The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)

Ditzler, Carman

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Search for an Ecologically Responsible Living: Garden
as Metaphor
Carman Ditzler
Trumpeter
Search for an Ecologically Responsible Living: Garden as Metaphor 2
CARMEN DITZLER: I grew up on a farm in Central Alberta and
from a young age listened to what the wind had to tell me. The
blowing grass and the wide open sky is still a vivid experience for
me. When I went to university I had a lot to learn and experience.
I was lucky enough to meet Harvey Scott and enter on a journey
of exploration. That journey led me to a new understanding of
the Earth and my place and my role. I fell in love with canoes
and water. I worked as an outdoor educator for a while, lived in
St. Vincent in the Caribbean to experience life in a developing
country, came home and started a master degree and eventually
completed a thesis that qualitatively looked at the process of living
ecologically. In many ways the writing of the thesis was part of
the process of weaving my own web. I care and question and make
connections, and make choices and exhibit paradoxes in my life.
I’m working on the action part. It’s difficult. One year ago my
partner, dog and I had the opportunity to escape out of the city
and live on a wonderful 1/4 section of mature spruce forest. We
are still here and beginning to dwell and put down roots. The
fresh air, the freedom to walk outside at night without fear of
attack, the green, the trees, the creatures, and yes my garden.
I find it useful to play with the idea of a garden and gardening to guide me in
my search for an ecologically responsible living. A garden is a place to grow
some food and flowers. A garden can be a place where humans and nature can
interact and foster one another’s growth. The garden fits in with the place one
lives, frost free days, sun, water, heat, soil. I garden all year round. I select
and keep seeds and bulbs, dreaming a vision of what the garden will look like.
In the spring I begin with preparing the soil by digging in the dirt. I use our
wastes that have become compost to provide nutrients for the plants. I plan the
beds and plant the seed and wait. Some things don’t germinate. Some things
don’t work out the way I planned. The garden needs nurturing. Some plants
and areas need more time, attention, water, nutrients, while others flourish on
their own. Being in the sun and feeling the earth and seeing the plants grow
nurtures me as well. Plants that grow well together, that get along, help each
other, protect each other, are planted together. I too surround myself with like
minded gentle people as much as possible.
Hoeing and weeding seems to be never ending. A weed may be useful or beautiful
or lovely all on its own, but somehow interferes where it’s growing. Pulling weeds
out of my garden, hoeing, hand pulling, is like getting rid of bad habits in my
life, like driving too much or buying overpackaged food. I don’t use herbicides,
so I need to think of creative work with the land, ways to get rid of weeds, or
better yet to use them to my advantage. The thing about weeds is that they
come back again and again. They creep in from the edges, making our garden
smaller. They grow in the rows and take away nutrients, water, and sun that
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Search for an Ecologically Responsible Living: Garden as Metaphor 3
the vegetables need. They reduce the harvest.
If I let the weeds get out of control then I’ve lost. My garden smothers, withers,
doesn’t produce, becomes ugly, unsatisfying. I end up working for money to buy
food. We all have weeds in our lives. Weeding takes patience, perseverance, time
and learning, all of which are lifetime processes. Harvest happens all year long,
from the first tender lettuce, spinach and radishes to the peas, beans, carrot
thinnings, beet greens, tender herbs, to new potatoes, carrots, corn, squash,
sunflowers and the endless zuchinni. The garden extends beyond the yard out
into the fields and valleys, connecting a web of living things. For example, there
are the wild berries that are a surprise on a walk, or a treat when my favorite
patch in the gully has a great year. The harvest is the fruit that gets canned,
the cucumber pickles, the root cellar brimming full, the dried herbs and braids
of garlic and onions all squirrelled away for a cold winter’s supper or a big family
dinner. There are other less tangible benefits of the garden. Soil gets between
my toes, under my fingernails and ground into my knees and connects me to
the earth. The sun, water, soil and seeds combine to create food for my body
and my soul.
The left over parts of the garden, like stems and leaves go into the compost
to become food for next year’s garden. The perennials get mulched and things
are ready for winter. Some herbs get moved indoors to last the winter and I
begin growing sprouts in a jar for salads, instead of lettuce in the garden. The
wonderful thing about gardening is that there’s always the winter to rejuvenate,
plan, dream and next spring to start all over again. This year I think I’ll plant
this and try this and move this over here and start these plants inside in March.
That variety of carrots wasn’t great, so I’ll try another kind this time. I get
ideas from other people, talk about gardening and visit their gardens, and we
trade cuttings, bulbs and seeds. I read and see the ways others are living and
provide support and hope for one another. Gardens are never the same from
year to year, we change, the garden changes. People and projects and interests
move in and out of our lives. Every one of us can think of many things that
could be done to create a vision of a new world on some level. And that change
is up to you and to me. Preferably we can begin the process of change from the
grassroots or beet roots.
...top down solutions are often inflexible, destructive, and unwork-
able. Even if this were not true, the best policies in the world will not
save ecologically slovenly, self-indulgent people who are not likely to
tolerate such policies in any case. In other words, the constituency
for global change must be created in local communities, neighbor-
hoods, and households from people who have been taught to be
faithful first in little things. (Orr, 1992, p.31)
Planting tiny seeds is having faith in little things. It is with faith and hope that
the potential for growing and living fully, richly and full of flavor and nutrients
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
will be realized.
My life, like gardens, has changed and grown, evolved and become a process of
dwelling in my place. I am in a process of discovering what works for me and
with the place where I dwell. Dwelling becomes a process, like gardening, that
is about doing it and doing it and doing it over and over in spirals and circles
and cycles. Gardening with myself as one of the plants I nurture and the Earth
as a partner who is full of surprises.
Reference
Orr, David W. (1992). Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a
Postmodern World. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Citation Format
Ditzler, Carman (1997) Search for an Ecologically Responsible Living: Garden as Metaphor
Trumpeter: 14, 2. http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.2.7
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Search for an Ecologically Responsible Living: Garden as Metaphor

