My Life Ethic

Any mind capable of the faculty of discursive reason can tell you what is plain to see any day in the Age of Aquarius; man is dominate on this planet, and with good reason. Man’s mind shines a thousand times more brilliant than that of the intuitive toad, complete with the audacity to explode beneath my Italian leather penny loafers.

The beasts and creatures of this world, scraping a living off rock, they certainly can’t build like we can, besides for those miserable beavers. But even this is without gain; equity built on a beaver dam doesn’t even reflect on your credit score. I wish those lazy Native Injuns could have been productive for once and finished the job they began and eliminated them entirely.

Native Americans bringing beaver fur to Europeans (Flemish, n.d.)

The only purpose I can find for the collective vermin that crawls this earth, otherwise known to liberal yuppies as biodiversity, is their innate instinct to situate themselves somewhere between the road and a car tire. Survival of the fittest I suppose, and my Suburban is outfitted quite well, I sprung for the deluxe options package.

Does even the ‘wise owl’ have the creative sense to create such fantastical tales as the Bible? The Koran? The Bhagavad Gita? I do not believe so. Which brings forward the decisive question; if even the wisest and most self-reflective member of the ‘animal kingdom’ doesn’t facilitate the ability of communication, what could the owls worth, or any lesser animal, be to the planet earth? What is the point of existing, simply to exist?

To the European mindset, everything must have a reason. Why would one exist if he or she was not productive in life? Even the journey of life itself must have an ultimate purpose; heaven. Existing simply to exist does not sit well with much of the modern world, this is why the Native Americans were called lazy by the Europeans coming to the “New World”. The Natives did what they had to in order to survive, and enjoyed the rest of their existence. Prior to European contact, the Natives were not a materialistic people and did not need to toil away the entire day to make a buck in order to buy a trinket. Life itself had intrinsic value; it did not require much more meaning than that.

The reason Native Americans are so often viewed as being connected and one with nature is because they lived their lives with little difference to that of the natural world. They existed because of and for their existence, much like the trees, the deer, and the wise owl. Competition and economic gain were not part of the Native American thought or desire, the same as nature itself. In nature, a cheetah does not kill a gazelle to horde its meat for later, the cheetah only hunts when the cheetah is hungry; this is the same as the Native American, and fundamentally opposite of the European. Europeans, however, were raised on the New and Old Testament, which contains scripture such as Genesis 1:28 – “God blessed them and said, be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” It’s only natural that a people familiar with such commands would be competitive and dominating by nature, it is God’s will.

My environmental ethic is more than just an ethic on the environment; it is my own belief towards life. Perhaps, to the core of my ethic, is a line from Aldo Leopold’s classic A Sand County Almanac, it reads, "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (Leopold, 1949). This line is so simple, but yet, this is the very reason Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac is such a classic, it plainly states what others are thinking but do not know how to express themselves. However, the reason my environmental ethic does not end here is because the abuse of nature is not a natural occurrence, the abuse of nature is an effect, the cause is the Anglo-Saxon mindset.

1st Edition of A Sand County Almanac (A Sand, n.d.)

Greed and gain fueled the Anglo-Saxon mindset in the early days of civilization, and that is why we know identify countries by their economic systems; these people are capitalists, those folks are socialists, we got the commies of here, etc. Those that colonized the world did so in the name of economic gain, they spread all over the world, and since nice guys finish last, the modern world was overtaken by this materialistic mindset. Competition is at the core of this system, competition that so engulfs the mind that we soon can’t see past our own shadow, and soon the only things of importance to a person is how much they have and how much more they can get. All the while, the natural world is being rapped of its resources and man is growing further and further away from his natural life.

If the population of the world would rediscover the intrinsic value of life and existence on this planet, if the miracle of our world was the center piece of our fascinations rather than man-made creations, than we would eliminate the cause of the materialistic mindset, and thus, the effect of environmental degradation. My environmental ethic is also my life ethic because far to often we forget the only reason we have life is because of our environment. In another brilliant quote from A Sand County Almanac, Leopold writes, "Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry” (Leopold, 1949).

As mentioned prior, the intrinsic value of life is forgotten far to often by modern man. However, I do not intend on trying to teach this lesson to any but myself, because I know some minds are far to entrenched in human institutions and obligations to provide me with any feedback other than a blank stare. They will look down at their feet as a red-tail hawk circles above or as a full moon gazes down. This is a lesson I constantly strive to remind myself of; that most aspects in life of 2011 are just bureaucracy and man-made anchors to keep people in check, immobile.

However, I am a tremendous hypocrite to my own ethic. I like to believe I consume less then most people, but I certainly still consume manufactured goods. I would like to say I’m free of stress from human institutions, but I have loans and debt to pay. Even this university I attend provides me with a great deal of stress, and even more debt, however, this is the place I realized my environmental/life ethic. I believe that it is near impossible to critique culture without contradicting yourself. With this said, I do not claim to follow all of my own rules, I only strive to achieve them the best I can and always try to remember to laugh in the face of my human stressors, as they are so very little in the grand scheme of the natural world, the universe, and time.

