POLITICS AND NATURE

Nearly every religion of which I know speaks to the human spirit about balance, living a good life, and raising our standards to a higher level. There are, of course, exceptions like Dionysians, and it surely does a body good to partake in a good hearted Bacchanalia now and then. But the rest of the spiritual mothers and fathers of human kind remind us of the need to temper our drive for material gain through heartfelt participation in the human story. How we do this is often, at least within Protestantism, left open for each of us to discover the way which best fits our personality and inner conscience. How this relates to society as a whole, however, is a wholly different matter and it is only through discussion of issues which we can find our way through the hazy tunnels life creates for us.

Wilderness has been much on my mind of late; more specifically, the relationship between wilderness, other protected lands, and social/political health. Anthropologists argue America was discovered thousands of years ago when people crossed the Bering Straight ice bridge and perhaps, floated across the Pacific Ocean from island to island until finally reaching the land mass of what we now know as the Americas. I’ve had friends who dismiss such foolish talk because, after all, those who were here prior to the Europeans sprouted out of the ground, or emerged from a different universe from a ladder; no less logical or unreal than Adam and Eve’s garden. One thing is certain, wilderness is always the place where people have gone to get right with God, the Creator, or what you will. Atheists and agnostics also find solace in the wilderness. In other words, it is imprinted upon our spirits and health and well being depend upon it.

The reason wilderness made such an impression on me is I’ve been considering writing my dissertation on the relationship between politics and wilderness. Additionally, my trip to the desert in March of this year was made in a trailer to an area filled with people. The OHV area I wrote of in my last article was packed with people in expensive RVs with all the necessities for towing their 4 wheelers and setting up home in the desert a stone’s throw from the city. Noise and dust hovered incessantly, especially on the weekend. Yet, I was able to hike ten minutes into the desert without hearing nary a sound. Hell’s Gate Wilderness lay near the area so I started pondering: what is the relationship between what many would call a sacrifice zone for OHVs and the broader protection of nature?

Surely the existence of the OHV area which allows people to get out into nature (albeit with all the comforts of home in a 100K RV equipped w/TV, bathroom, and storage for toys) plays a tremendous role in building support for the greater purpose of preserving wilderness from the expanding reach of industry and technology.

Now, I am not a fan of 4 wheelers or dirt bikes or the other motorized forms of entertainment which so many of my fellow citizens can not seem to do without. Still, I am a child of the late twentieth century and a man of the twenty first century. I do not live in the wilderness, nor do I want to. And, unlike advocates of a utopian ideology promoting a return to agrarian lifestyles, like Wendell Berry and so many others, I do not want to farm. Capitalism and the division of labor allow us each to pursue our interests while seeking profit from those interests.

What I wonder throughout all of this is: whether having zones where people can go and experience at least a modicum of nature, while enjoying their toys, can be used to develop a greater appreciation for the earth thus enhancing our abilities to continue expanding wilderness protection and building up our national system of protected lands.

The evidence I witnessed outside of Phoenix leaves me thinking this is a pipe dream. In the end, we will use every resource available to us with abandon until we are left like a spoiled and unappreciative child who dropped his ice cream in the sand. Generations will wail and gnash their teeth until we figure out what people like Berry have been trying to tell us all along, we don’t have to continue living the way we do.

The depressing portions of this journey were not related solely to the noise or the absolute consumptive abandon in the desert (although these have given me pause many times since). Trash was the culprit causing my greatest despair. Inevitably, whenever you travel into the woods or other natural areas, man leaves his trace. Now, in wilderness thinking, this is anathema to our ability to truly appreciate nature.

Bill McKibben wrote, way back in 1989, that nature no longer exists due to human infection. I agree with McKibben’s prescription for dealing with our problems with nature, a greater respect for nature’s reason d’etre beyond human wants/desires/needs, but I don’t fully agree with his analysis of the situation we face. Human traces existed in 1492 all over the lands we now call the Americas. Every white explorer who claimed to be “the first” to “discover” this or that was both arrogant and ignorant and we still coddle their departed egos today.

But when we continue to illustrate contempt for nature’s needs and trash the planet with such reckless abandon, I feel a sad slipping away of my natural optimism and my outlook turns towards the bleak and hopeless abandonment so often expressed in nature writing and ridiculed by those who sponsor “progress”: the ripping out of every tree and the endless dumping of toxins in areas where children will some day play.

It is always easy to blame the big evil corporate overseers for the pollution, selfishness, greed, and environmental abuse. What does it mean, though, when all of the regular folks out enjoying the weekend with the whole family (there were small RV/OHV villages out there) discard the amounts of garbage I saw? It means we really, as a society, do not give a darn about our world or what we will bequeath to tomorrow’s generations.

We have been working on a tremendously mistaken concept of what the good life is and how to live it. I am not saying everyone needs to be a monk and live off their own little potato garden like Thoreau or climb mountains with only bread and tea like Muir. I do not do these things.

I do have to wonder, however, if we will ever learn from our past mistakes or continue to use and discard in an endless cycle. What does it say of our culture that we are so wasteful? What does it say of our country that we care not for the rights of anything or anyone but ourselves? It is very sad sometimes.

The desert in the springtime is a truly awesome and inspiring sight to behold. The land can be green and brilliant wildflowers dot the landscape. These photos were taken on a trip outside of Phoenix at Lake Pleasant, an area filled with boaters and recreationists, while we camped in an area designated for Off Highway Vehicle use.

At night, the lights of Phoenix can be seen brightening the sky and yet there are areas here that are relatively wild. There is another story regarding the tremendous number of OHVs in the area where we were camped but that is for another time. For now, I simply would like to relate the magical nature of the land around the lake. Most of the photos in this post were taken after about an hour’s hike from where we were camped.

As soon as we were close enough to the water, Marley sniffed it out. The wonder a big lake (or any water for that matter) causes in the mind a black dog in the desert can only be marveled at. He was in dog heaven. I must admit, despite being from the area of Lake Michigan and having swam in some of the coldest waters I’ve ever touched (whether in Michigan or one of quite a few mountain streams) I was wary of jumping in. It was actually quite chilly in Pleasant in March. I did eventually jump in and it felt great.

It is really a wonderland in the midst of some of the driest and hottest country around. It is no wonder there are so many people who came near. I was amazed, however, at how easy it was to get away from people less than ½ hour from Phoenix. All it takes is a bit of determination and some wandering afoot to arrive at solitary places.

Granted, boats filled with folks were jetting across the lake and there was even people camped just across the first cove we discovered. There was even one individual who had hiked in to where we came to water first. Whoever this person was, they were not around but it may be assumed he/she would have been surprised to see Marley and I as I was to see the tent set up. This is the difficulty with public lands, how to manage them properly for both nature and people.

Nature is self willed and has a right to exist within its own right. This appears to me to be an intuitive truth but it has been making the circles for quite some time in the literature relating to wilderness protection (another future article). Many of us apparently feel nature is simply something to be used until it is no longer of a benefit to humans. Americans need to learn a great deal from our Native American brothers and sisters in this arena.

The cactus, for one, is mighty and mysterious. It holds a power which we fail to recognize at our own spiritual, emotional, and material peril. I can’t quite explain it like I wish I could. Reading John Muir recently has shown me how important it is to relate the feelings and emotions generated through the wild in order to expand our dialogue over protected areas. Standing alone in the midst of the desert the cacti come alive. It is like standing among old growth trees. There is nothing man made with the ability to inspire those feelings about life and God and all of the greatest motivations guiding humankind.

Oops. Haven't written anything in two months I notice now. And I only wrote two articles in March. Probably not the wisest thing to keep a website up without writing on it I suppose. So, I mean to remedy this situation and anyone who has been looking on this site for some time, I appreciate your patience. It's tough to keep up writing while life is taking up so much time.

I plan, however, to keep this updated with quite a bit more regularity than I have prior to my finals this semester. I am working on figuring out dissertation ideas and visiting protected areas and studying for comprehensive exams so this is going to work into all of that.

I plan to be gone for a week or two at a time over the near future so will write while I'm gone and post what I have written sporadically but with more content. I have enjoyed keeping the website up so we'll see how I keep to my intended plans.

can hear the cries now. You Marxist. Socialist. Stalinist. Fool. Or simply silence. Because the bluster and foolishness is coming (and has come) from another corner.

I posted a paper due regarding Karl Marx because I wrote the paper and I figured why not. I also figured anyone with the courage to listen to my ranting ought to be exposed to a short summary of the ideals of the German Communist.

Am I a communist?.....no.

Am I a capitalist?.......yes.

Am I an American?..........yes.

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The Communist Manifesto

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels follow the development of bourgeois capitalism from the ashes of feudal social/political orders. This pamphlet examines history as a series of class conflicts based on domination and subordination and illustrates how the ultimate development of this schism between the poor and powerful finds its expression within capitalist theories. Everything in capitalist society, according to the Manifesto, is guided by the desire for attainment of greater wealth.

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I just saw a photo of the woman who had the octuplets through in vitro (sp?) fertilization with a caption saying the taxpayers will be paying for everything for her. Hmmm.

Now, I don’t normally go for the sexy, engaging, and bawdy new stories and subsequent commentary which may actually make my website more successful. C’est La Vie. Or as Hunter would put it....Sela. I’m sure O’Reilly and Rush have plenty to say on such matters. It’s the fault of the liberals, the godless, the irresponsible hippies...all the same garbage.

What got me thinking though relates to much of my other work . . .. the relationship between the state and society, the responsible use of public finances, personal responsibility, and the role of each individual in pursuing the greater public good.

There appears to have been many poor choices in this situation. Why someone who is single with no job would actively pursue doubling her number of children (which were already hard to handle I would guess) is beyond my faculties. Why a California in vetro clinic would assist boggles my mind even further.

The only thing which could surpass the ignorance, foolishness, and carelessness of this woman and those doctors would be a society which allowed those extra eight little human beings to grow up in despairing poverty and hopelessness.

This is not to suggest any answers to this one specific instance of shamelessness and complete lack of common sense. Who knows, she may get a movie deal and soon have maids to care for them all. Joe the Plummer got a job and I still can’t figure that one out . . .but good for him.

What is the public good?

There are those who would say it is to keep the economic engines driving. Separating the wheat from the chaff by limiting taxes, raising salaries beyond what any human could possibly require, and reducing the role of the government in our individual lives.

This does not work.

There will always be financial gurus who will make more money than good sense dictates. I do not believe simply being wealthy makes someone a poor character. In fact, many rich people are great and do fantastic things and they do drive the economy. And, they should keep their money. But they should be providing leadership. Not only in these bad times but in worse times as well.

The public good rests upon security in knowing your children will be ok. It thrives on hope in this, or any age. This class division bullshit has gone too far. I don’t feel bad for the wealthy. Yes, many of them work hard but many of them, from Halliburton to KBR to Blackwater Security to Exxon Mobile to Shell to Grumman to Boeing to Monsanto and on and on and on all receive tremendous tax benefits when the government is not purchasing their goods.

This corporate welfare garbage did not start in the last six months. It was going on back when Jefferson financed the Lewis and Clark expedition to see what was out there which we could plunder and pillage for the good of the nation at the expense of people who should have been our dearest friends.

We have to talk about the public good. It is not in the interest of anyone to let children be malnourished, in California or in Zimbabwe. It is not in anyone’s interest to turn a blind eye to drugged out child soldiers forced to murder in what seems like a world away. It is not in anyone’s interests to allow our e-waste to fill African lands where children wallow through mounds of our trash to retrieve the miniscule amount of copper or whatever it is after being exposed to the horrendous chemicals spewing out after they break it.

There are those who will say . . . but this is life and it gives them money . . . what else would they do. This is a foolish and ignorant sentiment. Just as ignorant as those who say they have no connection to the starving children in our own nation or that wilderness does not matter.

We are better than this.

The gross manipulation of facts which somehow work to justify and sanitize poverty and pollution and war in the name of so-called realism must be cast away. The world is what we have made of it.

Perhaps if we had thought more about the true relationship between business and the public good, that woman would be married, have a job (or not), and her kids would not become a burden on society. Who knows.

All I know is that when we consider it a burden to pay someone $12,000 per year to support a family (or $20,000) but we think it is fine to tear down our mountains and watch as our fellow citizens live in poverty and we spend billions of dollars making incompetent people wealthy beyond most normal people’s wildest dreams......we have made, and continue to make some serious errors in judgment and I believe these stem from fundamental philosophies. Maybe I should have called the book Re-think America.

What was it the groundhog said?

The wintry weather picked up the last two days here in sunny Arizona. We have received about 6 inches or more where I am while on the other side of town, at least as of this am, they had twice as much. And it is still snowing. All in all, a good day to read John Locke and ponder the meaning of his lack of feminist thought and wonder why he barely even mentions the largest evil of the time...slavery. Well, Locke actually was a stockholder in a slave trading company back around the 1670s so there you go. Although I had to read a paper by a professor from the Midwest who claims Locke had an epiphany around the time he sold his stock in the slave company and realized the error of his ways. Unfortunately, whatever John Locke had written back in the late 1600’s, there was nothing he could have said or done to eliminate the African slave trade and all the evils we have inherited from it. At the same time, without our history, we would not have the intensity and diversity which colors our lives now. Such is Life.

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So, I went skiing this morning and, as always, thought of many things relating to the nature surrounding me as well as the social implications of protecting wilderness. My mind inevitably wandered to the stimulus package.

Winter is awesome here in Flagstaff. So are the other three seasons (although spring can be a bit windy). Look at the mountain. It is hard to complain with this as a backdrop to daily existence.

Without federal governmental protection, there would be houses strewn throughout the mountains near my home and this would make my life quite a bit poorer. Teddy Roosevelt said on a number of times there would be a benefit in federal land protection by offering the workers of this nation a place to re-invigorate and revitalize their lives.

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The stimulus bill is being worked on in the Senate and, as I understand it, will be headed for a vote early next week, maybe Tuesday. Last night with three Republicans voting in favor: Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.

I heard John McCain say this was an irresponsible bill and nothing of the kind had ever been passed before. How quickly he forgot his campaign suspension about 5 months ago. Bi-partisanship is not much in vogue in Washington D.C. these days. And there is no reason to think that it should be. It is important to have opposition.

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“The job of business is to make money, and the job of government is to regulate business.”

This is a major portion of an essay question for a class I took titled “Globalization and Corporate Responsibility.”

This statement is correct to an extent. An individual considering opening a business, spending the hours necessary to get it up and running, and possibly investing a life savings should be able to see a return on his or her investment through making money. The same is true with investors. The incentive to invest a portion of one’s earnings is to see a return which would be greater than placing money in a bank. The profit motive has many positive attributes but it does not need to be the sole meaning driving business.

Business should exist for beneficial reasons while striving to maintain a profitable structure within the context of civil participation. We have seen examples of terrible mismanagement and fraud at the top of the social pyramid. These will likely always occur in one form or another and government should act to reduce social harm.

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has a number of different definitions. Brown (p. 1) writes about the need to change business leadership in five dimensions: “the cultural, the interpersonal, the organizational, the civic, and the environmental.” Each of these elements of corporate life must be reconsidered in light of social needs and new knowledge about corporate impacts on civic society.

Zadek writes about corporate citizenship and the need to include corporations within a higher social forum. This forum includes rules “negotiated and overseen by a spectrum of institutional arrangements and processes ranging from public scrutiny and debate through to partnerships and more traditional statutory structures” (Zadek, p. 39). CSR currently relies upon a loose set of strategies developed by numerous authors attempting to elevate social needs to the corporate agenda.

Such an elevation requires a fair amount of re-thinking on the part of corporate management. After all, leadership will not hold their jobs for long if they are unable to assuage the short term concerns directed by the board or shareholders.

Jackson and Nelson write about the traditional concepts of a divided society between the market and the government. They add, however, “a third type of institutional actor in society, namely what has become known as civil society” (Jackson and Nelson, p. 344). CSR is a corporate effort to acknowledge its responsibilities within the civil society.

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How Can We Institute Reforms?

There is a strong argument against corporate power which advocates the idea we are subject to the influential whims of industry leaders who affect public policy. I, for one, do not agree that we are at the mercy of corporations. They provide a tremendous number of goods which makes life pleasant and interesting.

It is apparent, however, that organizationally, society, politics, and economics require concrete changes.

The questions I am concerned with include: How to engage corporate leaders on a new level? And: What methods are possible to enlisting the public in debates over issues?

Many advocates of Corporate Social Responsibility have determined that the benefits of acting responsibly, both in human and environmental terms will generate better business results. There are many arguments, from the Triple Bottom Line to the utilization of responsible corporate actions, the majority of these ideas point towards the need for more growth, more sales, and more profits.

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Happy New Year.

As we stand at the dawn of a new age, the beginning of 2009, I have one resolution I am determined to work at which is keeping this website up and running more fully than I have paid attention to it in the past. I have gotten through my first semester of my PhD program and assume that I have worked out some of the bugs inevitable within the context of figuring out how school life works again. I am re-focused on the issues at hand.....public policy, its social and environmental effects, and the generation of honest and substantive public dialogue over the meaning of American citizenship and mending the fences erected against our relationship with nature.

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I hope everyone had a wonderful and loving Thanksgiving!