Baldwin, Rob

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with
Conservation Biology: An AEI Approach
Rob Baldwin
Trumpeter
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach 2
ROBERT BALDWIN was born in Washington D.C. in 1963. He
moved to live in the woods of Maine with his family in the early
1970’s. His early years were spent caring for farm animals, helping
on a sawmill, with carpentry and other farm tasks. He went to a
public high school and then to Colby College, where he studied
Biology. His most interesting college experience was a year spent
at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Following college, he
went to work at the National Zoological Park in Washington D.C.
where he conducted a four-year research project on the behavior
of carnivores in captivity, and designed systems to help the ani-
mals express more of their natural behavior. He then worked as
a field station director on Andros Island in the Bahamas, a biol-
ogist in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a consultant
and State Park Manager in Vermont before coming to teach at
the Audubon Expedition Institute. His personal and professional
philosophies are influenced by his connection to land and tradi-
tions of the coast of Maine, and a desire to see a world form in
which humans respect each other and learn to live in balance with
the community of life. He hopes to soon purchase old farm land
with his wife Betty and work to restore its biological health while
supplying their family with food, water and heat.
Conservation biology and the deep ecology movement, one a science, one a philo-
sophical and grass roots movement, can be seen as entwined together through
their history. For instance, the author of ”The Land Ethic,” Aldo Leopold was
also the author of Game Management, the seminal work on management of
wildlife populations by using scientific methods. If one has developed a strong
intuitive sense for nature, and an ethics inclusive of all of nature, conservation
biology can be a powerful tool to inform debates and education over the fu-
ture of the planet. Conservation biology is science with the potential for an
inherent deep ecological ethic. The Wildlands Project, Greater North Cascades
Ecosystem Alliance, and the Southwest Center for Biodiversity1 are American
examples of the informed use of biology, law, and ethics in the service of biodi-
versity protection. Their activism and education are grounded in understanding
and articulation of biological principles as much as they are driven by moral-
ity. In some ways, they are models for the informed, active citizen and the
environmental educator who wishes to make changes in the world.
Environmental educators are our major hope for a paradigm shift in Western
human consciousness, short of ecocatastrophe. An effective environmental edu-
cator has an intuitive understanding of nature, and is also articulate about the
scientific and philosophical basis for the conservation of life. Traditional higher
education is generally effective in developing detailed understanding of the lat-
ter. It is more difficult to ”teach” intuition. The Deep Ecology Movement and
Conservation Biology do not need to be viewed as separate entities that devalue
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach 3
one another. Here at AEI, we consciously blend the value and insights inherent
in each of these realms.
Blending Deep Ecology and Conservation Biology
Deep ecology education is a process of developing an intuitive sense for the
behavior and needs of Earth’s living systems. Much as in my marriage, I work
to strengthen the relationship by listening, validating, and observing, striving
to know the problems before they arise. This process is echoed in group living.
The more I live, listen and work with others, the more I come to intuitively know
their individuality, their particular needs. I can learn to appreciate biological
diversity in the same way.
Leafing through a recent issue of Conservation Biology, I find an article on the
molecular genetics of pre-1940 red wolves. By attempting to understand their
genetics before captive breeding programs introduced gray wolf genes, biologists
are hoping to get a picture of how much of a species red wolves truly are. These
conservation biologists are experts on genetics and speciation. They use high
technology to inform policy decisions on federal and state protection of what is
now classified an endangered species. A supporter of the deep ecology movement
could rightly criticize humans for focusing their attention on discerning the
problem of red wolves on deeper and deeper levels, as other species are dropping
off of the planet, because the fundamental thinking about ourselves in relation
to the rest of nature has not changed. The deep ecological approach on red
wolves asks fundamental questions, such as how did human beings evolve to the
point where the loss of species such as red wolves is commonplace, and what
cultural paradigm shifts should occur so that we conserve other life through
our everyday actions? In an environmental education graduate program that
emphasizes the development of deep ecological values and teaching methods, we
try to balance the critical look at technology with respect and understanding for
science that is used to understand and maintain biological diversity. We ask our
third-semester master’s students: How can you, as an environmental educator,
use scientific information appropriately and effectively?
Karl Marx said: ”Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it.” A debate over the role and responsibility of activism
for scientists is currently raging within the discipline. (For a very informative
exchange of views on science and activism see the special section in June 1996
Conservation Biology) From this debate students can learn about the tension
