Yes. This has been a great series. My sentiments are perhaps utopial and unrealistic in view of historic human nature. But they are depopulate and rewild, the surest way to deal with the mess. Liverworts and lichen have just as much right to be here as we do.
Survival of the fittest is a pernicious doctrine. It provides cover for and absolves moral obligation for every act destructive of other species. It allows us to set ourselves up as the new Sun around which all other species must both revolve and adjust to. Or fall into the flames of our ambitions.
Thank you, Michael, for the poetry and passion in your comments. As you know, we can't blame Darwin for our cartoon version of what "survival" and "fittest" mean. The Anthropocene, arguably, is a clear sign that in our current cultural form we're not very fit at all. How, or whether, we recover from this leap off the cliff of rationality will better inform us of our fitness.
Thank you very much, Catherine. The ESA is a keystone topic... it's linked to so many aspects of conservation, esp. here in the U.S. Most of the points I made this week could be a topic in themselves.
This is chock-full of rabbit trails to follow, which I will do next time I have a nice block of uninterrupted time. Your mentions of section 7a1 reminded me that in law school, I wrote a paper on a 5th Circuit case interpreting that section, dealing with preservation of the water level in an aquifer in Texas for the benefit of a rare fish. I argued it was wrongly decided in that (as I recall) it failed to find a duty for non-wildlife agencies to proactively benefit listed species. I seem to remember my prof was a little skeptical of my thesis. 😆 I think I’ll go back and re-read the case, in addition to the resources you linked here, and see what my experienced professional brain has to say about it. ;)
Enjoy your rabbit trails, Rebecca. I imagine that, in your career, the disconnect between judicial reasoning and ecological rationality must have been frustrating...
Very much. Especially as I was trained in wildlife biology and ecology before law school. Your comment reminded of a piece Antonia Malchik just referred me to, regarding one indigenous person’s experience in law school, learning the case that formalized the American nation’s takeover of native lands. In one footnote, the author quotes a piece by Ralph Nader on how law school trains our moral compasses out of us, in the service of cultivating an ability to fully and fairly represent any client (no matter how reprehensible their views or actions). Having at least a minimal scientific background certainly helped me to keep the compass pointed toward a truth based in ecological reality.
If you haven’t read it, this might be up your alley:
In reading this thread about too many tools, etc, I think about my refusal all these years to get myself a “smart phone”. I’ve been around the block with technology, worked in the field, have been an early adopted or such as solar panels, etc; but once I found my Kyocera flip phone 6 or so years ago (does text, email, has browser for web, etc) I decided to never ever get persuaded to make my life so much more convenient with a nice iPhone or Android cell. Typing this now on my iPad, I’m still fine with my tough old phone.
Nicely said, Sylvia. I think we all need to assess what's necessary or useful for us rather than assuming we need whatever is being sold. Certainly people in human history seemed to survive just fine with lower and less tech. That said, Heather and I finally shifted to smarter phones a few years back - though Heather still threatens to dump hers - to keep in touch through our varied schedules. I think I use mine mostly for the camera, though, having lost all my old gear some years back. But the fewer apps the better.
Thank you ,Jason, for what you are doing here. Solid journalism on the most important topic of our day. I've been reading the archives, including the three-part intro series, and found myself nodding throughout.
Thanks also for linking to the Guardian article on the Merz paper. Don't know how I missed that. I went ahead and read the paper. They are definitely on to something.
But I would want to go deeper and use the tools they suggest to combat another part of the meta-crisis: the crisis of meaning. I think they stopped asking "why" - they stopped digging deeper - which is a shame. I hope as part of their interdisciplinary approach, they bring in philosophy, art, maybe even theology. Because there's reasons why our behavior is what it is, and those reasons point, I believe, to a disassociation with who we truly are in this world of ours.
Thank you so much, Simon. It's especially gratifying to have a subscriber digging into the archives and still liking what they see. Thanks for that. And your thoughts here on the why and the meaning of who we are now and how we got here are excellent. I suppose the authors had to pick some manageable parameters. I like your use of "disassociation" too, since I see us as both disconnected from our traditional selves amid our landscapes and blind to that disconnection. We are creatures of culture, equally adaptable to promised lands and prison cells, and so culture is where the solutions are. We're so tool-obsessed that the tools have replaced the natural world, though I can't decide if the push for intelligent tools is more closely aligned with our desire to enslave or our need for god-like entities. That's crudely said, and off the cuff, but hopefully it makes some sense. I'm a bit sleep-deprived at the moment... Anyway, thanks again for such a thoughtful comment.
You might need to go deeper into your comment about intelligent tools when we've both had a night's sleep. But I was thinking just now about how AI can do instantaneous translation. We'll all jump on this, of course - it's amazing! - and yet we will lose the cultural understandings that come with learning a language (what with language and culture being so closely entwined). It does seem god-like... but it also turns rich, natural, human interactions into 1s and 0s.
I'm also thinking that we're always adding - adding more tools - when perhaps we need to subtract. Perhaps we need to unlearn some of our cleverness. When we've peeled back the layers, maybe we will discover our animal natures. Less is more and all that.
Well said, Simon. On the language point, I'm reminded of what's been said about the difficulty/joy of translating poetry, whether poetry is what's lost or what's kept in the process. Always an intriguing question. As for unlearning our cleverness - great phrase - I'm immediately reminded of Barry Lopez and his discussion (and demonstration) of restraint. I think restraint was a central point for him, that industrial human society needed to take the myriad hints offered by the natural world and Indigenous knowledge regarding what's necessary to live well. Less can be much more, both in terms of aesthetics and meaning, and especially in terms of right relation to the world.
Yes. This has been a great series. My sentiments are perhaps utopial and unrealistic in view of historic human nature. But they are depopulate and rewild, the surest way to deal with the mess. Liverworts and lichen have just as much right to be here as we do.
