Natural Agents Of Change
Posted by skyblu on April 15, 2007
WHAT WE ARE IS WHAT WE DO
The very act of living, requires life to alter it’s environment. From the byproducts of eating and breathing to the castles we live in; all require and produce change in the environment. This is the natural order of life on the planet earth. Birds do it, bees do it, trees do it, beavers do it, we do it. It’s natural.
There is nothing ‘destructive’ about our changing food into poo. There is nothing ‘destructive’ about our changing O to CO or CO2 during breathing. This is ‘natural.’ There is nothing ‘destructive’ about a beaver building a dam across Thorofare Creek in Yellowstone.
The byproducts of the dam built by 
the beaver include dead grass, dead trees, eroded trails & runs, trapped fish, eroded stream banks, siltation of the pond, etc. This is natural and it’s what beavers do. In fact, whatever a beaver does – and whatever alteration of the environment results – is natural.
The only difference between beaver dams and human dams is one of scale. Oh, and somewhere along the way a value judgment is made. Not the value judgment of “good vs. bad,” but the value judgment about “natural vs. unnatural.” Somewhere the perception develops that some natural behaviors are “bad” and others are “good.” And, in the case of humans “Natural” vs. “Unnatural.”
The National Park Service at one time believed that wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and other predators were bad. These “bad” elements of the ‘natural environment’ were eliminated so that the “good” elements of the ‘natural environment’ could proliferate. The consequences of this action are with us today and we deplore the “unnatural” “imbalance” that the removal of predators left behind.
Somehow, removal of predators (coyotes & muggers,) from Central Park, in New York City is viewed as good and natural. These kinds of value judgments creep into our vocabulary and cloud our thinking.
From Julian Steward to Noam Chomsky there has been a thread of thought that points out how the universe is shaped by our language and it’s depictions of the “natural world.”
Depending on your theology you believe that humans are “natural” or “unnatural.” And that theology structures your vocabulary, and that vocabulary is laden with value judgments about the alterations to the environment that humans make – from breathing to dam building to global warming.
There is no behavior or byproduct that can be attributed to humans that is not found in some other living organism. There is of course the attribute of scale, and the supposed attribute of “reason & intelligence.”
In a very real sense the current state of the world is 100% natural. The anthropogenic component of global warming is as natural as the rhythmic swing of temperature & weather has been in the past.
Humans, (of course depending on your theology,) are just a recent development in the long history of environment-altering organisms.
Humans, (depending on your theology,) are just another part of the complex equation that determines the current and future state of this little rock. And humans, (depending on your theology,) will be long gone by the time this little rock becomes part of the sun. It’s just natural, (depending on your theology.)
It’s time to deal with the semantic component of our values. Are protected wolves “natural?” Are protected grizzly bears natural? Are we going to make anything “more natural” by delisting either? Of course not. We are natural and our actions are natural and the byproducts of our actions are natural. The question is — is it good?
Because, my theology demands that I make decisions based on a value structure that sees us all as natural: and all of our actions are natural as well. We can, however, change those actions in light of our definition of good or bad. Good for what? Bad for what? If it’s good for the earth, should we eliminate humans? If it’s good for humans does that mean we have to change the earth?
What’s good for Yellowstone? What’s good for visitors? Now there’s an interesting question framed over 90 years ago with the establishment of the National Park Service. And it’s a question of values not “natural vs. unnatural.” Or, is it?
The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purposes of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
The arguments about what is, or is not, “natural” are spurious. It’s all natural – and in a most troubling sense it’s both good and bad. That’s just the way human constructs are. Just like the roads that “impair” the “natural” scenery so that we can enjoy the “natural” scenery.
We and our roads and our dams and our CO2 are natural. We should decide what to do to make them “good.” If we can.
Jim Macdonald said
Okay, “good,” if “natural” is semantically vacuous, this leads me to the hard question: What is good and bad?
That is the question that people run from like the plague, cloaking the question in the verbiage of “natural”, “scientific,” “practical,” and “wild.” Today, we are taught that “good” and “bad” are “personal philosophies” and hence nothing that can be discussed. “Just the facts please!” they squeal as though “nature” was merely dry burnt toast.
But, we can’t run; the value judgments are infectious, and NATURALLY so. We cannot run from the fact that we value. So, I hope we won’t run from what it is we all do and consider the discussion you raise seriously (I’m trying to have that discussion on another forum right now).
