Northern Arizona University/Environmental Ethics/Journals/Cab's Journal

1) Land Ethic

What morals should be in place when dealing with the land? I think this is a very interesting question. When looking at the parts of the environment that deal with life, such as trees and animals, it is easy to feel an intense interest in keeping them safe. Yet what happens when it is our need vs. the tree’s needs? Or even taking it to a different level, when mining for ore, the landscape is ruined and trees can’t live there for a time. Should we hold off on getting ores to create the lifestyle which all humans have become accustomed to? It is hard to think about such topics, of how everything we buy is most likely causing more of nature to be killed. On the opposite side of the coin, it is hard to think we will ever be able to kill off nature. It has been around for millions upon millions of years, it has adapted to every environment on this planet. Perhaps that would be the wrong way to look at the planet, as a system which has survived this long and can survive anything we do to it. But it certainly is an easier way to look at things.

2) Individual vs. Whole

How does one distinguish an individual from a group, it is difficult to think about, to truly understand where a leaf ends and a stem begins. I am sure the biologists have technical definitions of each, but where do the neurons end and the thought begin. Is there a difference? I know if we subdivide everything enough it would all be the same, despite the original meaning of atom (indivisible). Therefore we are all representatives of the whole. I believe this is the entire thought process used when considering fractals, that no matter what part you look at (in three dimensions) it will be representative of the whole.

      So what does that mean for us? That no matter what we do, we will be the mean of the society which created us. We will be just a small representative part of the whole of society? I would like to think that this is not true. We are each more than a mere representation of the whole. We must define that individualism and claim it proudly. Or else we become just another cog in the machine, we become no better than the next man, or the next. This thought is too sad for me to bear.

3) Conclusion reached: Anything is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.

Could something so simple be the grand truth so many have searched for? To just do good? I believe that there may be more to it than that. That right and wrong aren’t so simple, that the only thing that hangs in the balance is the beauty of the system. How would we be able to judge as a race, how would we be able to judge as a community? Beauty is so subjective it is difficult to believe it is a criteria for doing right. Perhaps doing right is something much more complicated. Perhaps doing right is not something that we can identify right away in a decision. We can only do what we think is best, and let the chips fall where they may. And in the end, looking back, it is the right thing. Fate, you fickle bitch, how do we untangle your devious web? If integrity, stability and beauty aren’t the criteria for doing right, what is? Is it our own integrity, stability and beauty which we should be concerned about? Of course our own would mean very little if there was nothing to show for it in the end. We would just be a beautiful, stable race with a rigid sense of integrity. We should have more to show than that when the end comes nigh.

4) Locke: Labor Theory of Property.

If we work it, it is ours, if we build it, it is ours, even if we just see it first, it is ours. It is a ridiculous concept to think that just because we have put our time and energy into something, that it is automatically ours. People should work the land to either better themselves, the community or merely the surrounding area. To always look only at their personal gain from the work they put in, is an outdated and near ridiculous way to go about living. But don’t get me wrong, it is always nice when you get something out of a lot of hard work, I am merely stating that it should not be the only motivation for doing things. Would the world be a better place if we all did work to better those around us than just to better ourselves? I think so. But on the other hand, if we only do things to better those around us, how do we lift ourselves out of a rut? Are we forced to merely rely on the kindness of strangers, hope against hope that others will not just turn their back on you once you have finished helping them? I guess all we need is some trust in our fellow man to help others the way he has been helped. Booker T. Washington once said, herever our life touches yours, we help or hinder…wherever your life touches ours, you make us stronger or weaker….There is no escape – man drags man down, or man lifts man up.” I believe this sums up nicely everything I have tried to say.

5) Knowing everything about Nothing.

The great joke of academia, as you continue on you learn more and more about less and less until you know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing. We are all trending towards specialization which is a dangerous, dangerous trend. We cannot continue developing science in such a way that each of us only looks at the one side that affects them. We must begin to look at all sides of advancement before continue on at such a breakneck speed. As a race, we may not be smart enough to look at problems from different angles. The geologist can’t look at the problems like a chemist, who can’t look at it like a biologist, who can’t look at it like an engineer, who can’t look at it as a psychologist. We are the blind mice attempting to understand the elephant. But philosophy could bring those together. Through practicing philosophy we may be able to understand problems in a larger view, in an all-encompassing view. Because through philosophy we are forced to look at the sides of the question which naturally bring in other disciplines. We look at how these decisions will affect the future, we look at how this may or may not be the RIGHT thing to do. But it may not be enough to merely do the right thing, we have to do the best thing for the future. I guess all we can do is attempt to learn more about everything around us. To never let our curiosity rest, or else we will suffer and intellectual death. To become fixed in our ways is a fate I am not willing to resign myself to.

