The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)

Morse, David

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Destiny
David Morse
Trumpeter
Destiny 2
DAVID MORSE is a freelance writer who lives in Storrs, Con-
necticut. He is the author of the forthcoming novel The Iron
Bridge, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998, from which this selection
is taken. (Reprinted here with permission. Copyright (c) 1997
David Morse.) An earlier piece called ”The Iron Bridge” was also
published in this journal.
At the Quaker meeting for worship at the Old Furnace, Maggie focused on
positive images. Tried thinking of herself as the foremost molecule at the crest
of a great curling wave. She thought of the forces gathered behind her, the
human tide that had brought her to this point, that had made this detour
backwards in time. She tried to think of those forces as irresistible, imagined
herself as gathering strength from the consensus that had sent her back, saw
herself as the expression of that purpose and power.
She had asked Erzulie once if she believed in destiny.
”Destiny!” Erzulie snorted. ”Destiny is one of the most abused words in the
English language. My ancestors were slaves because somebody insisted it was
their destiny. Your great grandfather died in Auschwitz because somebody said
it was his destiny. Our planet was brought to ruin in the belief that it was
Man’s destiny to conquer Nature.”
Maggie was startled by her vehemence. They were walking through the rain
forest, carrying umbrellas, looking up at the forest canopy; beyond, the dazzle
of sun on glass. Maggie had just been admiring Erzulie’s face, her dark skin
refracting light from the yellow umbrella. She hadn’t meant to strike a nerve.
”So.” She proceeded cautiously. ”Destiny is just a human construct. You don’t
believe in some larger inevitability?”
”Dunno. Can’t say. As a scientists I see an order to the universe that lies outside
our comprehension. What Mr. Ho calls li. But I’m not comfortable giving it a
name. And what human beings call ’destiny’ or ’God’s Will’ or ’Natural Law’
is a spit in the ocean compared to that orderly flow. Invariably those names
become political.”
”Okay,” said Maggie. ”Politics aside, what’s going to happen if we succeed in
getting Industrialism onto a less destructive track? Will humankind show any
more wisdom the second time around?”
”You mean, is humanity destined to screw up?” Erzulie made the palm-up
gesture they all used to indicate the ruined world outside.
Maggie shrugged. ”Or gain wisdom.”
The little downpour was ending, thanks to whoever was doing rain that day.
Now there was only tree-drip. Erzulie tipped her umbrella aside. ”Dunno. We
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
sure do be out of control now, girl. The human species. Been out of control for
a long time. It may be a law of evolution that intelligence will extinguish itself.
Intelligence in the wrong species.” She sighed. ”I suppose if I truly believed it
was our destiny to mess up, I’d say forget trying to go back and change it. Go
with this.” She made the other gesture, palm curved in to embrace Ecosophia.
”This little miracle.” She knocked on a thick bamboo trunk: after a couple of
seconds, a miniature shower came from above. She grinned.
”But not a day goes by I don’t thank my mama and daddy for refusing the des-
tiny that was offered them. If you ask me do I believe in free will, in our ability
to change things, I don’t have an answer - but I live as if we did. My Daddy
was barely literate - I mean it was a struggle for the man to read a newspaper
- but he used to quote Gandhi. What you’re doing may seem insignificant, but
it is terribly important that you do it.”
Those words were a comfort to Maggie now, standing in the circle, trying to
focus her own power. Not only to have Ghandi’s words, but to have them from
Erzulie’s father.
Next to her, someone’s stomach growled audibly over the thump of the furnace.
Abiah, head tipped up. Abraham, head bowed.
Look at us, standing here on our hind legs, looking for comfort against the
abyss of meaninglessness. Looking for external salvation. That’s the pitfall of
Christianity - the idea of Christ coming and saving us from the mess we’ve
made. Judaism with a credit card.
Do I really believe in Gaeia? In the planet as a living whole, a composite of dy-
namics rhythmically adjusting its chemistry and temperatures within the range
necessary to sustain life? And if I accept as an article of faith the sacredness of
the life not only on the planet, but of the planet, then by what arrogance do I
suppose the planet wants to be habitable for humankind?
A furnace-keeper sneezed.
Mr. Ho used to say that compassion is for all creatures, not just our fellow
humans; that the universe is not human-hearted. A person who wishes to be in
harmony with the universe will not be human-hearted.
Her own stomach growled.
She thought of all their bodies respiring; semifluids and gases moving through
their gastrointestinal tracts; atoms of minerals and heavy metals tumbling slowly
through the plasm of hair follicles; oxidation of sugars powering muscles; hearts
pumping blood, the iron in their hemoglobin carrying oxygen to cells.
Iron moving within them and without them. Iron shaping the planet for life:
iron in the Earth’s core generating electromagnetic fields, the moon swinging
Destiny 4
tides of iron; magma forced up through seabed rifts causing continental plates
to shift; diatoms billions of years ago digesting iron compounds thereby freeing
oxygen to accumulate in the atmosphere, permitting complex life to evolve: the
planet a rusty spaceship hurtling through the void.
Citation Format
Morse, David (1997) Destiny Trumpeter: 14, 4. http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.4.8
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Copyright 1999 Trumpeter


Destiny

Blackmore, Keith

Enviromental Ethics

Cohen, Michael J.