What is good and bad? How does that relate to Yellowstone? I’m a freak; I can think of nothing else that could possibly interest me more. But, thankfully, my freakishness is both natural and practical (and maybe even becoming of me – though I think I’m perhaps stretching it).
What is … it? I spent the evening with the Piscataway Indians (even wrote about it here. I come home and read all about how the whole thing could be a fraud. But, that rests in a value judgment about what it is to be and the value of the being…my girlfriend’s in bed, sleeping, worrying about the future, upset with the noises above us in the apartment upstairs…it doesn’t seem good, but is it? What is this good and this bad? Something has to give because while we all might be natural; it’s not possible that we are all acting well since we act in ways that are contradictory.
Anyhow, I’m curious as to what you think. I read your blog now religiously (so to speak), and I find myself agreeing with you about 74.9% of the time (empirically verified by reliable sources). In any event, I haven’t responded except in meaningless blurbs inmy so-called newspaper that you’ve kindly endorsed. But, this one I had to respond to because you are talking about something very important; I think it’s self evidently good to raise the issue of “what is good”…and it’s refreshing to me. I hope you’ll share more.
I’m sorry for the layered poetry shit above (it’s sometimes fun to write like that, but that’s only one side of me); something about Chomsky and semantics gets me that way. I really am just curious and hopeful; I really do want to know what you’ll say next. I’m finding it helping me out a lot in my own thoughts and my own journey.
laluttefinale said
Nice blog!
skyblu said
As trite as it seems today, I retreat to East Prussia and say that it’s simply the ‘greatest good for the greatest number.’ It’s as if we’ve forgotten that we’re mortal moralists and behave as if there were no thoughts but our contemporary ones.
Kant wrapped it up for me, (except for a few of Nietzsche’s complaints,) – the world is reduced to our understanding of it – we’d better learn more and quickly! Understanding is the key, and knowledge is the foundation. So of course good, (and bad,) change with knowledge.
Chomsky & Kant could have had good conversations about good and bad, (which I like better than good vs. evil,) and would eventually agree that ” . . . the world is what we make it” – thanks mom.
Yellowstone has, from the beginning been operated on a principle of the greatest good for the privileged. Damn the hoi palloi and praise the gentry. It has set the example for the rest of the parks. Egalitarianism is saved for those that can afford it. From the time of the “sagebrushers” to the “snomobileers” there has been a resistance to popular appreciation.
The saving grace in all of this is that the world always impinges on our solipsism and ‘adjusts’ our mind. For me it’s the weather. It should be predictable and certain – it’s not. We just haven’t found that damn butterfly in the Amazon.
For Yellowstone it’s the continued and repeated demand by the hoi palloi for access and understanding.
The hoi polloi have been eschewed in favor of the gentry. No wonder attendance across the system is down – the gentry today have more important things to do, like getting their corporations to exploit the parks.
The ‘idea’ of a National Park is a sound one, just look to Kenya, New Zealand, etc. We’ve abandoned both ‘National’ and ‘Natural’ for ‘political’ and polemical.’ We just don’t know it or admit it.
…….skyblu
Jim Macdonald said
I’m not sure I’m ready to pursue (but it looks like I have–eek) the question more right now; I think it will keep coming out as we comment on Yellowstone. I am a rabid anti-utilitarian; I’m not sure I would count Kant among the utilitarians, though (the categorical imperative doesn’t really strike me as necessarily equating to the “greatest good for the greatest number”). So, though, like you, I’m vehemently anti-gentry, I wonder what is the “greatest good”, who count among “the greatest number” and how we can know the actions of one equate to the other. I have a tendency to think that the attempts to answer that question have led to the consequence that Yellowstone is “for the gentry” regardless of the intentions.
So, what I’m saying is that you and I seem to arrive at a lot of the same results, but it sounds like we may come from very different conceptions of “good.” My view is very minimalistic in that I don’t think there’s a lot we can say about it outside of a list of tautologies (I differ from Kant in that I do think these tautologies say something about reality or the “thing in itself”). Yet, in those tautologies, there is a lot to digest (indeed the whole universe). Anyhow, minimally, “Thou shalt not contradict oneself”, and therefore “Thou shall not claim to know more (or less) than one knows” amounts to much of my ethical foundation. It should be easy to follow, but we can’t seem to do it. We think we know answers we don’t know, and we enforce those values, and therefore set up a gentry class (one that fluctuates throughout history, but one based in vanity nevertheless).