6) Eternity

It was said that beauty, justice, and goodness are eternal. Yet the nature of eternity is very difficult for me to grasp. To think of something that is so long it has no end. And if something so large can be grasped and understood, how can anything in there be constant. It is even simple logic, if you take anything for infinity, it comes out to zero. Therefore nothing is eternal and everything is in constant flux. If that is true though, then beauty, justice and goodness are fleeting concepts which will mean something else tomorrow or the next day. When everything is in constant flux, how do we judge what we should do? It is clear that we cannot base our decisions off of concepts which are fluid and changeable. When dealing in the infinite, how do we find a constant? We know the moral laws seem to get a little wacky when we deal with them in the infinite, and even the laws of physics get crazy when we take everything into account. Since everything is in flux, the only thing we can do is attempt to have a good time while we are here. Anything we do will just be a ripple in a hurricane. It will be pass unnoticed to even the most observant eye.

7) Idea

Today we talked about what an idea is. It is a very strange concept to consider, thinking about an idea. One proposed definition was: it is the idea which gives something power. This is the reason that words have power. The word has power because it captures something real. The only real words worth speaking are ones which contain true IDEAS. Where do we get our ideas? It is difficult to contemplate where such thoughts come from. The oversoul is a logical place to think of for the home of all ideas. We get ideas by truly contemplating and finding it in the biospace (biospace is the great connector of all things, opposed to cyberspace). With that thought comes the knowledge that none of our ideas are our own. We claim no everlasting fame to figuring something out. We must merely pay tribute to the great over thinker that provides us with all of our ideas. This to me is a very depressing way to think about things. How do we continue on knowing that if we don’t figure something out…well there is somebody else out there who will get that particular idea popped into his head. Of course we can’t believe that, if we do life becomes meaningless for many of us. To rid us all of the chance of fame is unthinkable. Therefore, what if it isn’t like that completely, but just like god, the oversoul is not merely something that pipes ideas into us, but only helps those that help themselves. If you attempt to break through, you might, or you might not. But in the end it will be there to help you out.

8) Biased

While reading and studying how to apply the scientific method to yourself, to figure out those deep philosophical questions, I began to think that by the very nature of the experiment, it had to fail. Science and the deduction of all the laws are based on the fact that the observer, or tester, can have no feelings one way or the other about the result. Which is why doctors give placebos and can’t know which is which, because by knowing what result you want, you can change the outcome. So by going out by yourself into the woods to attempt to find out about morals, by acknowledging what you hope to find, you have already lost the battle in finding it. Therefore, how can we trust any true test done to ourselves, by ourselves? It will be easily biased and no longer will the results be valid when we give them to the world. We cannot allow the people which have gone before us to tell us the true nature of morals or reasons, these things must be found out by each person.

9) Infinite

I really enjoyed the concept of the oversoul. To consider that it is infinite animating principle which drives all else in the world, it is very fun to think about. But what is infinity? I understand the words which are said, infinity is forever, there is no end, take the integral of 2x to infinity and you come out with x-squared. Yet to contemplate something which is there, which is at the utter, undefinable limits that can’t exist by the very nature of the thing… Through considering the oversoul as something that is a part of us, are we not also extend to infinity? What does that mean through a moral or spiritual sense? If part of me is stretched for forever through everything, what does this life mean? Perhaps because a part of us is part of the oversoul, it doesn’t mean we go forever. Maybe the true reason the oversoul goes to infinity is because it can make those infinite number of stops along the way. It is not merely the Homo sapiens of the one planet which create is oversoul, but every rock, every planet, every star, every galaxy in this universe is what makes up the oversoul. And if that is possible, if we are connected in some way to this thing which can go across all of the cosmos, we have much greater potential then I believe any of us have realized.

10) Chief End

We have talked many times about the chief end of man, a conclusion has been reached that the chief end of man is to become good. The staircase analogy was made, that we will slowly climb up this staircase, only to come to a step where we can see up and be blinded so that we fall back down to the bottom to which we must start the slow climb back up again. I dislike this analogy when considering the chief end of man, I don’t believe we fall back to the bottom. I concede that we will all trip and fall numerous times, and almost everybody will make it to the top. I like to consider there are landings on the staircase, so that when we fall back down we do not hit the bottom, but merely stop at a landing. A lower place, for sure, which will require its own struggles to get up. But to continually being beaten back to the bottom again and again, it is an unbearable thought. Though this staircase is the analogy for recognizing beauty, I believe it works just was well for almost any part of life, of any part of growing up. Just as when we work hard to learn new concepts, we all have times when we trip and fall back down because latter on we come to the understanding that we never truly learned what we were meant to learn. Just as in relationships, a place where we fall back down much more than almost any other part of life. But we continually grow, become wiser in all aspects of life. This is what I believe the chief end of man is. Not to merely be good, but to never cease climbing up the staircase, never ceasing to continue on over the horizon. To never stop moving onwards and upwards.