that arises between scientific objectivity and the moral responsibility to act.
They can examine their own relationship to scientific information as educators
and the balance they will achieve between teaching values and facts. They can
ask what it means to be a professional teacher. David Orr’s critical look at the
effects of professionalism on academia’s ability to contribute to social change
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach 4
leads him to state: ”The professionally induced fear of making a mistake or
being thought to lack rigor has rendered much of the professorate toothless and
confined to quibbles of great insignificance.” (1994, p. 100) People’s historian
Howard Zinn questions the ethics of being a neutral teacher: ”...in a world where
children are still not safe from starvation and bombs, should not the historian
thrust himself [sic] and his writing into history, on behalf of goals in which he
deeply believes?” (1990, p. 1)
The Audubon Expedition Institute learning experience fosters connection with
the land. Students often develop emotional bonds with places they visit. They
often become critical of technology. For example, at a visit to the Glen Canyon
Dam two years ago I watched as students wept. It is often difficult for them
to reconcile the positive uses of science with the technological control they wit-
ness that seems to threaten living systems everywhere. Challenged to examine
current dominant paradigms by books such as In the Absence of the Sacred by
Jerry Mander, Thinking Like a Mountain edited by John Seed, Joanna Macy,
Pat Fleming and Arne Naess, and Earth in Mind by David Orr, students develop
an appropriately critical stance in relation to technology. Encouraged to work
through despair over planetary despoliation, including using Joanna Macy’s ex-
ercises from Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age , they often get
in touch with deep feelings and become motivated to do some kind of political
action. Hearing the first hand life stories of advocates such as Peg Millet (the
”Arizona Five”) Lynn Jacobs (author of Waste of the West), and Howard Zinn
(author of . People’s History of the United States) often helps students feel a
bond with other activists and seems to increase motivation to overcome their
own obstacles. At the same time, students are being encouraged to develop a
personal relationship with the land, using traditional natural history methods
as well as exploring the spiritual. Music has also been an important founda-
tion: One student last spring wrote words and fiddle music for a song to the
Nantahala River in Tennessee, as well as a research paper, for a natural history
writing requirement. In this context, Conservation Biology is a tool to become
a more literate, articulate advocate for conservation.
The intent of conservation biology education at AEI is to increase conservation
biology literacy, not become conservation biologists. We do not mean literacy in
just an academic sense, although this is certainly part of it; we mean an ecolog-
ical response that involves the body. To teach the body requires the immersion
of the whole person in the systems being studied, in our case this semester,
the Gulf of Maine bioregion. Only when the cycles of storms in the Gulf be-
come as ingrained as breakfast, lunch and dinner, when the finite boundaries
of protected forest land areas become painfully clear through direct experience
with clearcuts, will such words as ”habitat fragmentation” and ”species-area
relationships” come meaningfully to the surface.
Why is intuition important? Isn’t it more objective to focus on learning all of
the relevant facts? For some ecologists, intuition may play as an important role
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach 5
in recognizing ecological problems as the intellect. John Davis, editor of Wild
Earth, in the foreword of a recent book on eastern old growth forests, tells us:
”Natural Forests display such a broad spectrum of characteristics that we can-
not constrain them within neat definitions. To some extent, we might do well to
let our intuitions, backed by studies, tell us what is old growth.” Will Blozan,
an AEI alumnus, has become internationally known for his strongly develope-
d intuition for locating and identifying stands of old growth in the southern
Appalachians and his uncanny ability to find record trees. This semester, grad-
uate students doing studies of two ponds on Grand Manan Island reported that
it was the incidental observations they made, the feelings they got about the
places, that told them which pond was in a more healthy condition. One world-
class field ecologist I worked with described how, after a period of time being
immersed in a system, his intuition gives him an immediate understanding of
other, very dissimilar systems.
This semester, I co-facilitated a course in conservation biology for the Master’s
degree students in their third and last semester in the field. The stated goal
was to ”provide students with understanding of the biological processes behind
extinction, the anthropogenic causes and the proposed solutions, that they can
effectively use as environmental educators.” In AEI’s student-centered experi-
ential model we use eight major means of achieving this goal. These are:
1) A typical experiential model of a Three-part Experience, including a pre-
experience presentation, the experience itself, and a post-experience integration.
Pre- and post- experience teachings are usually done by students, with the
guidance of faculty. Preparations serve to inform the students so they can
ask better questions, engage more in the experience, and generally raise the
level of involvement. Integration enables students to digest the information and