The Secrets-of-Nature Trail and Game: A hands-on challenge for multi-sensory learning and relating

Taylor, Angus

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s So-
cialist Biophilia
Angus Taylor
University of Victoria
Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s Socialist Biophilia 2
ANGUS TAYLOR has for the past several years taught philosophy
at the University of Victoria.
The earth and the growth of it and the life of it! If I could but say or show how
I love it!” These words from the utopian tale News from Nowhere (1890) by
William Morris Pre-Raphaelite poet, writer of fantasy novels, leading member
of the Arts and Crafts movement, designer of wallpapers, fabrics, and type-
faces, founder of the Kelmscott Press, and political radical suggest the author’s
passionate concern with the natural world. This concern is apparent in Mor-
ris’s designs, which over and over incorporate the organic patterns of leaves and
flowers. The enduring appeal of this work was reflected in a major exhibition
in 1996, the centenary of Morris’s death, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in
London, following by three years a major exhibition of work by Morris and his
circle, from Canadian collections, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
Despite the appeal of his art, Morris has received little attention from the en-
vironmental movement or from philosophers interested in environmental ethics.
This is unfortunate, since in his writings and lectures Morris sought to describe
the connections among capitalism, daily work, and environmental degradation.
His key insight was that the project of improving human life through conquer-
ing nature is incoherent because human well-being cannot be divorced from the
well-being of the natural environment. Appreciating what he called ”the natural
fairness of the earth” is a vital need, one that can be fully satisfied only with
the dismantling of industrial civilization.
Morris called himself a communist. He wrote articles and co-authored a volume
(Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome) sympathetically expounding, and elab-
orating on, Marx’s ideas. In the 1880s he was a political colleague of Eleanor
Marx, Karl’s daughter, in the Social Democratic Federation and then in the So-
cialist League. Yet Morris was an anomaly among socialists, his commitment to
radical social change growing out of a visceral and uncompromising opposition
to the values of the industrial age. His unorthodox understanding of the relation
of humankind to nature can be appreciated by contrasting it with the ecologi-
cal perspective of Frederick Engels, Marx’s colleague. Morris and Engels knew
each other, though Engels, unimpressed with Morris’s grasp of political issues,
called him a ”sentimental socialist”. If both men were Marxists (something
Marx claimed he was not), they were Marxists of very different stripes. Morris
was even more radical than Marx and Engels; unlike those two in their later
years, he rejected the possibility of the working class attaining power through
peaceful parliamentary means. (A memorable line in News from Nowhere in-
forms us that in post-revolution Britain the Houses of Parliament are preserved
as a storage place for manure.) More than this, he rejected not just capitalism,
but industrial society in any form.
Although the seeds of an ecological understanding of the human condition are
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s Socialist Biophilia 3
centrally present in Marx, they never really see the light of day in his writings on
history and society. The subject of Marx’s view of history is the human being
with ”feet firmly on the solid ground...exhaling and inhaling all the forces of
nature....” Marx describes how ideology is shaped by the modes in which soci-
eties utilize and transform their natural environments. But non-human nature,
except as it is in the process of being transformed by humanity, hardly engages
his attention. He says little about the ways in which particular material envi-
ronments limit and channel social change, or about the often destructive effects
of human activity on nature. Marx’s general theory of history does not allot
a central role to matter, whether in the form of geography, natural resources,
climate, or human biology. Indeed, it can be argued that Marxism has not been
nearly materialist enough, in that it has recognized neither the significant con-
straints imposed on human agency by ecology and biology, nor the human need
for a flourishing natural environment.
The ecological implications of Marx’s perspective were articulated, in very dif-
ferent ways, by Engels and by Morris. What unites the two is their emphasis on
the link between the social hierarchy and competitiveness of capitalism and the
harmful interaction of capitalist society with the natural environment. Engels
sees this harm in terms of self-defeating attempts to control and shape the en-
vironment on the basis of inadequate scientific knowledge and private economic
gain. Better (that is, dialectical/ecological) science and socialized economic
planning can correct things, thus permitting the fullest possible exploitation of
the natural world.
In his writings Engels displays a keen awareness of what Jean-Paul Sartre called
the ”counter-finality” often involved in human projects, where short-term suc-
cesses on the part of individuals rationally pursuing their personal goals lead
to negative collective results. For example, citing the textile-industry districts
of Lancashire and Yorkshire, Engels notes that, in order to escape from the
polluted water supply of the factory town, capitalists strive to transfer their in-
dustrial enterprises to the countryside, thus bringing into being new towns with
the same problem. Only the abolition of the capitalist character of modern
industry, he says, can put an end to this vicious circle by allowing the breakup
of large towns, and the dispersal of industry over the countryside in a manner
best adapted to its own development. Further, ”Only the fusion of town and
country can eliminate the present poisoning of air, water and land, only such
fusion will change the situation of the masses now languishing in the towns, and
enable their excrement to be used for the production of plants instead of for the
production of disease.”
The bursting of the bonds imposed by capitalism, then, is the solution to the
problem of pollution and at the same time ”is the one precondition for an unbro-
ken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith
for a practically unlimited increase of production itself.” In terms of Marx’s im-
age, Engels shows us humanity exhaling the natural forces it has assimilated, so
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s Socialist Biophilia 4
that with these appropriated and remoulded forces it impresses itself upon its
surroundings. His perspective appears surprisingly relevant to an understanding
of the environmental crisis of capitalism, yet contributes little to moving beyond
it.
By contrast, Morris rejects the whole productionist mentality. The proper task
ahead of us is the remaking of society, not in order to increase productivity but
to allow us to exercise our faculties in communion with nature. For Morris,
it is not primarily a matter of humanity’s impressing its mark on nature, but
of being impressed by nature: of humanity’s inhaling all the forces of nature
in order to feel its unity with nature. His ideal communist society is not only
decentralized, but de-industrialized. ”It is a society conscious of a wish to keep
life simple, to forgo some of the power over nature won by past ages in order to
be more human and less mechanical, and willing to sacrifice something to this
end.”
Like Marx, Morris looks forward to an end to the detailed division of labour (the
breaking-up of a given production process into a multitude of simple operations
carried out by different workers, each of whom has little knowledge of, or control
over, the complete process). The guest in Morris’s future utopia is told by his
hosts that ”we pass our lives in reasonable strife with nature, exercising not
one side of ourselves only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the
life of the world.” But where Marxist orthodoxy looks to automation and high
productivity to free workers from alienation, Morris believes liberation can be
realized through a return to small-scale craft production, in a future where
hi-tech is a last, not a first, resort.
Like Engels, Morris advocates the abolition of large towns and the dispersal of
