PRESERVING GLOBAL CULTURE
https://news.yale.edu/2017/09/27/yale-leads-effort-protect-cultural-heritage-0?utm_source=YNemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=yn-09-28-17
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
globe and place and how everything connects
summary
I find big things easier to comprehend than little things. Since most people (in the Western world at any rate) are just the opposite, I’m always going against the grain. I can’t find any corroboration for my view that it is very easy to correct Earth’s climate and other critical woes if we think big enough. And it’s tempting to go off in a corner and leave the world to its dealings.
Despite what astronauts say about Earth’s unity, beauty and fragility when seen from afar, policy to give meaning to that vision is absent. The awe-stricken astronauts were working at the level of sensibility and feeling, and these are never the concern of policy.
After I wrote my first blog post (“How To Do Everything,” below) I heard about the book “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, for which the author won The Press Action Person of the Year award. Although I’m puzzled by Jensen’s radical views and by the acclaim given him, what he wrote stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that I received no corroboration for my views because there was none to be found within the broad culture?
Among the premises in Endgame :
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
I reread my post, and the main fault I now find with it is the perhaps naïve assumption that it lies within the power of government to save the planet from the dire consequences wrought by industrial civilization. Ain’t gonna happen, most likely.
But I question whether direct acts of violence against civilization (as Jensen advocates) is the answer – these will most likely happen anyway -- or whether it is feasible, as an alternate strategy, to take peaceful but subversive actions to protect and restore the planet. As an example, what if it were feasible to cover dysfunctional paving everywhere (paving that does not use the sun’s energy to do anything useful) with vegetation (a simple, non-technologic solution to climate change)? It can’t be denied that looking at Earth as a seamless orb that depends on vegetation for its survival is something that civilization has proven hopeless at doing.
During the coming year I want to investigate, to my satisfaction, how or whether the broader society, driven by a revolution in the humanities and the arts, could potentially reverse this direction. (Examining the feasibility of a worldwide survey of land-use plans is one possible way to start.)
Can what is harmful in civilization be transcended through civilization itself?
Despite what astronauts say about Earth’s unity, beauty and fragility when seen from afar, policy to give meaning to that vision is absent. The awe-stricken astronauts were working at the level of sensibility and feeling, and these are never the concern of policy.
After I wrote my first blog post (“How To Do Everything,” below) I heard about the book “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, for which the author won The Press Action Person of the Year award. Although I’m puzzled by Jensen’s radical views and by the acclaim given him, what he wrote stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that I received no corroboration for my views because there was none to be found within the broad culture?
Among the premises in Endgame :
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
I reread my post, and the main fault I now find with it is the perhaps naïve assumption that it lies within the power of government to save the planet from the dire consequences wrought by industrial civilization. Ain’t gonna happen, most likely.
But I question whether direct acts of violence against civilization (as Jensen advocates) is the answer – these will most likely happen anyway -- or whether it is feasible, as an alternate strategy, to take peaceful but subversive actions to protect and restore the planet. As an example, what if it were feasible to cover dysfunctional paving everywhere (paving that does not use the sun’s energy to do anything useful) with vegetation (a simple, non-technologic solution to climate change)? It can’t be denied that looking at Earth as a seamless orb that depends on vegetation for its survival is something that civilization has proven hopeless at doing.
During the coming year I want to investigate, to my satisfaction, how or whether the broader society, driven by a revolution in the humanities and the arts, could potentially reverse this direction. (Examining the feasibility of a worldwide survey of land-use plans is one possible way to start.)
Can what is harmful in civilization be transcended through civilization itself?
Posts
Blog Archive
-
▼
2017
(131)
-
▼
September
(25)
- The article on Silicon Valley is of immense import...
- Gail Tverberg says:
- PRESERVING GLOBAL CULTURE https://news.yale.edu/2...
- PRESERVING CIVILIZATION Political correctness ...
- "Comparing 2016 with 2000, and using constant 2016...
- The Case Against Civilization – The New Yorker ht...
- Gail Tverberg says:
- Women Are Natural Gobalists Women have been sub...
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greening-our-s...
- I can see enormous benefits to daylighting rivers...
- "Our consumption of sand is outpacing our understa...
- Trees bring economic benefit to a sampling of citi...
- worldofhanumanotg says:
- adonis says: September 8, 2017 at 8:28 pm abs...
- JT Roberts says: September 11, 2017 at 1:45 pm ...
- Is capitalism at odds with industrial production ...
- https://srsroccoreport.com/you-have-been-warned-t...
- America Can’t Afford to Rebuild "America is in n...
- Mapping the UN Sustainable Development Goals http...
- http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-...
- Gail Tverberg says: September 7, 2017 at 2:57 p...
- Tim Groves says: I for one think novelty is ov...
- DACA In some perverse way, the Trump administrati...
- "The ABAG process, linking housing targets to open...
- HURRICANES AND BUILDING ON FLOOD PLAINS Gail Tv...
-
▼
September
(25)
No comments:
Post a Comment