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.
Last week I went with a Pagan friend to the Marin Interfaith Council’s meeting, to hear Barbara McGraw give a talk on church and state in America. McGraw is author of Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, a very good discussion of how our Founders anticipated relations should be between church and state. California’s spiritual diversity was well represented by the people who turned out to hear her. Along with Pagans, at least the Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Bahai. Episcopal, Zen Buddhist, Brahama Kumari, Taoist, Unitarian, UCC, and Sufi traditions were all represented.
In a lively talk McGraw explained that neither the religious right nor the secular left really understands the Founders’ thinking on church and state. Secularists argue religion should be purely private, the right that we are a Christian country. This is why both sides throw quotations around so freely, quotations that seem to contradict one another. They ignore the context of the quotations they sling about. As she put it, both sides “are half right and half wrong.”
From John Locke, through the Founders, the view was that God communicated in many ways. God’s relationship with people could be through conscience, revelation, nature, and reason. Freedom of conscience was vital, because only with it could people be free to enter into the relationship with God in a way that seemed good to them. Locke explicitly included Jews, Muslims, Indians, and Pagans. He was echoed by our Founders, who went beyond Locke to also include atheists, who could listen to their conscience.
In contrast to the ‘Christian’ Right, and most practices before our founding, God’s inspiration and guidance was seen as coming from the ground up, not from the top down. This was why John Adams could write our constitution was made for a moral or religious people, and James Madison emphasized the need for “virtue.” Freedom was not for private happiness primarily, it was for seeking the happiness of everyone.
Freedom of religion was not intended to make religion private, but rather to enable Americans to enter into “a great conversation” about the good society. Religion was intended to inform and motivate our actions because only through inputs by all people of good conscience could a self-governing society be a good society. The Civil Rights movement, with its serious involvement by many denominations, would be an example of the Founder’s hopes showing life.
From the Founders’ point of view, the growing religious pluralism in American society would be a good thing, enlarging the perspective that could contribute to a good society. Madison made it explicit, pointing out that when there was great diversity, on balance agreement could be reached among people mostly on measures that would benefit the community as a whole, because no single group, be it religious or otherwise, would be able to have its way while sacrificing the well-being of others.
posted June 28, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The fact that both extremes in this debate seem to dominate the field illustrates the utter lack of imagination so evident in most of our political and social debates these days. It’s gratifying to see that pagans are a part of a productive conversation on this matter. Unfortunately, those groups that have grown used to the top-down model of religion are growing more reactionary as they witness this growth in pluralism
posted June 28, 2009 at 6:17 pm
This position is all well and good but is it really relevant to talk about the current state of America in terms of what men two centuries in their graves thought when compared against the realities of today?
The founders didn’t have to contend with Rove v. Wade or the Xian Dominionist movement. The founders had never heard of global warming or embryonic research. The founders were also trying to found a nation rather than perpetuate one that was already hundreds of years old. Most importantly, the founders didn’t have to contend with a vocal, violent, apocalyptic death cult that actively desired to conquer and subjugate the world in the name of Jesus and that was disproportionately represented in governing bodies across the nation.
I also remind everyone that, while the men who founded our country had plenty of good ideas that have persisted through the intervening decades they also had a large share of bad ideas as well. The history of our country is defined as much by the struggle to shrug off those bad ideas as it is by the attempt to live by the good ones. As we approach the hundred and fifty years since the USA was founded, it might do us all some good to think and talk about what we want our country to be in the here and now.
posted June 28, 2009 at 7:01 pm
This is a response to Thomas’ post. I think that the founders were intimately aware of what religious intolerance and fanaticism could do. Mary Dyer, along with three other Quakers, were hanged in Boston for their religious convictions. There are other examples of religious strife from colonial America. And the bitter experience of Europe’s religious wars were very much on the founders’ minds.
Best,
Jim
posted June 28, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Okay, I AM Canadian, but by MY math, America was founded just shy of 233 years ago. July 4th, 1776 right?! Good points Thomas, but credibility is somewhat destroyed by such inaccuracies.
posted June 29, 2009 at 1:42 am
Re Cassaundra: what inaccuracies?
You are correct in the age of the United States and we are approaching the 250th anniversary of the country. It’s 17 years away and it’s the next major national birthday.
posted June 29, 2009 at 9:30 am
The “Great Experiment” was designed — as in deliberately constructed — to establish a living government based on foundational principles. It was, contrary to what some Christian determinists would have it, set up in opposition to any even mildly theocratic pressure.
This, on the surface, makes it secular and nothing else. However, McGraw makes the important point, and if some would wish to offer rebuttal is should be to that point: pluralism was the guiding principle, and the founders succeeded in making pluralism possible.
Yes, they failed to establish pluralism from the beginning. Yes, the nascent government jumped with both feet onto the very principles they espoused during the Revolution. But here we are, 233 years later, and the foundational principles remain strong… and we are just as capable of screwing them up as the founders were, so I suggest we consider ourselves in Good Company.
posted June 29, 2009 at 9:36 am
Thomas go back and read your own post — you said “the hundred and fifty years”; you obviously meant “two hundred”.
It is amazing that the concepts our Founders put forth so long ago are still in place for the most part. They foresaw changes and thus incorporated the allowance of Amendments to address them. However, they could not have foreseen the myriad of lobbyists, religious and otherwise, that infiltrate our government now. Our representatives are supposed to be our “lobbyists”; if anyone ever listened to my advice I would say to eliminate ALL lobbyists, period. And religious groups would have no input into the running of our country.
Paraphrasing what Ben Franklin is reported to have said, “You have a Republic, if you can keep it”.
posted June 29, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Re: Cassaundra
Upon re-reading, you are correct. I omitted the word “two” in my first comment.
However, a typo on a weblog comment doesn’t destroy one’s credibility any more than pausing while speaking does.