emotions stimulated during the experience and construct new knowledge. Some
experiences focused on Conservation Biology have been: Mitch Lansky, author
of Beyond the Beauty Strip: Saving What’s Left of Our Forests; Manomet
Bird Observatory; Bowater/Great Northern Paper Company; and Gary Lawless,
poetry editor for Wild Earth.
2) Reading: students tailor their reading to their particular interests, with
the guidance of faculty. In addition to reading bioregionally-focused books and
articles on natural history and ecology, students are directed to the following
books: The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions,
by David Quammen; . Primer of Conservation Biology, by Richard Primack;
and Ghost Bears: Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis, by R. Edward Grumbine.
These works provide general and specific information on the theory and practical
application of the science of Conservation Biology.
3) Group Discussion: a component of pre- and post- experience teachings,
and other courses that happen during the semester. Discussions are facilitated
by faculty and students and focus on personal ethics and understanding of the
issues with the expectation that students pull in outside references to back their
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach 6
positions.
4) Dialogue with Faculty: faculty can draw out the students’ views and
understanding of conservation biology through guided, informal exchange.
5) Collaborative Group Project: students working in small groups to re-
search, plan and present an educational project ”to inspire behavior changes in
the audience.” Students also have the option of planning and implementing a
biological monitoring project in one the ecosystems we are visiting.
6) To focus inquiry, we asked the following four Core Questions. Core ques-
tions are intended to guide students’ exploration of the subject matter. For
example, they make great starting points for journal entries and discussions.
How have you engaged with the ecological communities of the Northern Forest
and Gulf of Maine bioregions?
What is an island from the perspective of another species?
How can you, as an environmental educator, use scientific information appro-
priately and effectively?
What practices do you employ to heal ecosystems and build your relationship
with them?
7) Learning Community:By watching and developing a learning community
students can develop an intuitive understanding of interconnectedness. By car-
ing for and listening to each other students develop a sensitivity to subtleties of
the non-human world.
8) Field Immersion: There is something magical about living outside that
puts us in touch with the pulse of the land. There is a constant stream of
”information” coming to us through our senses in the form of the passage of
the stars over our bare faces as we sleep, the fall of acorns, the smell of decom-
position, the sound of highways and rivers. This information may appeal to a
deeper intuitive sense, perhaps a genetic affiliation (Kellert and Wilson, 1993),
and put in concert with intellectual exploration of the environment, contextu-
alizes learning.
Conservation Biology is a tool to be used in the context of deep ecology educa-
tion. Effective environmental educators act and teach from an ethical stance,
are skilled in guiding others through values education, and can articulate the
philosophical and scientific basis for their actions. A well-developed intuitive
understanding of natural systems is nurtured through long and involved direct
experience. Intuitive understanding enhances articulation of scientific concepts.
It can operate on its own, or in combination with science. It is perhaps the
most valuable asset an educator can possess.
We are struggling out of a time when the mind was God. We let rationality tell
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
us how to live. As we learn to listen more to our hearts, let’s not forget our
minds.
Acknowledgments
As always, I am writing down what passes through me as I listen and learn with
students and faculty of Audubon Expedition Institute groups.
Notes
1. A good Canadian example of this would be the Wildlands League.
References
Davis, John. Foreword. 1996. In Eastern Old-Growth Forests: Prospects for
Rediscovery and Recovery. Mary Bird Davis, editor, Washington D.C.: Island
Press.
Grumbine, Edward R. 1992. ”The Biology of Thinking Like a Mountain.” Chap.
in Ghost Bears: Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis. Washington D.C.: Island
Press.
Kellert, Stephen R. and Edward O. Wilson, eds. 1993. The Biophilia Hypoth-
esis. Washington D.C.: Island Press.
Noss, Reed F. June 1996. ”Special Section: Conservation Biology, Values and
Advocacy.” Conservation Biology 10 : 904-920.
Orr, David. 1994. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human
Prospect . Washington DC: Island Press.
Primack, Richard B. 1995. . Primer of Conservation Biology. Sunderland,
Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc..
Quammen, David. 1996. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age
of Extinctions. New York, New York: Scribner.
Seed, John, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess. 1988. Thinking
Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings. Philadephia: New Society
Publishers.
Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach 8
Zinn, Howard. 1990. The Politics of History, Second Edition. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press.
Citation Format
Baldwin, Rob (1997) Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation
Biology: An AEI Approach Trumpeter: 14, 2. http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.2.13
Document generated from IXML by ICAAP conversion macros.
See the ICAAP web site or software repository for details
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter


Merging A Deep Intuitive Ecological Understanding with Conservation Biology: An AEI Approach

Roszak, Theodore

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Frankenstein, Feminism, and the Fate of the Earth: Vir-
tual Reality and Nature
Theodore Roszak
Trumpeter
Frankenstein, Feminism, and the Fate of the Earth: Virtual Reality and
Nature 2
[Theodore Roszak comments on his new novel The Memoirs of Eliza-
beth Frankenstein, now available as a Bantam paperback. The book
received the 1996 James Tiptree Award, a prize given by the feminist
science fiction writers for ”literature that expands our understanding
of gender.”]
Why do we call the environmental crisis we are living through today ”the rape
of the Earth”? Why does that phrase seem so appropriate? Could it be because
rape is the violent caricature of union? And union, the healing of our divided
soul, is what technological power needs in order to be used with wisdom?
At the center of her classic tale Frankenstein, Mary Shelley placed a love story,
a tragic love story of a marriage - a union, as she always called it - that failed
to take place. In writing the greatest of all Gothic tales, I believe she found the
myth that addresses all the great questions of environmental destruction and
healing. Or perhaps I should say, in the unguarded trust of her romantic youth,
she allowed the myth to find her. I could think of no better way to honor the
insights she had buried in her novel than to tell the story again in her words and
mine, this time bringing out all that lay hidden in the surrounding shadows of the
tale. The very act of assuming a woman’s voice to do that was transformative.
Each time I fell into that voice, I felt I was learning something I could not
learn in any other way. I was opening myself to the possibility of seeing many
things - a broken marriage, a failed love, the loss of a child, an act of rape and
abandonment - as a woman would know these things. Of course I needed help.
But that very act of asking women - some of them ecofeminist activists, some
feminist psychologists, some artists, some midwives, some practicing witches -
was part of my education. I hope I have done justice to what they had to teach.
Above all I hope I have given Mary Shelley the voice she could not assume in
her own day.
At the conclusion of The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, Elizabeth, having
discovered the dark truth about Victor’s experiments, is driven mad. But her
madness is prophetic. She sees all about her the death of nature in our time at
the hands of Frankensteinian science. This is the final entry in her journal as
she waits in her bridal chamber for her ”belated wedding guest,” the monster
who has vowed to take her life. In the original novel, Mary Shelley strongly
hints that Elizabeth’s death is a sacrificial act carried out in love and surrender.
Evian, the Inn: Evening, August 30, 1797
... garment by garment I let my streaming clothes fall from me and
lie at my feet. I stare long at the great canopied bed that fills most
of the chamber. I think: Tonight, were I any other newly-wedded
woman, I would be meant to lie in this bed as naked as I stand now,
wrapped in my husband’s passionate embrace, learning the lawful
delights of the flesh. Tonight, were I any other woman, I would
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
stand at the threshold of a lifetime’s fulfilment as loving wife and
mother. But this shall not be for me. I shall lie upon this bed like
the sacrificial lamb awaiting the expiatory stroke. And I shall not
rise to see the light of day again.
My head whirls. Since this morning, I have felt adrift.
The storm drops thunder and the deluge on our heads; it beats upon
the world as if the Earth were its drum. I gaze from the window,
watching the crooked fire dance madly among the clouds; now and
again the lightning reveals the dome of Mount Blanc as clearly as if
this were midday. It is as if the heavens were cracking open and the
flame of the Empyrean flashes through.
I have this brief time, this hour ...
I am impelled to write.
I will leave these words.
These are \textsl{not} my words.
I see the death of the world.
I see great machines in the womb of the Earth.
And I see the mountains crumbling.
And I see the lightning chained and made a slave of men.
And I see great Nature humbled.
And I hear the sky roaring with an iron voice.
And I see the Earth sprout a deadly garden of billowing fume, by tens and by hundreds great blossoming flowers of fire.
And I hear the electricity speak with a million voices.
And I see the men building cities that have no need of sun or moon.
And I see the men turning from the Earth’s fair face to seek new worlds in the void. I see them lifting into the void
And I see the void devour the hearts of men.
And I feel the deadly chill of the void descend upon the Earth.
And I see the men conjuring their fantasies out of captive matter.
And I see the men making creatures of their own imagination.
And I see the men breeding without women.
And I see monsters bowing down to their makers and rising up against them.
And I hear the rapping at the window and know who is there.
And I hear myself greet my belated wedding guest.
And I hear myself ask for the mercy of forgetfulness.
And I see myself lie down upon this bed.
I see myself stretched upon this bed.
I see myself a naked offering.
I see myself the last woman on Earth.
Frankenstein, Feminism, and the Fate of the Earth: Virtual Reality and
Nature 4
Citation Format
Roszak, Theodore (1997) Frankenstein, Feminism, and the Fate of the Earth: Virtual Reality
and Nature Trumpeter: 14, 3. http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.3.13
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Copyright 1999 Trumpeter


