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.
Back from wonderful Vancouver, British Columbia, my favorite
city. I got there as the last
tourists visiting for the Olympics were departing, parking was becoming available again, and life began returning to
normal. I was there for non-Pagan
reasons – I am co-authoring a paper using emergent order theory to explain why Vancouver is the kind of liveable city it is. Two of the first serious thinkers about
emergent order were instrumental in the late-1960s reforms that set in motion the
changes that led to what Vancouver is today. While one has passed on, the other asked me to co-author the paper project. A rare honor.
The open thread that developed here on divination issues, once I shut my yap blog-wise, is wonderful. So long
as folks keep posting to it, I’ll move the chance to keep the conversation
going up the queue from time to time, under a more specific heading.
Just before leaving for Vancouver I was asked to contribute
to a blog debate on Community, Exit, and Coercion - a discussion mostly by libertarians and communitarians. (I am neither, but have connections to and sympathies with both.)
The result has been interesting, and I give this link for anyone who wonders
where I am coming from as a political theorist.
Since my mind was on completely secular issues while in
Vancouver, I was able to keep my end of that discussion going. But I could not shift my mental gears
enough to say much of interest here, given the little time I had available to
me. (It is hard to switch back and
forth from spiritual to secular issues, especially when totally immersed in discussing
and writing on the latter).
posted March 5, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Welcome back! Congratulations on the paper you’re co-authoring
posted March 5, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Glad you’re back. It’s that lie that convinces us that there’s a difference between the secular and the sacred that we need to eradicate. It’s all real; it’s all metaphor; there’s always more.
posted March 5, 2010 at 3:43 pm
In some ways I agree with you Hecate. There is no ultimate distinction. Spirit includes everything.
In other ways I think it’s a useful distinction.
My favorite approach is to say that the sacred includes the more than human context, the secular focuses on the human context. When we look at contexts beyond the purely human we begin to involve the sacred.
I think of politics as secular because first, it focuses on the human community, second, because when the sacred becomes an explicitly political concern it ‘s representation is likely to be controlled by power freaks – as we see with the Republican Party – and third, because the Sacred speaks to different people in different ways that are deeply personal,trying to enforce a spiritual insight simply because I think that is how Spirit spoke to me can tear a society apart and lead to murder.
I try and make my political arguments focus on reasons other than my being Pagan. Being Pagan helps give me the strength the stand my ground, and influences the positions I take, but I believe that my political reasons should address issues in ways that atheists and Christians, insofar as they are decent people, can accept and still remain atheists or Christians.
posted March 5, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Being Pagan helps give me the strength the stand my ground, and influences the positions I take, but I believe that my political reasons should address issues in ways that atheists and Christians, insofar as they are decent people, can accept and still remain atheists or Christians.
Can I use that quote on my blog? I think that it’s both true and lovely.
posted March 5, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Of course!
(blush)