Survival of the fittest is a pernicious doctrine. It provides cover for and absolves moral obligation for every act destructive of other species. It allows us to set ourselves up as the new Sun around which all other species must both revolve and adjust to. Or fall into the flames of our ambitions.
Thank you, Michael, for the poetry and passion in your comments. As you know, we can't blame Darwin for our cartoon version of what "survival" and "fittest" mean. The Anthropocene, arguably, is a clear sign that in our current cultural form we're not very fit at all. How, or whether, we recover from this leap off the cliff of rationality will better inform us of our fitness.
A great analysis of the ESA. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you very much, Catherine. The ESA is a keystone topic... it's linked to so many aspects of conservation, esp. here in the U.S. Most of the points I made this week could be a topic in themselves.
This is chock-full of rabbit trails to follow, which I will do next time I have a nice block of uninterrupted time. Your mentions of section 7a1 reminded me that in law school, I wrote a paper on a 5th Circuit case interpreting that section, dealing with preservation of the water level in an aquifer in Texas for the benefit of a rare fish. I argued it was wrongly decided in that (as I recall) it failed to find a duty for non-wildlife agencies to proactively benefit listed species. I seem to remember my prof was a little skeptical of my thesis. 😆 I think I’ll go back and re-read the case, in addition to the resources you linked here, and see what my experienced professional brain has to say about it. ;)
Enjoy your rabbit trails, Rebecca. I imagine that, in your career, the disconnect between judicial reasoning and ecological rationality must have been frustrating...
Very much. Especially as I was trained in wildlife biology and ecology before law school. Your comment reminded of a piece Antonia Malchik just referred me to, regarding one indigenous person’s experience in law school, learning the case that formalized the American nation’s takeover of native lands. In one footnote, the author quotes a piece by Ralph Nader on how law school trains our moral compasses out of us, in the service of cultivating an ability to fully and fairly represent any client (no matter how reprehensible their views or actions). Having at least a minimal scientific background certainly helped me to keep the compass pointed toward a truth based in ecological reality.
If you haven’t read it, this might be up your alley:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1250&context=mjrl
Thanks (to you and Antonia) for the link. I'll find time for it. Glad you're out there working the ecotone between law and science.
I do have apps on my iPad, and use that for the camera.
I'll keep checking in to your site, but can't subscribe just now.
In reading this thread about too many tools, etc, I think about my refusal all these years to get myself a “smart phone”. I’ve been around the block with technology, worked in the field, have been an early adopted or such as solar panels, etc; but once I found my Kyocera flip phone 6 or so years ago (does text, email, has browser for web, etc) I decided to never ever get persuaded to make my life so much more convenient with a nice iPhone or Android cell. Typing this now on my iPad, I’m still fine with my tough old phone.
Nicely said, Sylvia. I think we all need to assess what's necessary or useful for us rather than assuming we need whatever is being sold. Certainly people in human history seemed to survive just fine with lower and less tech. That said, Heather and I finally shifted to smarter phones a few years back - though Heather still threatens to dump hers - to keep in touch through our varied schedules. I think I use mine mostly for the camera, though, having lost all my old gear some years back. But the fewer apps the better.
Thank you ,Jason, for what you are doing here. Solid journalism on the most important topic of our day. I've been reading the archives, including the three-part intro series, and found myself nodding throughout.
Thanks also for linking to the Guardian article on the Merz paper. Don't know how I missed that. I went ahead and read the paper. They are definitely on to something.
But I would want to go deeper and use the tools they suggest to combat another part of the meta-crisis: the crisis of meaning. I think they stopped asking "why" - they stopped digging deeper - which is a shame. I hope as part of their interdisciplinary approach, they bring in philosophy, art, maybe even theology. Because there's reasons why our behavior is what it is, and those reasons point, I believe, to a disassociation with who we truly are in this world of ours.
Thank you so much, Simon. It's especially gratifying to have a subscriber digging into the archives and still liking what they see. Thanks for that. And your thoughts here on the why and the meaning of who we are now and how we got here are excellent. I suppose the authors had to pick some manageable parameters. I like your use of "disassociation" too, since I see us as both disconnected from our traditional selves amid our landscapes and blind to that disconnection. We are creatures of culture, equally adaptable to promised lands and prison cells, and so culture is where the solutions are. We're so tool-obsessed that the tools have replaced the natural world, though I can't decide if the push for intelligent tools is more closely aligned with our desire to enslave or our need for god-like entities. That's crudely said, and off the cuff, but hopefully it makes some sense. I'm a bit sleep-deprived at the moment... Anyway, thanks again for such a thoughtful comment.
You might need to go deeper into your comment about intelligent tools when we've both had a night's sleep. But I was thinking just now about how AI can do instantaneous translation. We'll all jump on this, of course - it's amazing! - and yet we will lose the cultural understandings that come with learning a language (what with language and culture being so closely entwined). It does seem god-like... but it also turns rich, natural, human interactions into 1s and 0s.
I'm also thinking that we're always adding - adding more tools - when perhaps we need to subtract. Perhaps we need to unlearn some of our cleverness. When we've peeled back the layers, maybe we will discover our animal natures. Less is more and all that.
Well said, Simon. On the language point, I'm reminded of what's been said about the difficulty/joy of translating poetry, whether poetry is what's lost or what's kept in the process. Always an intriguing question. As for unlearning our cleverness - great phrase - I'm immediately reminded of Barry Lopez and his discussion (and demonstration) of restraint. I think restraint was a central point for him, that industrial human society needed to take the myriad hints offered by the natural world and Indigenous knowledge regarding what's necessary to live well. Less can be much more, both in terms of aesthetics and meaning, and especially in terms of right relation to the world.