Hey Jason, thanks for another great essay with interesting links. Soon, I’m heading out into the thick western forest fire smoke to take a gentle walk to think about the changing world, but first wanted to comment... Last week you stated, "We’re as blind to most of the electromagnetic spectrum as we are to our transformation of the Earth (science informs us about both, but we seem to scarcely understand)." Our indifference, it seems, will continue until it becomes even more personal (folks have to FEEL it, despite the fact it is all around). Thanks for helping make us feel. I'd like to see your class on the dissection and impact of the smartphone in the mainstream -- I'd attend and I don't even have a cell phone! Like your essays, and those written by others, as well as books you've mentioned, we need more avenues to understanding. In "A Brief History of Earth,” Andrew Knoll quotes Baba Dioum, a 1968 Senegalese forest ranger: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."
Thanks, Liesl, for the beautiful comment. And I'm impressed at your lack of smartphone. You've held out a lot longer than I did, though to be fair it's still a phone and camera for me rather than a rabbit hole into other media.
I think you (and Baba Dioum) are very much correct. His diagnosis is elegant. It doesn't speak to the other forces at work - economic and political - beyond our own consciousness-building, but even those forces can be nudged by a population big enough and motivated enough to create a world that values more than just abstract human development, that teaches about and understands and loves the community we evolved alongside and that we now have a responsibility for.
Well said. I think Aldo Leopold would agree: "We abuse land because we see 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."
Hey Jason, thanks for another great essay with interesting links. Soon, I’m heading out into the thick western forest fire smoke to take a gentle walk to think about the changing world, but first wanted to comment... Last week you stated, "We’re as blind to most of the electromagnetic spectrum as we are to our transformation of the Earth (science informs us about both, but we seem to scarcely understand)." Our indifference, it seems, will continue until it becomes even more personal (folks have to FEEL it, despite the fact it is all around). Thanks for helping make us feel. I'd like to see your class on the dissection and impact of the smartphone in the mainstream -- I'd attend and I don't even have a cell phone! Like your essays, and those written by others, as well as books you've mentioned, we need more avenues to understanding. In "A Brief History of Earth,” Andrew Knoll quotes Baba Dioum, a 1968 Senegalese forest ranger: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."
Thanks, Liesl, for the beautiful comment. And I'm impressed at your lack of smartphone. You've held out a lot longer than I did, though to be fair it's still a phone and camera for me rather than a rabbit hole into other media.
I think you (and Baba Dioum) are very much correct. His diagnosis is elegant. It doesn't speak to the other forces at work - economic and political - beyond our own consciousness-building, but even those forces can be nudged by a population big enough and motivated enough to create a world that values more than just abstract human development, that teaches about and understands and loves the community we evolved alongside and that we now have a responsibility for.
Well said. I think Aldo Leopold would agree: "We abuse land because we see 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."