Frankenstein, Feminism, and the Fate of the Earth: Virtual Reality and Nature

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Sanity, the Psyche, and the Spotted Owl
Theodore Roszak
California State University
Sanity, the Psyche, and the Spotted Owl 2
THEODORE ROSZAK is a cultural historian at California State
University in Hayward, California. He is the author of numerous
books, including Ecopsychology and Person/Planet.
How often do we come across reports like this?
”Washington D.C., March 8, 1997. Reviving a lawsuit over the
Northwestern spotted owl, a Federal Appeals Court cleared the way
yesterday for a new timber industry challenge to logging reductions
that President Clinton ordered three years ago. Clinton’s plan was
intended to protect old-growth forests inhabited by the spotted owl,
which was declared an endangered species in 1990.”
Another hard-fought struggle to preserve a threatened natural beauty from de-
struction. The environmentalists involved are of course fighting with whatever
they have, in this case the Endangered Species Act, the workhorse of the move-
ment. But perhaps it is time to admit that the spotted owl has served the
environmental cause beyond the call of duty - and not always in ways the public
can appreciate. How many Americans understand that the species listed in the
Endangered Species Act are not there as isolated animals, but as guardians of
entire ecosystems? How well have environmentalists done the job of showing
that assaults upon the remotest wilderness endanger human beings as much
as any other species? Physically, morally, and emotionally we are woven into
the web of life with old-growth redwoods and rainforests and dying lakes and
polluted rivers. We need them, not simply as a matter of intelligent resource
management, but for the good of our souls. The same toxins that kill them
run in our blood, the ugliness of their suffering aﬄicts our eye, for all we know
images of their dire fate haunt our dreams. And surely children who grow into
life without knowing wild nature will be less than fully human.
If that seems hard to believe, find a copy of the remarkable photographic study
Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry (edited by Bill Devall for Sierra
Club Books and Earth Island Press, 1993). Sit down with the book and read
through as much as you can before your eyes fill with tears. Clearcut was
intended to be an environmental report. It is that, but it is also a psychological
document. What you see in these heart-breaking photos of butchered redwoods
is a picture of the human soul. Perusing the volume, I was reminded of the
famous Oscar Wilde story The Picture of Dorian Gray, the tale of a young
man who kept himself beautiful by visiting his sins of debauchery and cruelty
upon a portrait that he kept hidden in the attic. Clearcut is the portrait we
are keeping hidden in our psychological attic.While ecopsychology certainly has
its place in the practice of private therapy, some of us in this movement are
also working toward a more public and political objective. What we seek is
to integrate ecologists, psychologists, and therapists into a new profession that
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Sanity, the Psyche, and the Spotted Owl 3
has a clear environmental purpose. When we say that we are out to redefine
sanity, that goal may seem abstruse. It isn’t. ”Sanity” is a hard legal term.
It is used in courts of law to prosecute, fine, issue injunctions, incarcerate or
let free. If environmentalists are to use the term with legal effect, we must
have a professional consensus as powerful as the consensus that has grown up
around the realization that ”dysfunctional families” can damage the mental
health of their members. That conclusion can now be taken into a court of
law to warrant official intervention in families, even to the point of removing
children from abusive parents.
Thirty years ago, when the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing was insisting that
the corrupted ”politics of the family” was driving people crazy, he was con-
sidered a maverick. Now his ideas and those of other family therapists are
being used in court rooms across America - and can even be heard echoing