Okay, so I guess this leads me to criticize something about the utilitarian calculus “greatest good for the greatest number (of x)” as an answer to what is “good” and “bad.” That seems to suggest that good is simply a quantity that applies to a specific worthy population. A quantity of what? For whom? And, isn’t this just a re-definition of a new gentry class outside of those who are ~x? Most people defending their policy judgments for Yellowstone probably think they are utilitarians, too. They just define the boundaries of the quantity and the x differently. What makes your boundaries better? I have trouble seeing any contradiction in denying those boundaries.
I’m also not sure what you mean by your last paragraph. Perhaps, this would get at the difference and yet the surprising similarities that arise from our different approaches.
Cheers,
Jim
skyblu said
Maybe no – probably yes. Kant made a good life and reputation by telling us what we already knew. It just sounded good ’cause it was hard to read,’ even then.
By, (pick you age,) 5 or 7 or whenever we have our values, and they determine our actions. Despite ex post facto analysis, actions continue to determine what we are, (the title of the piece.)
As we learn, the maximum for action will change – if we continue to learn. From Aristotle to Colin Wilson, (Kant included,) the experience of “doing” gives feedback. We learn from it or not.
Be you an Existentialist or something else you continue to do – until you die – then . . . . depending on your theology . . . . learning quits.
All philosophizing is just trying to understand the doing. Mick Jagger vs. the Beatles is the paradigm that we’re struggling with right now. We’re just busy formalizing what we already believe. A new paradigm is being formed; Gangsta’ Rap?
Good vs bad boils down to – “does it hurt me, and therefore others – or does it hurt others and therefore me.”
In the Yellowstone case, so many of the administrative actions hurt so many people it hurts them and me. Failure to anticipate the future means the pain of exclusion, expensive lawsuits, denuded landscapes, unaffordable buildings, over the snow travel in times of no snow, etc. That hurts us all.
The people that momentarily feel good about the park are rewarded momentarily but fail to learn by failing to consider the whole ball of wax. They have failed to incorporate the existential reality into their knowledge base. They just grab their $3,000 spotting scopes, return to their $450,000 motor coach and, (at 2 mpg,) leave to collect one more scalp – on to Arches.
The categorical imperative is just one more way of expressing the golden rule . . . nothing new there. “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
Be it Vietnam, Sex, Iraq, or Yellowstone: satisfaction and good run parallel courses. The imperative is that we learn and act accordingly. That’s what’s good for Yellowstone.
It's a wine blog. It's a hiking blog. It's Winehiker Witiculture! said
[...] Natural Agents Of Change « A Step Apart If it’s good for the earth, should we eliminate humans? If it’s good for humans does that mean we have to change the earth? Skyblu over at A Step Apart examines these questions in a very thoughtful post. (tags: environment nature natural change earth good bad skyblu) [...]
be said
by what standard are we to understand/endorse moral agenhood? moral subjection? – to all? we? the categorical imperative, as i understand it was a standard by which to apply to moral agents (as a derivative of an agent’s, or agents’ species propensity to reason). that standard rests on what i understand to be a definite alienation (nuomenal/phenomenol – ability to experience/think/reason). but does yellowstone reason – should yellowstone reason?
the wolves are what they do – and what they do is beautiful/good/right – as far as i understand/experience. yellowstone is what it does – beautiful/good/right. what ‘we’ do to yellowstone (and ourselves) is frequently egregious, and as far as ‘i’ can discern, totally out of accord with what yellowstone does… so ? can teleology replace nuominal ‘reason’ as the precondition for moral agenthood/subjectivity? but then what of the foundation for the categorical imperative? good/bad?
i can not help but agree with you – if its what you believe – that consumptive hedonism is not a maxim consistent with consistency (it’s contradicting somethin’) – what then of utilitarianism? a more enlightened hedonism?
and “hurt” – “does it hurt me, and therefore others – or others, and therefore me” – “hurt” – now that’s just not natural…
and that photo of the cow – that sure as hell ain’t natural ; )
Jim Macdonald said
I have not had a lot of time to respond. I think that you are still begging the question. You made a strong point to start, that “natural” is semantically empty, that what matters is what is “good”, but when I probe into what is “good”, your answer is “more good for more of us”, and you substitute the word good for “hurt.” There is a community aspect of it; so you are saying a little bit about the nature of “good”, but why this community of people, not this community of beings, who belongs, who doesn’t belong, what constitutes the health of the community, etc. has simply semantically shifted into another vacuous circle.
