Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
I will return to Pantheacon issues shortly, but Holly Liebowitz Rossi over at Fresh Living wonders whether I am using the word ‘spiritual’ appropriately in my blog on shopping locally. This gives me an opportunity to explore this interesting question a bit more.
In mainstream Western culture ‘spirituality’ has generally been separated from the material world. They are two orders of existence, one higher than the other. Radical secularists just chop off the higher level, and voila! We are in the midst of a world of things, valuable only for our subjective utility. We are radically alone in the universe, but in consolation, we have lots of stuff. Economists are the new high priests, and when the God fo the Market is happy with us, we are awash in stuff.
Hunting and gathering peoples, and the Pagan traditions that grew from them blend these levels of spirit and the world about us. They do so in different ways, but all believe the world of spirit is not radically separate from our day to day existence. NeoPagans generally share this outlook.
From a NeoPagan perspective we do not live in a world of things valued only for their utility. We live in a world of relationships, and from those relationships comes utility, among much else. If you are not sure what I mean, think of friendship to get my point. Friends are useful, but if I value someone for their usefulness, I am not their friend. In this sense Holly is spot on in noticing I connect spirituality with community, but in her more critical remarks I suspect still assumes our culture’s division between spirit and the world.
American society values nothing for itself. For me that is its major shortcoming. For many Americans not even human beings matter much, given their support of torture and bland acceptance of children’s deaths as “collateral damage” in wartime. In such a place getting into a frame of mind where we are aware of immersion in a world of relationships is difficult. If we think of ourselves as ‘consumers,’ it is impossible.
Treating buying locally as an important principle is a first practical step into this wider sense of relatedness with all around us. It need not mean I only buy locally. As one of my commenters in my previous blog pointed out, even local merchants sell things made far away, and for most of us that is a good thing. Few are rich and prices do matter. My argument is not to ignore these things, but not to let them slweays override the less obvious relationships we have with our community, a community that properly understood extends in concentric rings to encompass ever the universe.
posted February 17, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Neighborhoods that have actual locally operated shops–where the owner lives in the neighborhood, (sometimes over the store), have personalities and their own energy fields. It’s a palpable character. you feel comfortable there. The pace of life slows down a little. The people don’t all look the same anymore. They have bright shining eyes and when they smile at you they mean it. You have to slow down to see all these things, but they are there if you can remember to look with the right kind of eyes.
posted February 21, 2009 at 7:50 am
Respectful Christian visitor weighing in here: Over the past couple years our household has made a concerted effort to, whenever possible, buy locally, especially food. (We live in a rural area which admittedly makes this easier than it might be for any city-dwellers reading.) I cannot tell you how enriching this ongoing experience has been. We have cultivated wonderful relationships with local farmers and other “locovores” — an amazing group that encompasses everyone from Amish families who sell us produce and chickens to a local businessperson who sells his grass-fed, homegrown meat and poultry on the side to a friend from church who trades us home-canned green beans or our home-canned salsa. We also find ourselves feeling more gratitude and respect for the things we eat and the steps that bring them from field to table. And we also find ourselves sharing the joys and struggles of our neighbors — the joy of a family beginning a CSA flower-share business, or the funky, relaxed ambience of a mom-and-pop hardware establishment; the sorrow of the family who provides us with lamb and herbs, when disappearing hive disease emptied its new beehives overnight. Of course we can’t, nor would we want to, eschew supermarkets and imported foods/goods entirely; but we now purchase all of our meat, and most of our seasonal vegetables and fruit, from local/regional sources. My partner and I were talking about this the other day; we would never go back to our old way of purchasing.