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.
Tim Wise has written a revealing piece about how the Tea Partyers are overwhelming evidence of White racism. I then tried his “imagine” experiment with with Pagans and replaced Tea Partyers with Christians talking about how this should be a Christian country, that other religions were evil, that their holy book should override the constitution, and so on.
Very revealing. We should never forget it.
with thanks to America Blog
posted April 25, 2010 at 12:19 pm
As I mull this over a little, what comes to mid is a sense that we–and I guess that “we” could be any aggregation or group or community or bunch or tossed together by circumstances assortment (citizens, demonstrators, ideologues, neighbors, passengers on a jumbo jet–are frustrated by the obviously rigged game/world. But that we do not yet get who’s running how things are rigged or what, exactly, to do about it.
We are continuing to play by outdated rules as the riggers are using supercomputers to alter the rules faster than human minds can adapt.
We, as it looks to me right now, aren’t even in the ballpark’s parking lot–so far as putting the game back on any kind of fair and playable basis.
posted April 25, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Tea Party 1773: No Taxation Without Representation!
Tea Party 2010: No Taxation!
posted April 25, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Their racism has been obvious to me by the grossly disproportionate hatred and reaction they have had to Obama. Plus, they went on a fear crazed buying binge of guns and ammunition in the months just before and after his election.
posted April 26, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Interesting post. There are quite a lot of fallacy of exclusion, hasty generalizations and law of small numbers logic errors in the piece by Tim Wise but it does get you thinking. Here is a link to a short interview segment from the twin boobs of Sauron, Glenn Beck and Ted Nugent. One could argue that it is taken out of context but then with these two there really is no such thing as logical, intelligent “context” possible.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516796,00.html