through most of what the television talk-shows are telling the nation every day
about abusive families. As tawdry and sensational as such tabloid material
can become, it nevertheless represents a widely-shared insight into the broader,
interpersonal context of mental health.
Can the concept of dysfunctional environmental relations become similarly fa-
miliar? Can we develop an environmentally-based definition of mental health
tight enough to find a place in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - the
American Psychiatric Association’s official listing of neuroses?
If so, we might make such a definition available to environmental activists and
lawyers as a basis for legal action and to government as the basis for policy.
For example, ecopsychologists might be able to argue persuasively that any
institution, practice, or policy that diminishes ecological biodiversity is a direct
assault upon the mental health of a neighborhood, community, bioregion, or the
human species as a whole - and for that reason the activity must be stopped and
an alternative found. The project could be made very specific. It would mean
amending the Wilderness Act of 1964 to include the word ”psychological” in
the definition of ”wilderness” as any area that contains ”ecological, geological,
or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.”
Here is an excerpt from the Dedication of Clearcut:
This book is in memory of the plantlife, birds, insects, animals, and
indigenous cultures that have been driven to extinction by the greed
and delusion of human arrogance. All of us in the Industrial Growth
Society must take the responsibility for this condition ... We must
try to visualize extinction and learn to understand accurately how
certain patterns of human behavior lead to the extinction of species.
We do have the ability to enrich, not impoverish, our lives and the
planet wherein we dwell.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
Notice the language:
”greed, delusion and arrogance ...”
What are these but emotions that work at that secret level of the mind which
is the special province of psychotherapy?
”to understand patterns of human behavior ...”
Is that not what psychology was invented to do?
The Ecopsychology Institute has been in touch with environmental lawyers who
believe that having a hard, psychological consensus behind such legal categories
as ”behavioral evidence” would be an invaluable contribution to their cause. It
might be a better legal strategy than relying so exclusively on the Endangered
Species Act. There is reason to believe that the endangered species approach is
proving to be less and less persuasive with the public, which often cannot see its
stake in the issue. Offering the environmental lawyers a body of well-researched,
behavioral evidence would be the work of the academic psychologists; offering
them a useful connection with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would
be the work of the therapists. Making an environmentally-based definition of
mental health work in the policy-making arena is the task of environmental
activists and scientists. Getting the whole job done involves creating a profession
that commands respect when it speaks to both environmental and psychological
issues. That profession is called ecopsychology.
The contribution below is a small sample of the effort we have made to inspire
a dialogue between ecopsychology and environmental law. It is a magisterial
paper by James Thornton, former senior attorney for the Natural Resources
Defense Council, that comes close to being a definitive survey of the legal issues
surrounding environmental sanity. We hope it will lead to further discussion.
Citation Format
Roszak, Theodore (1997) Sanity, the Psyche, and the Spotted Owl Trumpeter: 14, 3.
http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.3.8
Document generated from IXML by ICAAP conversion macros.
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Sanity, the Psyche, and the Spotted Owl

Nissani, Moti

Brass-Tacks Ecology

Brunk, Glendon

Grizzly Fears

Cridland, Sean

From Simplicity to Complexity: The Two Approaches to Nature Taken by Thoreau and Lopez

