Wholeness, Personality and Theory of Change

In all “civilized” cultures, especially in Western society, there is an unnecessary schism between logic and emotion, between empiricism and intuition, and between science and spirituality.

              This separ     ation has no power in my being!

                                  My logic is emotionally informed and my emotions are logical.

                                              My empiricism defines my observation of the seeable and my intuition defines my perception of the unseeable…the mystery…the sacred interconnection.

                                                              My spirituality is based on science and my scientific ventures are driven by my spiritual mission to find the whole.

Service: Junk Food of the Government

I love reading inflammatory, polemic pieces of writing because they often use ego-breaking, humorous and clever words to state the obvious that has become not so obvious. One of the obvious facts of life that the recent articles I have read expound on is that the U.S. government feeds us a lot of junk food. By junk food, I mean things that make us feel good but are really bad to our personal and community health in the long run. The piece of writing that I am specifically going to discuss is Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions.” You can read his article at this link.

I agree with Illich. In fact, I have been feeling the same animosity against international service for quite some time. On a theoretical level, I do not believe in international, domestic or any other kind of service because that would only imply that the community being serviced has little to no privilege or power with which it would normally be able to take care of itself. The power and privilege have been taken away from these communities by the dominant group. It is perverse and inefficient for the dominant group to do community service when it could easily eliminate inequality by equitably redistributing resources, money, and political power. But, of course, the dominant group does not want this. For example, American and European governments and corporations are keeping many African nations under increasing debt while, at the same time, young, affluent people are joining organizations to help alleviate hunger and poverty in these same countries. This is simply and intentionally schizophrenic. Moreover, service organizations ultimately keep these poor countries indebted to affluent countries in one more way.

Equity and Justice in Sustainable Development

Sustainable development includes not only environmental protection but also social justice, economic equity, and fair distribution of wealth and burden. In order to create ecologically sustainable societies, it is very important that mainstream environmentalists begin to incorporate social issues into discussions, for their current distinction between what is nature and must be protected and what is human and must be eliminated will only create a polarized society that will benefit neither the environmentalists themselves or the lay people. Environmentalists specifically have to consider issues of job security, social justice, and the distribution of wealth when discussing environmental policy.

Having work and job security is what most people worry about before environmental protection. All people have to work to provide for themselves and often their families. It is not to the environmentalists’ advantage that they devalue the significance of work in society and emphasize solely the protection of nature over the needs of people. Ramachandra Guha argues that the obsession with unspoiled, “natural” wilderness is a uniquely American phenomenon because it is oftentimes the middle to upper class, White environmentalists who do not worry about not having a job that emphasize the need to protect the wilderness for its beauty. The wilderness has become one more amenity, one more aesthetic enjoyment for the well-off to consume in American consumer society.

White Guilt

It’s Thursday night. I’m in my common room watching a PBS documentary on the complex relationship that exists in disadvantaged, often minority neighborhoods between chronic health problems and environmental factors such as proximity to industrial pollution, lack of fresh food, little open space for play, and the list goes on. A close friend of mine comes in and inquires about what I’m watching. I explain it to him. After two minutes of watching, he says, “Oh, this is depressing.” After another five minutes, when asked what we’re watching by one of my suite-mates, he replies, “It’s a show about White guilt.” At this point, I am visibly angry but I do not address my anger with my friend because I did not yet know what I wanted to say and did not want to be unproductive with my words.

It seems that many White people these days, especially White college students who are continually exposed to more social problems than ever, are feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for being White. I ask, “Why?” It solves no problem and helps no one, except the person that is feeling the guilt. And this, I realized, is the exact purpose of White guilt. A White person feeling guilty feels better about him- or herself because he/she is using the logic of, “If I’m feeling guilty, I must know better. I am no longer a racist.” This actually is a flawed logic because it encourages no action to fight racism out in the world. Moreover, it creates the illusion that there are only two options for White people- You must feel guilty or you must be ignorant. This illusion is paralyzing because it stops White people from seeing a third option- Action. Taking an active role in helping oneself and others understand and then improve a society whose social policies are consciously formulated over the centuries to exclusively advance the well-being of the White population.

Abandoning 3 Myths to Achieve a Land Ethic

I was most intrigued and impressed by the eloquence with which Aldo Leopold wrote the “Land Ethic” because he explained vividly what an ethic based on the human beings/biotic community relationship meant. The land ethic, according to Leopold, is an ethic in which people see themselves, not as superior conquerors of nature, but as members of nature (biotic community). He explains that it is only through this perspective of humans as members of the biotic community that people will be able to mitigate their ecological impacts and continue to sustain their existence. Although impressive, his essay only served as an introduction to the idea of a land ethic and did not explain how humanity as a species can erase its anthropocentrism in order to adopt a land ethic. Although Leopold did not state this outright, my paper will argue that the human race needs to reposition itself on the same level as all other living beings in order to see itself as one species among billions. There are three major anthropocentric beliefs that I believe must be erased in order to live a land ethic in which all living beings are equally important. They are: 1) that death is evil, 2) that change is undesirable, and 3) that endless consumption can bring happiness.