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.
Brandi- tell me about it.
posted September 21, 2009 at 11:19 pm
What?
posted September 22, 2009 at 11:06 am
Gus is something supposed to be here?
posted September 22, 2009 at 2:23 pm
someone named Brandi posted a nice response to an un-related post – and asked whether I knew anything about “Witch School.” I don’t. I do not have access to any of your email addresses – unless as occasionally happens for reasons known only to their server, I have to approve comment. (I was once asked to approve one of my own comments.)
I figured this was a way to find out…
posted September 22, 2009 at 3:50 pm
A witch’s education begins with picking up one little charm. Or being taught one. For me, it was being tought how to center, ground, and move energy within and around myself.
posted September 22, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I did that online witch school for about two days before becoming bored. You can probably find more information on the Internet in general without bothering with witch school. Heck, reading Terry Pratchett will probably do you just as well.
posted September 22, 2009 at 9:58 pm
If it’s the outfit I’m thinking of, it’s an online school run by a guy named Ed Hubbard out of Hoopeston, Illinois. They may have had a physical teaching or organization space there too. I believe the tradition they come out of is called Corellian. Never met the man in person. The scuttlebut depends who you ask. Some of the old-guard traditional coven folks are down on him for self-promoting or the idea of an online school. Others say he’s given back to the community in various ways. I think they did a big push for Hurricane Katrina relief a few years back. I guess an online school or a book is never as good as getting initial training in a good coven, but 90% of people don’t have that opportunity for one reason or another.
It goes to the bigger question of whether people should be charging for such things, and I’m of a mixed mind on that question. I don’t like the idea of a professional clergy caste anymore than Gus does, and I also don’t want to see paganism become the latest billion-dollar self-help guru fad. It also feeds the ludicrous notion that one needs to have someone “make” you a Wiccan or pagan of any kind.
On the other hand there just aren’t that many decent and knowledgable people willing to step up to the teaching task. Too many of the ones that are willing to do it for free or a nominal fee are in it for the wrong reasons and exact a far higher fee in other ways – control,. having their ego fed, outright abuse etc. In that light, it’s hard to take an absolutist position against people charging for instruction. I pay about $500 a semester for a chemistry or biology class at the local community college, and it’s not hard to pay $500 for a credit hour at other schools. I don’t know what the answer is. I’d be intrested in hearing other’s perpsectives on this.
posted September 22, 2009 at 10:02 pm
If Hubbard’s Witch School is meant, this is the web site.
posted September 23, 2009 at 8:39 am
My two cents: If a thing has worth, one should not eschew paying for it.
If you can find it free, good for you! But that doesn’t make a price tag an evil concept.
posted September 28, 2009 at 11:26 am
I have very little info to base it on, and it’s not because I object to the money charged, but something in the pit of my stomach revolts every time I hear this group mentioned. I don’t know if it’s instinctual or if perhaps it’s the part of my soul that protects me from frauds (&that i really should listen to way more often). Whatever it is that sends me this hunch, I just feel that this group is WRONG WRONG WRONG.
I have an acquaintance that was spending a lot of money on this Corellian stuff and although i never saw the workbooks the little info that was shared didn’t exactly assuage my concerns.
I guess it comes down to this: I believe that a bad teacher is worse than no teacher at all.