the population more evenly over the countryside. The difference is that in Mor-
ris’s future this is to accompany the abolition of large-scale industry itself. The
natural environment will then be able to recover from the destruction wrought
by humanity, and humanity will recover its sense of oneness with the natural
environment. The desire to enslave the natural environment technologically, he
believes, is closely related to the desire to avoid the mechanical toil of daily
work under capitalism, and reveals a profound alienation. ”It was natural to
people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ’nature’ their slave,
since they thought ’nature’ was something outside them.”
Morris notes how, under capitalism, technology has done little, if anything, to
lighten the burden of work. Useful work, not useless toil, is the proper form of
engagement with nature, and artistic creation is the characteristic expression
of joy in work. Morris’s view is that ”everything made by man’s hands has a
form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with
Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her....”
In this regard he has little good to say about modern civilization, which has
impoverished the human spirit (and often the human body) in the midst of its
material riches:
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s Socialist Biophilia 5
Shall I tell you what luxury has done for you in modern Europe?
It has covered the merry green fields with the hovels of slaves, and
blighted the flowers and trees with poisonous gases, and turned the
rivers into sewers; till over many parts of Britain the common people
have forgotten what a field or a flower is like, and their idea of beauty
is a gas-poisoned gin-palace or a tawdry theatre.
Three things are necessary, says Morris, for a decent life. First, there is ”hon-
ourable and fitting work”, work that is both worth doing in social terms and
pleasant to do; second, there is what he calls ”decency of surroundings”; and
third, there is ”leisure”, that is, ample time after work for rest of the mind and
body. Under ”decency of surroundings” Morris includes well built and aesthet-
ically pleasing houses, towns that have abundant green spaces within them and
that do not sprawl unnecessarily into the countryside, and a general prohibition
against degrading air, water, or land with smoke, litter, or other waste. How-
ever, this list of requirements fails to convey adequately the emphasis Morris
places on the need for feeling at one with the natural environment. In Morris’s
utopia the narrator is told that ”The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to
delight in the life of the world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and
surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a lover has in the fair flesh of
the woman he loves....” To fail to cherish the beauty of the natural environment,
as in the bad old days, is to be self-destructive. ”How could people be so cruel
to themselves?” is the rhetorical question from Ellen, the travelling companion
of Morris’s alter ego in News from Nowhere.
For Morris there is an ideal merging of the human and the natural. This is
evident when Ellen and her guest from the nineteenth century arrive at what
must be Morris’s own Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire: ”She led me up close
to the house, and laid her shapely sun browned hand and arm on the lichened
wall as if to embrace it, and cried out, ’O me! O me! How I love the earth, and
the seasons, and weather, and all things that deal with it, and all that grows
out of it as this has done!’” The landscape of Britain, and particularly southern
England, where he lived, no doubt inclined Morris to think of nature less in
terms of primeval wilderness than in terms of a marriage of human settlements
with the land that supports them. In The Earthly Paradise (1868), before his
political awakening, Morris looked back with favor to the kind of harmony he
imagined existed between settlements and their environments in pre-industrial
times:
Forget six counties overhung with smoke, Forget the snorting steam
and piston stroke, Forget the spreading of the hideous town; Think
rather of the pack-horse on the down, And dream of London, small,
and white, and clean, The clear Thames bordered by its gardens
green....
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s Socialist Biophilia 6
In a somewhat similar vein, News from Nowhere offers us a picture of post-
industrial Britain as a great garden, with the occasional wilderness area. This
is not to say that Morris in his later years desired a return to the Middle Ages.
In A Dream of John Ball (1886), a story of the English peasants’ revolt of 1381,
he makes clear his opposition to the oppressive social order of that time. And
his utopian future includes not only smokeless factories, but also ”force vehicles”
of advanced technology for moving heavy loads by land or water.
In one of his essays Morris goes so far as to speak of the ”murder” of trees.
However, it is neither nature apart from human beings that concerns Morris,
nor nature as an instrument of human self-creation, but nature as the ground
and context of human life. Running as a unifying thread through Morris’s
writings is the idea that a flourishing natural environment is for humans a
vital need, a need rooted in our very nature. This has more recently been
articulated as the concept of biophilia, the hypothesis that human beings have
a profound emotional affinity for the planet’s other living organisms, which
constitute the web of life within which homo sapiens has evolved. Morris goes
further, by calling our attention to the way industrial society has thwarted
satisfaction of the vital need for a flourishing natural environment. To prosper,
he says, we must work to undo previous destructive human intervention in
the environment and must free ourselves from the system of production that
furthers this destruction. Morris urges his audience ”to set yourselves earnestly
to protecting what is left, and recovering what is lost of the Natural Fairness of
the Earth: no less I pray you to do what you may to raise up some firm ground
amid the great flood of mechanical toil, to make an effort to win human and
hopeful work for yourselves and your fellows.”
Whether destructive interference with the natural environment can be halted
within a capitalist framework is a question that now confronts us as never before.
Beyond this, it must be asked whether industrialism itself is worth pursuing
under any social regime. The Soviet Union and its imitators in state socialism
rejected capitalism but not industrialism, the project of organizing society in
the interest of maximum productivity. They failed in no small measure because
ultimately capitalism proved to be the more efficient industrial mode. Indeed,
the competitive drive for capital accumulation inherent in the system makes the
phrase ”post-industrial capitalism” a contradiction in terms.
Human beings have a rational interest in the historical development of their
productive powers. Yet it is rational, even on anthropocentric grounds, to cir-
cumscribe the ways of employing those powers when the possibility exists of
satisfying everyone’s vital needs, and when certain kinds of interference with
the natural environment become threats to the quality of life. Recognition of
our duty to respect the well-being of non-human life on this planet can only
reinforce this message. Morris is adamant that the very project of remaking the
environment on a massive scale is destructive of human happiness. And yet,
limiting our material production and consumption does not require an end to
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
creative endeavor: even in utopia, he says, science and art are inexhaustible.
The significance of Morris’s contribution to the emerging debate over the viabili-
ty of industrial society lies in his insistence that the issue of human modification
of the environment transcends economics, and relates ultimately to what is good
for us as natural beings. If we are truly natural beings, inhaling as well as ex-
haling all the forces of nature, then we can flourish only when the rest of the
world flourishes.
Citation Format
Taylor, Angus (1997) Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris’s Socialist Biophilia
Trumpeter: 14, 4. http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.4.12
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See the ICAAP web site or software repository for details


