I have put up my first thoughts on Environmental Ethics in Outlaw Politics...it was kind of a flushing out of thoughts...anyway, more will come.
-the colonel
Review: The Americans, Episode 4
11 years ago
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Environmental Ethics
It's been far too long since either the ambassador or myself have posted much of anything, aside from a couple poems, and I think this is for a few reasons. First, we are lazy. Second, such musing cannot be rushed and we must take our time and wait for that particular muse to infiltrate our mind. The muse must be one that will generate discussion and perhaps even opposing views. It takes time for these things to mature fully.
I have been struck by such an idea just today while reading For People and the Planet: Holism and Humanism in Environmental Ethics by Don E. Marietta, Jr.
It seems to me that we have an "environmental ethic" out there, somewhere, floating through society and our consciousness. However, it also seems that we do not really understand it and do not necessarily care too much about it. Our lack of interest on this topic is not because we want to see the planet waste away or that we do not care about future generations or the other forms of life dwelling among us. The reason we have not embraced some kind of ethic concerning the natural world is that we get it confused with our moral duty to other humans, we try to take on the new ideas of preserving the environment while gripping too tightly to the ethics we already have in place, which are, as Marietta calls it, atomistic - or seeing everything as individual atoms instead of as a functioning whole system.
This does not have to be so. To show what I mean I am going to attempt a kind of Cartesian form of skeptical argument. I am not going to prove that I know nothing other than I and some supreme being exist, instead I am going to throw all my current knowledge of ethics and morals to the wind and start anew. I will attempt to formulate a working set of principles that will take into consideration the implications our actions have on the entire ecosystem.
This is a daunting task and I ask that you have patience, as I am still reading on the subject and my views may change as I work through this project. It will be long and will require a series of many posts. I encourage comments and arguments as you feel appropriate.
From now on, the posts will be under the "Outlaw Politics" section of the blog, as I may feel the need to discuss policy.
-the colonel
I have been struck by such an idea just today while reading For People and the Planet: Holism and Humanism in Environmental Ethics by Don E. Marietta, Jr.
It seems to me that we have an "environmental ethic" out there, somewhere, floating through society and our consciousness. However, it also seems that we do not really understand it and do not necessarily care too much about it. Our lack of interest on this topic is not because we want to see the planet waste away or that we do not care about future generations or the other forms of life dwelling among us. The reason we have not embraced some kind of ethic concerning the natural world is that we get it confused with our moral duty to other humans, we try to take on the new ideas of preserving the environment while gripping too tightly to the ethics we already have in place, which are, as Marietta calls it, atomistic - or seeing everything as individual atoms instead of as a functioning whole system.
This does not have to be so. To show what I mean I am going to attempt a kind of Cartesian form of skeptical argument. I am not going to prove that I know nothing other than I and some supreme being exist, instead I am going to throw all my current knowledge of ethics and morals to the wind and start anew. I will attempt to formulate a working set of principles that will take into consideration the implications our actions have on the entire ecosystem.
This is a daunting task and I ask that you have patience, as I am still reading on the subject and my views may change as I work through this project. It will be long and will require a series of many posts. I encourage comments and arguments as you feel appropriate.
From now on, the posts will be under the "Outlaw Politics" section of the blog, as I may feel the need to discuss policy.
-the colonel
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
It's been quite some time since either the colonel or I posted anything up here, and by way of an excuse I'll tell you why: we're fuckin' lazy. So that's that.
More seriously, we've both been on break from our respective schools for the past month (excluding the last two weeks, over which we really were just being lazy) and so we decided to take a vacation from the blog as well.
We should have some posts up soon, though, so keep an eye out. There's a new poem over at the Surrational Rhetoric page to tide you over until we put some posts up on the other pages.
A belated merry jolly-days and all that jazz,
the ambassador
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