What Will Happen to Our Home When We’re Gone?
A different sort of question today. No, it’s not about something children might ask about the house they live in when they leave for an extended vacation, or perhaps move permanently to an entirely different place. It’s about the place called home for the entire human race.
Much has been brought to our attention in recent years regarding the status of the earth’s health. Maybe the first memory some of us have of not taking everything natural for granted was in Smokey the Bear’s reminder that only you can prevent forest fires; or maybe it’s the image of a native American standing by the side of a littered roadway with a tear running down the side of his face. Water pollution, air pollution, global warming, overpopulation, escalating rates of species extinction, and a host of other issues, some real, some imagined or concocted have come to our attention over the relatively recent past.
One outgrowth in the academic world is a new field for philosophers called environmental philosophy. It is the topic of the current issue of a journal I have referred to a couple of times on this blog, Philosophy Now. The history of this particular sub-discipline is, like all things academic, subject to debate; but usually included in the accounting is an essay by Aldo Leopold entitled “The Land Ethic,” published in 1949. In it, Leopold formulated what has become a widely discussed principle which says, “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity of, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” At first glance, it seems simple enough. But reflecting on it for a little while shows how a field of philosophy/ethics could be spawned. What exactly is the biotic community? How do members of that community related to one another? Who decides for the community? What does the integrity spoken of mean, and how do we know it? What vantage point must be assumed to even begin to answer this? Is such a point attainable? What longterm goals should be in view in order to make sense of what will tend toward integrity, stability, and beauty, etc., etc.?
The fact is that such potential problems such as overpopulation, to take one example, have been discussed at least as far back as 1798 essay by Thomas Malthus, who had dire forecasts. He saw the problem becoming even more pronounced if we as a race could make any headway against the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” which he delineated from the Book of Revelation: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Disease. Tim Delaney’s essay changes this to the “Five Horrorists” which now face us, adding “enviromares” to the list. These are some of the mass-scale disasters, such as the nuclear melt-down in Japan last year–things that have a natural world component coupled with an environmental impact exacerbated by technological “advancements.”
Jim Moran outlines three reasons why “saving the planet” is difficult (I confess: it is difficult for me as a Christian theologian to shift my thinking that salvation is something of which we are the saved rather than the saviors). The first of these is overcoming anthropocentrism; the second is understanding our place in nature (the first principle might have set this one up), and defining moral status. My interest is not to delve too deeply into the specifics of Moran’s thesis, but to begin thinking biblically, theologically about the possibilities that the earth is in need of saving by humankind, and whether or not that is a specifically Christian interest. Or has stewardship of the earth and its resources been so far from our concerns that when someone finally points to a bit of smoke that should not be there (metaphorically speaking here), we either shout down the messenger or take his account of the facts and along with it his worldview assumptions? Make no mistake here: the idea of our being created in the image of God with a special place in the scheme of earth’s history is very much at stake in this discussion.
Where might we begin to participate in the discussion? How might we fittingly teach a better way to our children–and their parents and grandparents? Or should we allow what will happen ti happen and go about saving souls? Just asking.
Cause and Effect are in question here. When I was a kid, my home had 3 pieces of electronics, a cabinet with a stereo in it (complete with phonograph), a tv, and a clock radio. Right now I’m sitting with a cell phone (with more computational power than existed in the state of Pennsylvania in 1969), a laptop (more than the USA/1969), and an IPad (more than the USSR)/1969). But this is more than electronics/tech, our house had one bathroom in 1969, how many do you have today?
Desire creates consumption, consumption requires resource processing, that processing creates pollution.
Who created those desires and why?
This is an excellent aspect of the enviro-discussion which is seldom taken as part of the equation. We do our recycling thing and conclude that we’ve done our share; the rest is someone else’s doing. Might be worth following up in future posts.
Wasn’t Adam’s original job to be a gardener? “Fill the earth and subdue it” (apparently I memorized in NIV). “Subdue” can mean a lot of things, I suppose, but “exploit” shouldn’t be one of them. I think we should do our best to be good stewards of what we have been given – including the physical world we’ve been given. Our electronics are a great example — and there’s a related human cost with those. The metals used to make most electronics are mined mostly by children and slaves.
I think that most Christians do believe that they should do their share to take care of the earth. As you said, though, we don’t really know what that means or who decides what is best for the earth. It’s hard for us to think globally about anything (even sharing the gospel, honestly). Maybe the best solution is probably to teach our children tackle the bit of earth that we can see and try to take care of it as part of being a good steward.
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And thought the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bring wings.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
Ok, Schoff, you just went up a million points on my cool meter. One of my favorite Hopkins poems. (but it’s “bright wings,” I think. deduct fifteen of those million points.)
i am too old and cranky to be cool
just ask my kids
I’ll vouch for the cranky part, but cannot comment on the old.
What Dr. Miller gives he takes away.
Yesterday I was “excellant” and today he had to “pile on”.
lol