My problem with utilitarianism (I don’t think you are talking about Kant; my problems with Kant’s approach another time) is that anyone can embrace it and yet not really be saying anything. Who could be against the “greatest good for the greatest number”, the “least bad”, etc.? Well, duh? Everyone argues that what they are for is good, and good for those who are most worthy. The hard part is figuring out “what” and “who” that is and “how” to make it happen. There is nothing ethically interesting about utilitarianism, except that people take it seriously. They think that what’s good is self evident or is determined by science or determined by the majority or determined by common sense, and so people with absolutely contradictory notions of what is the greatest good for the greatest number all think they are following the same philosophy when in fact they don’t have any ideas at all. At root, there is an arrogance; no one explores what’s left unsaid in our pronouncements. No matter our pronouncement, there is something that needs asking and figuring out. (I think in a roundabout way, I’m saying something about what I take the nature of good to be – yet, if I simply said it, reduced it, formulized it, I would be falling into the same semantical traps that lead to these vicious circles).
I agree with you strongly about people and what they do in the Park, unreflectively, with reactions, not understanding how their unthinking privilege is unwittingly hurting people. But, it’s not simply that they hurt people that’s the problem. I think, like Kant, I would agree that there’s something inherently self contradictory in what they are doing, and that is the problem par excellence. However, I think there is something more to say about the nature of the problem. You see, when it comes down to it, I like that you’ve noted that “nature” can be semantically meaningless, but what I hope I’m demonstrating is that so can anything. The problem isn’t that we need to find a new word that has a more distinctive definition; it’s that we need to avoid the entire practice. Nature in fact can breathe as a real and meaningful reality, but that requires us to see our concepts as not simply ideas before a mind (a la Kant and Hume and Locke before him).
I think Kant would say that the golden rule is consistent with the categorical imperative, but he would say that the difference is that the one is willed as an act of reason, the other is not. So, the categorical imperative is a stronger rule since it depends on nothing except the rational will. I don’t think that’s an unimportant point. It’s the process of truth that matters as much as the maxim itself – which reveals our words. If we think of this in Yellowstone, the hike, the ride, the journey is a necessary part of the experience of wonder. The spotting scope, the privileged access, the convenient reality cheapens the experience. “I can’t get no satisfaction” because “We all live in a yellow submarine”, our experience tied to the new myths for sale as part of popular culture. “Imagine,” sings Blake Lewis, “Vote for me 866-IDOLS-03.”
And, that’s the state of ethics and the modern bastardizations of ethics (Kant, Mill, James) – it’s reducible to quarks but packaged as a holistic philosophy.
It’s hard to write about such important subjects like this; the mind wanders. This is the kind of thing for conversation, life, and action. All the same, I admire you for being playfully serious. Even if I seem to be a bit critical here, I really am trying to understand things that trouble me. My approach is different, but I think there is a central insight that we must share or I wouldn’t agree with what you write so much and look forward to your point of view. And, I think that’s part of what I’m trying to understand and perhaps why I keep pressing you.
It’s also fun…even if I am quite serious. (Thankfully, I don’t talk like this most of the time; I’d drown in my own semantical quagmire – fool that I am).
Take care,
Jim
skyblu said
Since we vote on truth, we can also vote on good. We call it value judgments or ethical behavior, but the state of mind is certainly good or bad. Culture determines it, in the most basic sense. Situational ethics will continue to dominate cultural constructs and thus the sub-title of the piece “What We Are Is What We Do.”
There is no dark secret insight here; nor can I appeal to the absolutist position of cave dwellers barking at shadows. Good can no more be absolute than any other psycho-cultural construct; and it’s mitigated by action and the results of same. The great tragedy is that the evaluation is, (of necessity,) ex post facto.
