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Dr. Ari Santas
PHIL 3180
January 18, 2012
1.) How might the decision of the climbers to turn back before they got the top of Corcovado serve as a metaphor for our present place in history? What does Doug mean later when he says that moving forward might mean turning around 180 degrees and taking a forward step?
The climbers really wanted to continue in the direction they were headed. They considered making the summit a personal goal and indicative of progress. It was only until it became blatantly clear that their lives were in danger that they decided to abandon the summit and become content with the climb itself. We are currently approaching a summit that scientists have warned against for decades with increasing intensity within the last few years. Like the climbers who worried about be able to even make it down, we may not be able to return to a previous state if we wait too late on this mountain of industrialization, corporatization and economic “progress”.
It is believed that there are tipping points that can occur within the fragile and necessary balance of Earth’s biosphere. Once a tipping point has been reached and nature takes over, we may not have the option of even looking for a way down the mountain. Doug mentions a common sense approach to dangerous situations that I remember hearing as a child watching Jim Henson’s amazing movie The Labyrinth. When Sarah is deadlocked in the maze uncertain of where to go next, she consults a weird old man with a bird attached to his head. The man tells her, “Sometimes the way forward is the way back”. Our ideas of progress are linear and masculine. They are goal oriented in terms of immediate and long term gain involving profits and not beings. I am not sure how far back we should go. There are advocates of creating small eco-villages that are not patriarchal in order to respect a Gaia oriented worldview. Whatever we must go back to, it hopefully will truly be sustainable and not a new way to market petroleum. Many of the “green” products are simply petrol products made to look natural and painted green, or they are natural products that are transported from China using petrol products. Either way the “green” message remains a message of consumerism. We cannot address environmental issues at all without addressing consumerism.
2.) Hydro-electric power seems like a good idea, but the large dam projects are heavily criticized in Patagonia, as they are throughout the world. Explain some of the problems associated with these large dams and the rift between small town and large city dwellers on this issue.
The problems associated with dams are the destruction of wildlife habitat, and changing the water flow so that streams completely dry up, affecting the water in surrounding areas. Building dams in or near small towns severely impacts aspects of the local aesthetic experience as well as game and fish relied upon for sustenance. Again, it may also affect local water resources. The electricity is usually sent to power larger areas at the cost of the rural people, the wildlife and land. On the film, the narrator mentioned that the video game hobby in the United States was enough to power the entire city of Santiago for one year. Whose will is more important depends upon the highest revenue that will be generated for the corporate interests making a decision. Everyone purchasing a new Wii or Playstation feels entitled to play the game system. The people living in rural areas of the world feel a connection with the land they survive off of and with the animals which inhabit the land. If fueling the plastic economies of large cities yields greater revenue for corporate interests, the costs of devastating local resources may seem smaller in the “big picture” for companies. This is the issue which drives environmental activism in local communities. While a pulp mill or other industry may bring low paying jobs into communities, the people become separated from local resources and dependent upon prepackaged lives produced by the industrial complex. Usually, these lives of convenience must be financed by taking on debt as well.
3.) Rapa Nui (Easter Island) illustrates a society that has exceeded its resources and as a metaphor for the planet. Jeff recalls a quote from Aldous Huxley: “Men do not learn very much from the lessons of history; and that is the most important lesson of history.”
In every age, people with power who are at the forefront of technological and scientific innovation consider themselves the champions of progress. The lessons of history are compartmentalized into books and points of reference for research papers, but rarely given much thought outside of purposes associated with learning lessons of domination over others. Throughout history, societies have risen and fallen, many of them unable to realize the process of disintegration they were involved in until it was too late to change. The most important lesson from history is that people are blanketed within an arrogant chosen ignorance which they feel absolves them of any personal responsibility to direct the course of events within society. Society, as it is, seems to be a wild animal void of reason on a whole, and driven toward immediate gain and pleasure at the expense of its own future sustenance.
We could use any aspect of historical catastrophe and it would fit into this idea. The environment is a catastrophe waiting that is different than all previous social catastrophes, and even perhaps all previous biological events leading to mass death. The reason being that without an environment to live in, we and every thing else on the planet are doomed. Also, given the mathematically slim probabilities of life ever emerging at all in this universe at any point and time, our actions against the environment may have consequences that are far beyond the scope of anything imaginable. If everything on the planet were to go extinct excepting a few deep sea bacteria, there is no guarantee that life would ever evolve in the same way it did millions of years ago. It may not evolve at all, ever.
I am reminded of something I heard on NPR once concerning global warming. A man said that when frogs are placed into a pot of boiling water they will jump out. However, when frogs are placed into a pot of tepid water and the temperature is slowly increased to a boiling point, the frogs do not jump out. We are in a pot of water whose temperature is beginning to rise. It may be rising rather quickly, according to many scientists, quicker than we thought it would.