarchy of our evolutionary past was defined and administered fundamentally differently than modern hierarchy - where "Only institutions, formed by long periods of human history and sustained by well-organized bureaucracies and military forces, could have placed absolute rule in the hands of mental defects like Nicholas II of Russia and Louis XVI of France. (Bookchin 101)"

This stuff sounds good to me -