Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Stopping the Loop
In class today we discussed the aspects of what would be better how a mother reaches her potential by helping her only son reach his potential. I think we can apply this to the entire human race and the environment as a whole. Humans should be sacrificing our wants for the environment, to reach our total goal of keeping the human race alive. Instead, we individually focus on our own goals and sacrifice the potential of nature. We rely on material possessions and consumerism to satisfy our need and wants in life, but that comes at a detriment to the natural world. If we wanted to sustain nature, we would need to live simply and try to consume less so that we would be using less natural resources. I think humans have forgotten that nature is there for us, but we need to help nature as well so that it can continue to sustain life, and human life in particularly. We live in a positive feedback loop, in that the more we use, the more we hurt nature, and the more we hurt ourselves. That loop needs to be stopped. Human society has become egotistical and anthropomorphic in the sense that we tend to see nature as a means to our end. Does anyone agree with me that humans and nature can be seen in this relationship? Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to stop this loop?
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I think that's a pretty accurate description of our relationship to natural processes. I don't believe that the feedback loop can be stopped, but we can partially choose in what way it functions. If we consider our interactions with different ecosystems carefully then we can maintain a positive feedback loop that works to our advantage. If we continue to see our interactions in a shallow, egotistic, way then there will always be a strong tendency towards a negative feedback loop that diminishes our standard of living in the long term.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that it is dead on that individuals have to start caring on whether what they are doing is better for the environment and the species then for oneself. In times of climate change and great destruction, one must look to helping each other for the survival of the species and if one is closed of in ones own world, then the environment will not change. It is going to take a mass effort of every person for our species to stop destroying our planet.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how to or if this loop can be stopped, but I agree with what your post says and the comments. I feel this loop with material possesions is only going to worse with all of the new technology and the hype that surrounds them.
ReplyDeleteI think the lesson of Deep Ecology is less about self-sacrifice than it is about self-underestimation. On the first page of his essay, "Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World" Arne Naess claims that "We under-estimate ourselves. I emphasize 'self.' We tend to confuse it with the narrow ego" (13). In that case, our confusion of ourselves with our egos is a form of self-sacrifice because it means interpreting the totality of our wants and desires in narrowly egoistic terms, when we actually want much more than this. Naess's claim is that we actually want to do what is right vis-a-vis the environment, but that our traditions of moral obligation and guilt make us reluctant to pursue these desires out of fear.
ReplyDeleteFor one hypothesis on this fear, see Morgan's post on "Why We Separate Ourselves from Nature."