Inhaling All the Forces of Nature: William Morris's Socialist Biophilia

Henderson, Bob

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Friluftsliv
Bob Henderson
Trumpeter
Friluftsliv 2
”Each day we reacted less like tourists and more like tenants [natives,
as in native to a place].”
Student Field Notes
Friluftsliv is a Norwegian word denoting a quality of outdoor education as lived
experience in nature. It concerns an aspiration towards a genuine meeting face
to face: nature in its primacy, as it genuinely is! This quality of experience
is unfettered by an aggressive human agenda of conquest or study of nature as
”other”, or nature as a cultural construction. Friluftsliv is a quality of experience
through which guides and students come to understand and EXPERIENCE a
particular spirit of relationality.
Meeting nature on nature’s terms allows for a simplicity that one spokesperson,
Sarah Pendleton suggested, lets ”nature live free, meaning let nature’s rhythms
unfold freely” (1983, p. 107). This is a joyful learning allowing nature to work
and play on our spirit. While self-realization involves a caring for and identi-
fication (love) with surroundings as communion of the Self extended, the lived
experience of Friluftsliv (in wild nature) involves coming to know nature as home
through simple travel and camping experience. It is a quality beyond a naive
romance and lies further along the continuum towards a relational maturation.
Sharon Butala, in her ”friluftsliv-like” book, The Perfection of the Morning: An
Apprenticeship in Nature, writes:
It is one thing to come from the city and be overwhelmed by the
beauty of Nature and to speak of it, and another thing entirely to
have lived in it so long that it has seeped into your bones and your
blood and is inseparable from your own being, so that it is part of
you and requires no mention of hymns of praise. (1994, p. 89)
While there is a big difference between the week long ”apprenticeship” of the
canoe or snowshoe trip and full time habitation, friluftsliv as a principal tra-
dition for outdoor education seeks this seeping of nature into one’s bones and
thus remains an apprenticeship for how to dwell in Nature. Home with nature
is home with a quietly celebrated, respected presence, not an awe-struck spirit
of worshipped otherness. The tonic of friluftsliv is for a nature that gets (seeps)
under one’s skin, solidifying in our being, not for nature as a halo we worship
outside ourselves.
I believe nature as home is what traveller P. G. Downes had in mind in his
general references to the ”ways of the North.” Downes wrote:
The real people of the North don’t love the North; what they cling to
is that complex in themselves which is satisfied by their own situation
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Friluftsliv 3
- by the freedom of being their own boss ... [by the] wandering
irresponsibility of it all. (Downs, 1936, p. 174)
Sigurd Olson (1956), reflecting on the north woods, sought the lived experience
of friluftsliv in nature as a listening to the wisdom of the stillness, touching
the external rhythms of the water and land, discovering the harmony of the
natural order. Developing through this lived experience, he sought a personal
philosophy, what can be called an ecosophy with which he developed, a personal
rhythm, stillness, and touch for life with nature. The lived experience of friluft-
sliv is a living ”with” one’s place, rather than an agenda of ”against,” ”over,” or
”through” as one’s dominant expression of relationship. It is a particular kind
of meeting. Meeting, Martin Buber has proclaimed, is ”an event at the source
when a response was made to a You, an essential act of the spirit” (1987, p.
103). That response can be steeped in alienation of otherness or it can favor
identification and thus caring and meaning. It is assumed here that we can ul-
timately free ourselves of the subject-object dichotomy to explore our meaning
of being part of nature, rather than apart from nature.
Filuftsliv is immediately concerned with teaching practical skills, craft, and lore
of living in and with nature. The simple living/travelling with nature avails
oneself to seeking meaning and direction from nature. The way home to nature
is not one of struggle but, in Sarah Pendleton’s terms, ”[t]he aim is rather to
nurture ways of creatively adapting to nature’s terms in ways that are protective
of both human and nature’s welfare” (1983, p. 107).
The lived experience of friluftsliv finds a concrete expression in the Norwegian
tradition of outdoor education and recreation. Playwright Henrik Ibsen first
introduced the word to print with the line, ”And friluftsliv for my thoughts”
(Reed and Rothenberg, 1993, p. 12). Translated as ”open air life” or ”life in
nature,” friluftsliv concerns ”thoughts” of nature as ”a way home,” not an escape
from urban pressures, but a surfacing of a free, nature-inspired lifestyle, not a
departing from a village/city but an actual arrival to authentic home. Friluftsliv
is an outdoor educational/recreational movement that requires a shift from a
vacationer’s superficial sensibilities. As Arne Naess states:
Conventional goal direction: to get there, to be skilful, to be better
than others, to get things done, to describe in orders, to have and use
new and fancy equipment - is discouraged. The ability to experience
deep rich and varied interaction in and with nature is developed.
(Naess, 1989, p. 179)
Nils Faarlund, a leading spokesman for this tradition, connects friluftsliv be-
yond personal growth towards the individual as a ”transformational tool” in
creating ”an ecologically sensitive society.” Friluftsliv is ”not meant to shore up
our modern way of life but to help us - as individuals and as a society - out
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Friluftsliv 4
of it” (Faarlund, In Reed and Rothenberg, 1993, p. 164). Friluftsliv, as an ex-
pression of the lived experience in wild nature, is a tuning out, a disorientation
turn, decontextualization for a corresponding tuning in to a sincere listening,
meeting, touching of the harmony and order and rhythms of living with nature.
‘Friluftsliv for my thoughts’ is Thoreau’s quest for the ”tonic of wilderness,” Ol-
son’s attention to ”ancient rhythms,” Butala’s ”seeping of the beauty of nature
into your bones,” Downes’ ”ways of the north.” All in all, it is a quest to be a
tenant, or rather native with nature, of nature, not a tourist, in nature as for
nature.
”It is not just what you see and hear out here but it is the aura you
feel through your whole body. It’s a feeling of freedom. Freedom
from the everyday hustle and bustle.”
Student Field Notes
References
Buber, M. 1987. . and Thou. New York: Collier Books.
Butala, S. 1994. The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature.
Toronto: Harper Collins.
Downes, P. G. 1943. Sleeping is Land. New York: Coward-McCann.
Faarlund, N. 1993. Nils Faarlund. In P. Reed and D. Rothenberg (Eds.) Wis-
dom in the Open Air. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Naess, A. 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy.
(Rothenberg, D., Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Olson, S. 1956. The Singing Wilderness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Pendleton, S. 1983, Spring. The Norwegian Nature Life Approach. Journal of
Experiential Education.
Reed, P. and Rothenberg, D. (Eds.) 1993. Wisdom in the Open Air. Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Notes:
Students field notes are taken from individual journals of a university canoe trip
in the Canadian Shield of Northern Ontario, McMaster University, Hamilton,
Ontario.
Citation Format
Henderson, Bob (1997) Friluftsliv Trumpeter: 14, 2. http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.2.14
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Friluftsliv