In a final quote from A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes, “Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” (Leopold, 1949). Once again, Leopold is able to explain in a few elegant words what takes me a considerably longer amount of time. My environmental ethic does not just pertain to the environment, but also to my philosophy of life. I strive to constantly remind myself that I am no greater, and indeed much smaller, than the natural miracle of the earth and the natural world. By doing so, I remember to use the resources of this earth “with love and respect”. Whether that means riding my bike to work, reusing, or simply consuming little, I learn to respect this planet more and more with each passing day as I gain deeper understanding and insight into my own life ethic by observing the obstacles my ethic faces daily.

References

"A Sand County Almanac | Ask.com Encyclopedia." Ask.com - What's Your Question?. N.p., n.d.

Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .


Leopold, Aldo, and Charles Walsh Schwartz. A Sand County almanac, and sketches here and there . New York: Oxford University Press, 1949. Print.

"The Flemish American: Beaver Peltries and Le Bâtard Flamand Part 1 - An Early Flemish

American." The Flemish American. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2011.

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* I apologize for the indenting on some paragraphs and not others, blogger is acting a bit buggy.

** Blogger isn't letting me post the last paragraph of my paper, so I am sending it to you Prof. R, as an attachment. Please see said attachment for complete paper.

New Professor Lecture Series 2010-2011 (Extra Credit #2)

Proffesor James M. Dyer's presentation on Wednesday, March 9th was a rare environmental presentation with an almost positive tone.

This "positive tone" which was what caught my attention the most in the entire presentation, spoke of regenerating forests. What was fasinating about the regeneration of forest around southern Ohio, were much of the presentation was concentrated, was the idea of succession. The forests were regenerating after years of destruction, peaking in 1920; which is a good thing. However, the forests are not regenerating to their original state of makeup. We are now experiencing an Oak-to-Maple transition period.

Due to certain environmental changes, Maples are now becoming the dominant tree in southern Ohio and other near by Appalachian regions, where as Oaks used to be #1. Prof. Dyer presented a few possibilities to this phenomenon. The possibility I found most interesting was the lack of Native American burnings, that is, Natives purposely setting fire to the forest to make for better hunting lands. This theory was then proven unlikely to the Oak-to-Maple transition, however, I enjoyed the creative fleshing out of possibilities used to determine the nature of an environmental effect such as this.

Being a geographer by trade, Prof. Dyer had a good number of maps as visuals. However, these visuals were very helpful and informative to his presentation. They very much supported his ideas and claims and seemed to provide further credibility to the presentation and further understanding to the audience. My personal favorite visual was a .gif file that showed the evolution of tree growth from 1920 to modern day. It was reassuring to see the map of Ohio gradually growing darker with tree coverage throughout the years.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Prof. Dyer's presentation. It was very informative and easy to understand, which is more than can be said about many presentation put on by professors I have seen. I hope this presentation will have worked as a kind of primer to my "American Forests" class I am taking Spring quarter; with any hope I can whip out a term like 'Oak-to-Maple transition' and look like a genius.

Tar Creek Movie (Extra Credit #1)

Tar Creek (2009) tells the story of Picher, Oklahoma, the most toxic place in America.

During WWII, a great amount of lead was needed for the war; during this time Picher, Oklahoma was the biggest producer of lead in the world. The companies mining Picher, Oklahoma were to busy lining their pockets to worry about mining Picher correctly. When a mining company mines any location in the United States, they are supposed to leave that land the way they found after they are done. This did not happen in Picher.

Seen above is a chat pile. Chat is basically fine, ground up lead left over from mining larger pieces of lead. And this is not the extent of the problem, chat piles this size and bigger surround the town of Picher; they are almost all encompassing. The children of Picher have been victims of increased lead counts for years; many of the children have learning disabilities. As if all of this wasn't enough, a particular Native American tribe was even pushed off of this land by mining companies once it was discovered that it was rich in lead.

The makers of this film did a very good job producing this work. I do my fair share of documentary watching, and this one was very well exicuted, and even featured a soundtrack by blues legend Watermelon Slim. The filmmakers did a good job of engaging the audience by bringing in several view points; native tribe leaders, environmental Professors, older men who had worked in the mines, and average members of the community. However, the most engaging part of the entire film was simply the shots of the chat piles. These were unbelievable to see, and just plain shocking. Helicopter cinematography was utilized to capture the hugeness of these piles.

This superfund site (the #1 superfund site) has been deemed the most toxic place in America, and the biggest environmental disaster in America. The lead mines and chat piles have been abandoned for over 50 years now. I cannot believe that 1. I have not heard of or seen this place before and 2. I cannot believe that the government has not stepped in to help clean this place up. It is baffling that nothing has been done about this catastrophe for over half a century. However, this was a very well done production, and therefore, I very much believe that it will have an impact and hopefully help draw attention to Picher and get it cleaned up, finally.

Here's one final, unbelievable picture of Picher for the road: