Meh.

What bothersome things we humans are. We toil and tend the land to make our lives bearable when the very meaning of living escapes us. We create things, unnatural things, to become more entrenched in them instead of actually living. How many people can say that they don't use cell phones? How many people can say that they don't need the internet to get along from day to day? Few, especially in developed countries. And after we're done with a device and want the newest gadget to replace it? Throw it in the trash. That's where most portable devices end up, poisoning the land with heavy metals and other things that take thousands of years to decompose. All of this in order to continue something we consider "happy lives." I honestly am hoping that I'll eventually move out into the woods like Thoreau did at Walden pond. Sure, it'll be tough and I probably won't last that long, but I figure that's better than being enslaved by the things we all "need" in our daily lives. Fabricated necessities that further construe the meaning of life and lead to fabricated debt of money with arbitrary value. This isn't how we were meant to live and if it's a requirement these days, then I'm ashamed to be a part of it.

Communicating Climate Science

Good stuff from Dot Earth and the filmmaker who made Flock of Dodos (about Kansas and the teaching evolution debacle).  http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/climate-communication-and-the-nerd-loop/

Role of the Government

The government's main function should always be to enforce laws, legislate new ones, and arbitrate  conflicts. If you take this to relate directly to environmental problems the government has the same functions. First, enforce environmental laws through sanctions against those who pollute the most, which could most certainly have accumulated over time. This could be through fines or actual punishment that would help provide the government with some actual funds. Second, legislate new environmental laws to mandate wind energy or solar energy, etc. If you phase out our reliance on oil and coal and harnessed renewable energy our international debts could eventually be paid off. And lastly, arbitrate conflicts, within our own country first. We need to make sure "going green" is affordable for everyone.

WATER Center

Our field trip on Friday to the Wichita Area Treatment, Education and Remediation Center raised a plethora of issues that would make excellent topics for research essays and blogs.  Among them:

• Why should a corporation be held financially and morally responsible for cleaning up environmental damage that that same corporation caused in the distant past (when none of the current employees were alive let alone working at the company, and when environmental protection laws were very different)?  Is such a corporation responsible for paying as much as needed, even if it means bankrupting the company? How far in the past does the responsibility extend?
• What should be the role of governments in cleaning up environmental problems?
• Are there ways to do environmental cleanup that are morally unacceptable?
• Are the rules of Superfund cleanups onerous, and should local governements be allowed to sidestep those rules as Wichita has?

In comments on this post, list additional environmental, philosophical, policy and other issues the field trip raised for you.

Shale Gas

Here is the beginning of a very important conversation for the future of energy: New discoveries of LARGE supplies of natural gas in shale around the world.  A final research paper on the transformation of the energy economy in the future would be an excellent choice for someone.

Sunrooms and Misbehaving Children

Yesterday my girlfriend and I bought some tools to start our garden with. It was nothing big, just a trowel, a hose and a hand cultivator. We then went on to explore several estate sales and stumbled upon a home which had a stunning sunroom surrounded by one of the most inviting gardens I have ever seen. This got me thinking about my garden and what it would look like. I found myself thinking of large, overgrown greenhouses from movies and the landscapes painted by the personalities on HGTV. Then I caught myself. I started to wonder first why I thought of these and then why I thought they were appealing. The reasoning was clear on the prior: I have been conditioned by what I've seen. I like it so I'll think about it when creating something similar. The latter, however, is a bit more mysterious. Do we as humans enjoy plentiful surroundings? Yes. Does this preference come from our animal instincts to have a high probability to find food and shelter? I believe this to be true as well, but what of the aesthetic value we place on such emplacements? Why is it pleasurable to sit in that sunroom and soak up the scent of the plants only an arm length away and relax in the shade of the green leaves lit by the high afternoon sun? What makes it so easy to write elegantly about doing so? Is it really human nature to enjoy what the world has surrounded us in and give it value just because it's there or is it something more? Yes, it were those exact surroundings that gave us food and shelter and still provide that to us today, but do we love it just because it supported us this whole time like a mother? The situation we as humanity have gotten ourselves into seems to me like a spoiled child who's grown up and wants his mom to pay for everything. The only kicker is that mommy is running out of funds and is falling apart because of how we as the children take.

The developmental process of studying philosophy

One thing that I find really enjoyable and encouraging about studying philosophy is that it isn't a "closed" process. What I mean is that there isn't a specific trajectory one has to take, and there isn't a specific destination that everyone has to get to in order to study the field in the "right" way.  That's a big difference from, say, chemistry, math or accounting, where you learn the material in a particular order and there is a certain set of concepts and techniques you have to master in order to be qualified in those fields.

Philosophy is more like a developmental process--different people start and end in different places, take different paths, travel at different rates.  And, ideally, keep doing it forever.

All of which is just to say, the process of having your basic ideas jostled and maybe overturned is one of the great things about philosophy, since it affords you the opportunity to CHOOSE what you believe and how you will act.  Most people don't have the benefit of that process.  For most people, beliefs and behaviors are unconscious things that "you just do."  There's a good deal of courage needed to really examine your beliefs and be willing to change them in light of evidence and arguments.  It is really true that old habits die hard.

I remember as an undergraduate having daily (if not hourly) "aha" moments where I was able to see things in a new way.  I'm happy to report that those cognitive shifts still happen for me at least once a week, even in my "old age".  It is fun to see it happening for the students in this class, too.