[at-l] People, Nature and "Development" - A final thought or two and a toast to the New Year

[Clark Wright]

I received some off-list e-mail replises and have just read David’s and
RnR’s posts, and I wanted to leave all you good folk with a few additional
thoughts:

 

1)  I just finished watching and listening to the funeral services for
Gerald Ford, our 38th President; I was a fully engaged, troublesome teen
when Ford took office, and for some reason his passing has hit me harder
that I would have ever figured . . . as best I can figure such things out, I
think his passing has impacted many more than they would have expected
because of the juxtaposition of his infinite decency laid next to what we
see in D.C. today . . . somehow, I think there is a lesson there for us
hikers, too . . . passion is a wonderful thing, but it often obscures our
ability to relate to and empathize with each other . . . I respect and
admire, sometimes with shaking head, RnR’s passions, yet in the end, what
are we without BOTH the wonders of nature we all love AND the ability to
have relationships and love with one another?  That to me is the dilmemma .
. . I want to have passion for my conservation goals, but not at the expense
of my love of my fellow “equally natural” human beings . . . I struggle to
find room for both, with varying degrees of success, but that is indeed the
goal on this life’s path . . . 

 

2)  RnR talks about scale – to me, scale covers a lot of territory,
including the work of many men and women to create, build and protect
incredible things like 2,175+ mile long national treasures like the AT,
which then touch the lives of millions, with millions more to come . . .
what is scale when compared to God’s infinite love?  What is scale compared
to David’s point about life competing with entropy?  What is the scale of
man’s achievements when one realizes that, just as with the Beaver dam,
Hoover dam too will fall and crumble to dust and mud within a single tick of
the geological, universal time clock?  Of what use and scale is the loss of
the polar bear, the eagle, or the grizzly if we are too busy killing each
other or damning each other (pardon the pun!) over our varying faiths,
political beliefs, or definitions of how best to define, much less achieve
conservation and environmental protection?  It has taken me a long time, and
I have a long way (hopefully!) yet to go, but walking the Trail was a
powerful message to me about the importance of both the wilderness I
experienced, AND the relationships with other human beings that I formed and
continue to cherish to this day . . . in the end, it seems to me that I
gotta have both, and if I get too unbalanced either way, then that’s when I
get in the most trouble.

 

My New Year’s toast:  May my passions be better devoted to love, grace and
forgiveness of myself and those close to me, and to God, and may my passion
for wildness and wilderness be tempered with recognition of the natural
place in Earth’s ecosystems of my fellow man, burdened with the great
responsibilities of stewardship, knowing we often have failed in that
stewardship, but remaining confident that if we work together and respect
each other, we can not only accomplish much more common good, but we also
can find the greatest gift of all, which is to enjoy and share this amazing
planet and universe TOGETHER! :-).

 

ThruThinker

 

I. Clark Wright, Jr.

Ward and Davis, LLP

409 Pollock Street

New Bern, NC 28560

252-633-1101

252-633-9400 (fax)

252-229-5900 (cell)

   _____  

From: David Addleton [mailto:dfaddleton at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2006 11:20 PM
To: RoksnRoots at aol.com
Cc: AT-L at backcountry.net; icw at wardanddavis.com
Subject: OT: People, Nature and "Development"

 

Life is nothing but competing with entropy anyway: calling it 'profit'
doesn't make it any worse or better: it's just life as we know it . . .

The psychological argument here is a nonstarter . . . why one
rationalization deserves the adjective 'damnable' more, or less, than
another, is beyond my ken . . . 

R&R's post goes from acknowledging the logical conondrum, to a political
reason for ignoring it, to deciding the limits of what other people need to
know, and calling other's arguments 'damnable' . . . 

I think this means we've reached the logical end of discussion here . . . 

Enough.

Philosophical presupositions deserve a philosophical board, not an AT hiking
list . . . they're off topic here . . . 

I'd like some candyadienne here, about now, 



On 12/30/06, HYPERLINK "mailto:RoksnRoots at aol.com"RoksnRoots at aol.com
<HYPERLINK "mailto:RoksnRoots at aol.com"RoksnRoots at aol.com> wrote:

In a message dated 12/29/2006 10:21:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,
HYPERLINK "mailto:icw at wardanddavis.com"icw at wardanddavis.com writes:
*
*
*

"Describe in defensible, logical terms, the
difference between a beaver dam and Hoover Dam." 

          The beaver dam is part of the natural landscape which responds
with
natural adaptation like species that dwell and depend on the pools formed by
the dam as well as flood control etc. The pond edge where the beavers take 
their trees probably receive more sunlight which in turn causes special
microclimates and conditions for other species etc. There is probably a long
list of
fungi etc given life because of the extra flooding caused by the beavers.
Most 
important is the fact that the process is all completed by means of the
physical features of the animal.

           Hoover dam involves scales well beyond the actual bodily
abilities
of the animals creating it. It creates large-scale examples of the same 
species adaptation conditions that are very recent as far as "natural" time.
Where
Hoover dam goes beyond "natural" are the changes occurring in places far
from
the actual dam caused by the dam itself. The electricity developed by
Boulder 
dam allowed the creation of a vast city in Las Vegas that has sucked dry an
extensive desert watertable. So the so-called parallel between
moisture-increasing beaver dams and large human dams ends there with large
scale drying of the 
overall environment far from the dam, but not caused directly by the actual
physical, kinetic action of the dam itself. That's primarily why the human
dam
is un-"natural". Comparisons might be poetically or philosophically cute -
but 
in no way are they comparable.



people are just as much
a part of the natural ecosystems of the world and universe as any other
creature.  We are not inherently "unnatural," and what we build and do is 
just as natural from a logical point of view as that done by any other
creature.  To me, it is important not to case important environmental issues
as "us versus them," or "the natural order" versus "unnatural, polluting 
humans."

           ***   This is just the predictable human defense mechanism to
rationalize our current, ongoing vast destruction of nature at an
exponential
rate. Humans are great rationalizers (excuse-makers). At a time of increased

concern over our destruction of nature the past few years have been attended
by and
acceleration of same. That's all you need to know. Yes, nature might destroy
settled nature in cataclysms like asteroids or volcanism, but it is only man

that destroys the entire eco-equilibrium as a matter of concerned practice.
It's clear to me that a certain camp is trying to get the main environmental
mainstays down to where they aren't worth saving so they can say it was all
part 
of natural progress (and therefore they don't have to try) (and profit the
most
by not). They see nature in terms of competition for profits and are
therefore competing with it (by destroying it).

           It would be much more meaningful to say we are doing the Amazon
in 
our generation and probably putting the tiger to death. If you want to watch
flies on the window and call that "nature" be as poetic as you want - but
it's
still rationalization. And a damnable one at that. One that will work until 
it's all gone. Which is what it's really about...






*
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