Cutherbertson, Brent

Heine, Michael K.

Whitson, Dave

Producing Meaning Through Movement: An Alternative View of Sense of Place

Brown, Kirk

From the Inside Out: Building A Sustainable Environmental Movement

Rowe, Stan

The Mechanical and the Organic: Virtual Reality and Nature

Bromley, P. S.

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Imagining The World We Want: Social Values and Mass
Media
P. S. Bromley
Trumpeter
Imagining The World We Want: Social Values and Mass Media 2
P.E. BROMLEY is a Vancouver city communications design con-
sultant who works especially on socially and ecologically respon-
sible projects.
In this century, human activity has presented the world with two truly dan-
gerous possibilities. The first, nuclear warfare, has largely been averted. Now,
unbridled industrial development is threatening to precipitate worldwide envi-
ronmental collapse. Excessive resource exploitation is destroying habitat and
bringing about species extinction on a massive scale. Emissions from techno-
logical and industrial processes are adversely affecting the atmosphere.
The situation clearly demands immediate social and economic reform. However,
such reform presupposes that environmental responsibility becomes a fundamen-
tal and unassailable part of our value system. As a communications tool, mass
media can be made to serve this purpose.
At present, earth-friendly values are only latent – that is, debated but not fully
acted upon in the centres of power. Bringing environmental values into full
public view through sustained and controlled use of media would change that
balance. Provided it uses clear, direct and inclusive language, such a commu-
nications initiative would help give environmental responsibility the popular
status it deserves and provide the moral framework for unified and purposeful
action.
Changing The Inner Landscape
The fabrications of industry permeate our daily lives: highrises, computers, tele-
phones, kraft dinners, electric toothbrushes, disposable diapers Industry also has
an intimate connection to our values. Automobiles provide mobility. Television
entertains. Career choices can bring personal fulfillment. Our culture used to
think this was the pinnacle of evolution, but now admits that industry and its
supporting values are threatening to destroy the planet.
The sheer momentum of our way of life makes the situation difficult to remedy.
Industry has enormous influence and well-developed protective reflexes. When
seriously challenged on ethical grounds, industrial leaders are not above raising
the spectre of economic decline. In the eyes of many, society therefore seems in
a state of denial, even paralysis.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that the fabric of our value system must change so
that people can live their lives in an environmentally responsible manner. But
in order to change our value system, it is necessary to come to grips with the
forces that shape it.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Imagining The World We Want: Social Values and Mass Media 3
We must challenge our sense of who we are.
For example: society has a well-developed taste for material comfort, conve-
nience and power. Dare we admit that industry simply exploits these tenden-
cies? If we can acknowledge this, then it’s possible to see that deliberately
developing other latent values could literally change the modern landscape. So-
ciety needs only to provide itself with the moral alternatives.
One way of doing this is through the strategic and sustained use of mass media,
the modern grapevine. Such measures would combine artistic principles with
their commercial equivalent – advertising.
Art & Advertising
The arts are trusted and taken seriously by society, while advertising has the
power to communicate a specific message for a prescribed amount of time. Ef-
fective social marketing combines these characteristics.
The creative arts deal with social values. At times, they simply entertain and
reassure us. At their best, they play an important social role by celebrating the
ideas that bring us together as humans.
As a communications medium, the arts are a one-way street. This means they
can establish and popularize new ideas simply by being granted adequate public
exposure.
Advertising is also a one-way form of communication. It uses artistic techniques
to reinforce the perceived value of a product or service. Of course advertising
also goes on to suggest that people part with their money. To achieve this objec-
tive, advertisers take great pains to appear familiar, unthreatening and personal.
This is a commonplace gambit – and most effective when the advertiser caters
to the value system of the ”target market”.
However, from a strategic standpoint, this arrangement has significant short-
comings. Advertising is so self-referential and style-conscious that it winds up
occupying a narrowly defined territory. Its style and content become predictable,
and its sincerity remains forever suspect. Environmental interests can therefore
command significant attention in the mass media simply by being honest, direct
and straightforward.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Imagining The World We Want: Social Values and Mass Media 4
Keeping It Simple ...
For environmentalists, effective use of media requires a sacreligious approach to
massive amounts of documentation:
Satellite and ozonesonde data show that much of the downward trend
in ozone occurs below 25 km (i.e., in the lower stratosphere). For the
region 20 - 25 km, there is good agreement between the trends from
the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE I/II) satel-
lite instrument data and those from ozonesondes, with an observed
annual-average decrease of 7 + 4
Translation:
Ozone depletion is not uniform.
Direct:
Many religious doctrines are oriented toward the spiritual heavens and rooted in
a time when human population and industrial activity were not major threats to
the environment. Nevertheless, present day churches are beginning to identify
environmental responsibility as a major social concern. Perhaps some of our
most basic beliefs are about to be updated.
Getting Grounded
Effective marketing communications requires a good knowledge of sociology be-
cause prevailing social values finally decide what can be successfully ”sold”
through mass media. This is why successful businesses take pains to know their
customers in order to manipulate their desires regarding success, happiness and
security. On perhaps a less calculating level, the non-profit sector now uses
similar insight to raise funds for causes such as child welfare and public health.
In such instances, manipulation of guilt is widespread and to a degree effective
– simply because guilt about those issues permeates the social conscience.
Environmentalists, in contrast, are faced with the challenge of altering the values
governing social behavior. This requires great care; isolating and attacking
industrial activity – itself an extension of our desire for control over nature –
can breed paralyzing conflict unless deeper issues are also addressed.
It is essential that society regains the grounded psychological framework neces-
sary to make earth-friendly decisions straightforward. It will then be possible
to stop humanity’s industrial assault on the planet.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Imagining The World We Want: Social Values and Mass Media 5
Lead Us Not Into Temptation
It’s hard to resist taking a potshot at the status quo – it’s like shooting fish
in a barrel. However, the sellers of high profile advertising space will not allow
it. Even if it’s for a good cause, a billboard like this would be seen as a direct
attack on a most valued customer. Consequently it would not see the light of
day in mainstream media – where it is needed most.
A less satisfying but more effective tactic would be to ignore mainstream values
altogether and present compelling alternatives on their own merits.
It Ain’t Rocket Science
Progressive social activists are now using marketing communications – or ad-
vertising – as a means to improve their links with the public conscience. They
have come to terms with advertising’s reputation for celebrating the banal, and
now see the craft for what it is.
When used effectively, advertising involves three simple communications princi-
ples. Appeal, the first of these, hooks the attention to create a receptive mood.
Sexual imagery is a common appeal device, but others engage interest in such
things as humour, guilt, refinement, comfort and power.
Clarity, the second principle, is the way an idea is framed in terms that can be
easily understood and absorbed by the mind for later reference.
Repetition, the third and most important principle, is, for lack of a more delicate
metaphor, the hammer that drives in the nail. Without repeated exposure,
especially in today’s world, the mind simply does not retain the information.
Furthermore, repetition can make up for shortcomings in clarity and appeal.
Who has not found themselves humming a radio tune they detest?
Future World
Systems analysis shows that when organizations reach a critical level of complex-
ity, they either collapse under their own weight or simplify. Modern society is at
that threshold. An overly complex way of life must be made to serve us – or be
discarded. Obviously, technology will have to become rigorously earth-friendly,
but society must also reevaluate basic assumptions regarding population, em-
ployment, competition, and other issues. Current practices are not sustainable
– and are at the root of irresponsible treatment of the environment.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
When threatened, societies normally coalesce and find solutions. The role of
government and news media at such times is to bring reality into focus and
encourage action. Today’s politicians and news organizations are not quite ready
for the task, however. Earth-friendly beliefs are not a fully functioning part of
the social framework. In some circles they are considered weak, unrealistic,
subversive, even unmanly. Government policy and mainstream news media
simply follow these beliefs. Consequently individual citizens feel isolated and
doubtful in their views concerning environmental reform. There is a perception
that there is no common will to change the industrial and economic rules that
we ourselves have created.
Using mass media in a strategic and sustained manner would make public and
respectable the concept of environmental responsibility, and foster the sense
that, as communities, we are willing and able to take nature into account. As
creatures of this planet, we possess that awareness as part of our heritage. It’s
now a matter of remembering, en masse, that an earth-centred value system is
required to deal with a rapidly approaching future.
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Imagining The World We Want: Social Values and Mass Media

Hope, Marjorie

Young, James

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Remembering Shenandoah
Marjorie Hope
Trumpeter
James Young
Trumpeter
Remembering Shenandoah 2
MARJORIE HOPE and JAMES YOUNG have just completed a
book titled Voices of Hope in the Struggle to Save the Planet,
from which this piece was excerpted.
With the recent death of Leon Shenandoah, the Thadodaho, or chief-of-chiefs, of
the six-nation Iroquois Confederacy, a luminous presence passed from this world.
During the past seven years, in the course of writing a book on the ecospiritual
movement, the two of us have talked with scores of spiritual leaders and activists
around the world. Some have achieved a certain fame - including Shenandoah’s
own nephew, Oren Lyons, who has become known as the leading spokesperson
for the indigenous people of the world. But Shenandoah was unique.
He was a leader in the revival among the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois) of
their traditionalist Longhouse religion: a synthesis of ancient shamanic practices
and agricultural ceremonies, and the revelations of nineteenth century prophet-
reformer Geneodiyo (Handsome Lake).
Some Native Americans (whom Shenandoah always referred to as Indians) have
compromised on issues of development or gambling; even some Iroquois have
welcomed them. Under his leadership, his own nation, the 0nondaga, continued
to say ”No!” and resistance was strengthened among other Iroquois.
In 1992 he participated in the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He also foresaw how destructive to native
economies and spiritualities NAFTA would prove to be.
No one we have ever known has expressed with such quiet simplicity, the feeling
of being of the Earth.
This is the story of our first meeting with Shenandoah.
As you drive south from Syracuse, New York, an interstate highway sign points
to the ”Onondaga Nation.” No flags, no uniformed officers, no customs barriers
mark the approach to this 7000-acre nation. Instead, a diner and a somewhat
forlorn-looking store dealing in beer, cigarettes, Indian souvenirs, and sundries
stand near the beginning of the road through the territory. As you near the
village, on either side of the road lie dumps and abandoned cars. Most of
the dwellings are rundown trailers. Here and there, however, stand neat, new-
looking log cabins, and a few ranch-style houses. In the yards, some families
are gathered in circles, eating, smoking, talking quietly and staring at visitors’
cars. Beside the road stand several ”Onondaga Mission” churches with well-kept
cemeteries. And in the hazy distance rise low round hills still thickly wooded
with tall trees and nurtured by streams, a reminder of the distant past and a
fading way of life.
Leon Shenandoah greeted us with a certain reserve. A white-haired man in
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Remembering Shenandoah 3
his seventies, still slender and vigorous-looking, he motioned us to a seat in his
smoky living-room, and regarded us with intent, watchful eyes. Although a new-
looking television set stood against one wall, most of the furniture was worn,
and the only heat came from an electric heater. We remembered that it was a
tradition among families from which chiefs were chosen that they should not be
ostentatious; indifference to money and belongings was a sign of superiority. In
the next room an infant grandson played on the floor under a calendar with a
photo of an Indian chief sitting on a horse in full regalia.
The chief listened somewhat impassively as we explained that we were writing a
book on the new alliance between faith and ecology, and had a special interest
in the Iroquois. After a moment of reflection, he nodded.
”Our way of life is what our religion is all about. It was given to us by the Father
Creator. We do not even use the word ”religion,” except to help the white man
understand. It is more like giving thanks. The way we think, Mother Earth is
our mother. We get our nourishment from her. It is a duty to work in harmony
with her. All our ceremonies are related to Mother Earth.”
”Can you tell us more about them?”
”Well, a little,” he said slowly. ”We do not allow visitors at the ceremonies.
Some Indians do, but we don’t. Our children, though, they come. That’s how
they learn. All of us, we carry on from the elders. It’s continuing. We have a
ceremony for every season, and two others between seasons. We can tell you
about them, but you cannot attend if you are not Iroquois.” He paused, as if to
be certain we understood the full import of his message.
”This is a nation,” he went on. ”We Iroquois insist on that.”
”Other tribes refer to themselves as nations, too.”
”That’s true,” he said, a little impatiently. ”But we insist on being treated that
way. Like we have our own passports, saying ‘Onondaga Nation’ or whatever.
The Iroquois and the Hopi out West are the only ones with their own passports.
We tell the United states we never have been American citizens, and never will
be. Other Indians, they’re supposed to have that right, but they don’t fight for
it. Another thing, most of our disputes are settled by the elders, and the police
are not supposed to come in here. They keep trying, sure. And we have fights.
But we win.”
The phone rang, and he moved to the dining-room. ”Yes, you can come tomor-
row,” we could hear. ”I’ll be here all morning.”
He sat down again. ”The whites, they come to us now, to learn,” he continued.
”They’ve already learned a lot. Their constitution was copied from our Con-
federacy. Right here in Onondaga stood the Tree of the Great Peace, the white
pine that was uprooted so our nations could throw their weapons into the pit
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Remembering Shenandoah 4
before putting the tree back. That’s where white people get the phrase ‘burying
the hatchet.’ They never got to practicing it, though.”
We remembered that according to oral history, the Confederacy was founded
perhaps a thousand years ago, perhaps more, by a Mohawk named Deganwidah,
the Great Peacemaker. Many U.S. founding fathers saw in the Confederacy’s
constitution, the Great Law of Peace, a model for their new nation. Some
features, such as debate and compromise, two houses of legislature, and uniting
several sovereign units into one government, were adopted, but many other ideas,
such as reaching agreement through consensus, were never included. Friedrich
Engels lauded the Iroquois as exemplars of primitive communism. In traditional
Iroquois society, status depended more on moral qualities and leadership skills
than on lineage or wealth.
”Can you tell us more about how you choose your leaders?”
”Okay. Every Iroquois nation has several clans, with names like beaver or wolf
or turtle, and every clan has a clan mother. There are two leaders for each clan,
the main one and his partner, working together for the people. And it’s the
women, the clan mothers, who choose the men. The clan mothers, they’ve seen
the children growing up, so they can study the person to see if he has the right
qualities, like truthfulness with the people. So the clan mother talks it over
with the other women and then chooses. All the clan mothers together choose
the chief Statesman for their Nation. Those chiefs approve the Thadodaho, the
chief-of-chiefs for the Confederacy. He comes from the Onondaga Nation because
the first Thadodaho was an Onondaga. The Onondagas are the Firekeepers of
the Haudenosaunee. So he shares that trust with his cousins, the other thirteen
Onondaga clan chiefs.
”Today I’m chief-of-chiefs. But what I learned, I learned from the heart. Not
from the book. Today - the children all go to school here. It’s run by the state.
They get brainwashed.” He sighed. We told Shenandoah that we had just visited
the school. With its corridors and classrooms adorned with Indian craftwork,
poetry, and student paintings, it had seemed a bright, cheerful place. Although
the principal - a man who spoke with great admiration for Indian culture - was
white, most of the teachers were Indian.
”Yes, there are Indian teachers, but they’re brainwashed too,” he said impatient-
ly. ”The children learn Indian culture and language up to eighth grade, but then
they go out to the high school, and there are no Indian teachers. That’s what
the government wants, that we lose our traditions.” His lips tightened.
”Did you have much formal schooling?”
”A little. I went to a Quaker school a few years. It was all right. When I
was sixteen, I went into the Longhouse and I said to myself, ‘This is where I
belong. This is our way of life.’ So I worked on the land. All day we ploughed
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Remembering Shenandoah 5
with a horse. We worked hard but we were close to the land. it was natural.
Then things got harder and harder, and I had to go out to work. I went into
construction. Today the people can’t make a living here, they go out, and a
lot do construction. White people look for Indians to work on high steel, like
bridges, because they’re agile and aren’t afraid of high places. So a lot of our
people live in cities. Then they come back. Some of them do.”
Modern education - it took away from common sense, he told us bitterly. Take
water – if it was polluted then it only made sense not to drink it, then do
everything possible to prevent pollution. But the white man made everything
complicated.
”The Christian God doesn’t believe in Mother Earth-” He shook his head. ”We
were given Christianity by the Europeans. Before the white man came, we could
drink from any stream. Pretty soon we won’t be able to drink any place. But
these white ministers say their way is better than mine.”
The infant grandson crawled into the living room, and up to his grandfather.
Stroking the child’s head, Shenandoah spoke slowly. ”I have a heavy heart.
Children like Michael - what is their future? Bad air, bad water, bad earth...”
His voice trailed off.
”I think about our young people,” he went on. ”Some get into drunkenness,
because they’re all mixed up and haven’t had good education. Some of them,
they want casino gambling. We don’t allow it here. We go by the Creator. Later
a lot of them begin to think about that, and then go into deeper thought. They
need to come back home to find themselves. Only the ones who are ready for
that can survive. Those sucked into the almighty dollar, they’re beyond saving.
”It’s hard to get away from the dollar, even here. They’ve approached us to let
industry in, because we have no taxes. But we just say ‘no.’ We get calls from
all over, from companies that want to dump wastes - all kinds, even nuclear - on
our land. Nobody wants it. They think of us, the poor Indian. We could make
two million dollars easy. But it’s not worth it. You are selling the children’s life
away if you give in. You know our saying: ‘We have a responsibility unto the
seventh generation.’”
The phone rang again. After returning from a long conversation in Onondagan,
he seemed absorbed in thought. At last he spoke. ”Oil, it’s part of Mother
Earth’s intestines. The whites are drawing the oil out of her. Then they burn it
up into poisons, and put them back in the ground, and the air. Mother Earth
now, she’s nothing but webs of roads around her body, and they’re strangling
her to death.” He sighed. ”I’m afraid it’s done, it’s too late. I know what’s
coming.”
”A wasteland?”
”Yeah. Yeah. Still, some white people are concerned. I do what I can. Like I
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Remembering Shenandoah 6
talked in Kentucky at a high school last month, and had them in tears. I just
got back from Mexico. We talked with the Maya in the mountains about how
their traditions are disappearing. I’ve been to England three times, Switzerland
two times, Holland once. Over there they’re really interested in the Indians. I
spoke about human rights at the United Nations in Geneva. And next month
I’m going to Australia to a conference about the environment and I’ll meet the
aboriginal people and talk about what’s happening to their rights. I’m going
with my nephew, Oren Lyons. He is an educated professor. I’m a traditional
professor. He goes to the ceremonies, too, but we’re different. He doesn’t see
what I see.”
”Yet you do seem to have a bit of hope.”
”Well, some. As things get tougher, more of our young people begin seeking,
and then come back to the old way. They will get their strength back if they
continue in this direction. Some white people are seeking, too.”
”If you could sum it up in a few words, what would you say is the answer?”
For the first time he smiled a little. ”Live in a simple way.”
Notes
Article excerpted from (or about themes in) Voices of Hope in the Struggle to
Save the Planet.
1 Holy Ground: A Resource on Faith and the Environment (a study guide by
the editors of Sojourners for small groups and classrooms) includes our article
”In Awe and Wonder” (Washington D.C., 1997).
2 ”Keeping the Sacred Fire,” EarthLight, Summer 1996.
3 ”In Awe and Wonder: Creation’s Reliable Testimony,” Sojourners, September,
1995. A portrait of Calvin De Witt and the Au Sable Institute.
4 ”Islam + Vatican,” an excerpt in Islam in America, Fall 1995.
5 ”Kids for the Earth,” Creation Spirituality, Summer 1995.
A portrait of Sister Pat Monahan and her environmental organization.
6 ”Keeping the Sacred Fire,” Resurgence, May/June 1995.
A portrait of Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga Nation.
7 ”Contrasting Perspectives: Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Thomas Berry,” Earth-
Light, Winter 1995.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
8 ”Islam + Vatican = Bad Medicine,” As-Salamu ‘Alaykum (Journal of the
Muslim Peace Fellowship), October 1994.
9 ”Islam Will Not Ally with the Vatican,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
3, 1994.
10 ”Islam and Ecology,” Cross Currents: Journal of Religion and Intellectual
Life, Summer 1994.
11 ”A Prophetic Voice: Thomas Berry,” The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy,
Winter 1994.
12 ”A Holy Mountain: Delving Into the Secrets of Mount Sinai,” The World
and I, December 1993.
13 ”Experiencing Sufi Spirituality,” EarthLight, Fall 1993.
14 ”Student Ecologists Stir Things Up to Ease the Earth,” National Catholic
Reporter, October 9, 1993.
15 ”Water Disputes Trouble the Middle East,” Christian Century, June 3-10,
1992.
16 ”Faith and Ecology on the S.S. Dostoyevsky,” Christian Century, February
26, 1992.
17 ”The Struggle is About Water,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 10, 1992.
18 ”Environmental Concerns and Actions of Six Faith Groups,” Sequoia, March/April,
1991.
19 ”Voices for the Earth - Around the Earth,” Baltimore Evening Sun, April
27, 1990.
20 ”Thomas Berry and a New Creation Story,” Christian Century, June 3-10,
1989.
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