Cultural relativism is the construct that allows this perspective. Until, (if,) there is a world culture then good shall continue to be slippery and as elusive as the stopped neutrino. Within culture the construct holds – and I wager will for quite a while. Why else do we so hate and love the French or the Russians? Why else are we still trying to understand “The Greeks?”
Push on with exploring, reduce to the Nth degree, and yet it is the hedonistic pragmatist that has always acted; and if in concert with cultural norms and values – then, sanctioned and good.
The unthinking act is the one that hurts.
…..skyblu
Jim Macdonald said
Well, we are drifting further apart fast, or at least it seems. Are your anti-privilege views about access to Yellowstone, your concern about the effects of climate change, and similar issues simply a vote in favor of a cultural norm that doesn’t exist? By today’s cultural norms, are you in the “bad”?
I think absolutes when it comes to ethics are very, very sparse…they are open to a great deal, but at the same time, I’m not a relativist. I’m a pluralist; the distinction is that for a relativist, anything goes (whether one calls oneself a “cultural relativist” or just a “relativist” means little – the one still logically entails the other). There is no truth except as determined according to the subjective reality (which is to say there is none at all). A pluralist is different in that there are parameters, but the parameters themselves are absolutes. Anything within those parameters goes. I can’t tell you much about what is “good”, either. However, I can say some things about what is “not good”; the distinction has some meaning. We couldn’t so much as have this conversation without there being some truth to that. Utterance depends upon real distinctions already pre-existing.
For me, there is a great deal of space for people to find their own goods, but that space isn’t infinite in every respect. My favorite philosophers, the rationalists (even if I only really like one of them), noted the different kinds of infinity, and that a lot of people made ethical, ontological, and epistemological mistakes because they didn’t keep it straight. There is infinite space for “good” behavior within the parameters; the parameters have real boundaries. Those boundaries are, shall we dare say it, natural…what makes them natural? Not because they define simply what people do but because they are boundaries of reason (therefore, of reality). To that extent, I agree with Kant (and probably do more than you despite what you claim because Kant’s rules are universal, absolute, and without exception, not culturally relative to cultural preference for what is “good” – they are a priori; although because Kant’s rules don’t necessarily apply to experience, they may end up leading to the same place as you – but that’s another discussion). I agree that reason places limits on our experience; I don’t think it goes far, but it goes somewhere meaningful.
That’s why I am a pluralist. I don’t believe that there are absolutes except as they define the boundaries of ethics; the rest I think of as dogma. Cultural relativism, as similar as it seems to look to pluralism, can actually lead to all kinds of rigid rules and dogmas because even that goes. It doesn’t make things or ethics simpler; it makes it insanely complicated since everyone speaks, but no one thinks they can figure anything out.
My war against the gentry in Yellowstone is one against dogma, against the belief in privilege, that “we the people” deserve more. No one deserves anything; no one is entitled…certainly not the rich. No one has a right to define and enforce those values; they don’t exist. They don’t make up the minimal parameters of ethics.
I get as fed up with the snowmobiler as the snow coacher; I get fed up with almost any of us who can afford to go to Yellowstone at all (who don’t live within shouting distance) and then complain about the price when we don’t do so in other aspects of our lives (like school lunches, bus and subway fares). Entitlement narrows what’s acceptable too much. I am afraid, though, that by replacing entitlement with an ethical voting system, we only will create the same entitled classes. That’s really just capitalism. There’s something worth resisting in that. If the cultural norm of a period accepts slavery, it’s still not okay, and you aren’t “bad” if you are in the cultural minority. You are “good” to resist that. Slavery is antithetical to the pluralistic possibilities permitted by ethics. We can go on and on, but now we are egalitarian not on the basis of a cultural vote, the shifting tides of people’s empty semantical fancy, but because any attempt to be otherwise is incoherent.
Cultural relativists can be quite ideologically rigid and absolute. I think it’s more helpful not to criticize people for being ideological, rigid, absolute, too complicated, too simple; it’s better to say what is the appropriate place for any of these categories. That’s the pluralist insight.
Anyhow, that’s enough for me for now. My work is calling – not nearly so interesting as this (unless you are into the politics of Algebra II end-of-course exams – that’s not my preference; but whether it is or isn’t, that’s not really what ethics is – it’s not a situational choice – it’s the horizon of possibilities where those choices happen, and at least choosing to be consistent with the world as horizoned)
Cheers,
Jim