Ashford, Mary-Wynne

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
The Power of One
Mary-Wynne Ashford
University of Victoria
The Power of One 2
MARY-WYNNE ASHFORD is an M.D., a long time peace ac-
tivist, and a faculty member at the University of Victoria in B.C.,
Canada.
”...on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s
up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”
Albert Camus, ”The Plague”
Not long ago I borrowed a set of tapes from David Suzuki’s CBC series, ”It’s
a Matter of Survival”, (Suzuki, 1989), and listened to them one after another
over a weekend. By Monday, I was paralyzed with despair. Although I had
been working every spare moment on nuclear disarmament, suddenly I felt like
Sisyphus in a pointless exercise pushing a rock uphill. Every morning the rock
grew larger and more unwieldy. Onto the weight of the nuclear arms race, I had
now cemented over-population, ozone depletion, drift-net fishing, destruction of
the rain forests, the Great Lakes dying . . . . For a time, I couldn’t put my
shoulder to the rock at all.
The questions that immobilized me were as old as the Greek myth itself. How
do you find hope when there is no rational reason for optimism? How do you
deal with evidence that the situation is worsening despite your best efforts?
Does your life make any difference? What is the power of one?
Camus in his 1947 novel, The Plague, explores the same questions, using an
epidemic of bubonic plague to represent evil and suffering and, specifically, to
represent the Nazi occupation of France and the collusion of the Vichy Regime.
The protagonist, Dr. Rieux, fights against suffering and death, not as a hero,
but as a weary, somewhat detached man, who through his struggle gives his life
meaning. His friend, Jarrou, speaks of having had the plague earlier in his life
when, as a child, he discovered that his father’s role as a judge was to sentence
and preside over death. In choosing how to respond to the plague, Camus’
characters are not motivated by hope, but by an inner imperative similar to
that often described by those who chose to risk their lives saving Jews from the
holocaust. The rescuers say that they were faced with someone at the door,
and simply did what had to be done. Viktor Frankl (1955) also writes that
finding meaning in life is independent of hope or freedom, as he describes life in
a Nazi concentration camp, where daily tasks of living often represent a refusal
to acquiesce.
Perhaps it is not fair to compare the angst of facing personal death with that of
facing the possible extinction of the human race, but our responses are still made
as individuals. The planetary crises raise existential and spiritual questions we
are usually able to avoid in our aﬄuent society. I find that the question of how to
face hopelessness is one I cannot answer with consistency and intellectual rigor.
On the one hand, optimism probably represents denial of the facts because the
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
The Power of One 3
scientific research offers little evidence that nature can recover from the man-
made destruction wrought in this century. I know, therefore, that I cannot
rationally base my decisions on the hope that we will turn things around. On
the other hand, I find that I cherish the small signs that people are taking action
to promote change, and when I see them, I feel a tiny surge of optimism that I
am unwilling to repress. My compromise is to work without depending on hope
that it will make a difference, while at the same time treasuring the signs that
I am one of many.
In spite of my despair after hearing the Suzuki series, I found myself continuing
my efforts in disarmament, not because it seemed to be the most urgent problem,
or the most terrifying, but because there were things to be done in disarmament
that were clear to me. Whether or not I could really make a difference, leaving
them undone was a resignation to despair. At the very least, the individual can
challenge the silence of assumed consensus. By breaking the silence, by refusing
to collude with evil and insanity, one resists the darkness.
Breaking the silence is, I think, the most significant thing we do as individuals.
Sometimes even without speaking, one can challenge the silence, as did the
women in Argentina during the military regime. The women, Las Madres de
la Plaza, refused to be intimidated by death squads. They kept a daily vigil
for the disappeared, standing outside government headquarters, their presence
alone a blatant accusation of murder and brutality. The women also showed
that the power of one is acted out in community, not in solitude. We sustain
each other in dark times, sometimes simply by being present together.
The result of ”speaking truth to power”, as the Quakers put it, is often subtle
and unpredictable. Men who left their jobs in US military industries as a result
of a crisis of conscience describe individuals who forced them to confront the
meaning of their work on nuclear weapons (Everett, 1989). One senior official
told of the impact of passing a solitary man who stood every day outside the
entrance to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, holding a placard opposing
nuclear weapons. The anonymous protester played a significant role in the
official’s eventual decision to resign his job.
Sometimes, we look to great individuals like Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela
in order to see that one person can effect change. I find it more inspiring
to see the effects of ordinary people who did what they saw had to be done
without becoming great symbols of resistance. I think, for example, of hearing
the Executive Director of the Manila YWCA speaking at a peace meeting in
Honolulu. She was asked whether the YWCA had had any part in the overthrow
of Ferdinand Marcos and the election of Corazon Aquino. ”Well, yes,” she
admitted, ”we did”. ”What did you do?” the audience demanded. ”Well, I lay
on the road to keep the tanks from coming into the downtown, and the other
women brought food and water.” I am inspired to know that she was not an
unusual, heroic example in those gripping last days of the Marcos regime. She
was one of more than a million who stood up to defy corruption and brutality.
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
The Power of One 4
I am reminded also of the small group of people who went to the Persian Gulf
peace camp in Iraq before the bombing began. As international observers,
they wanted to make a symbolic statement that there were alternative ways to
resolve the conflict. One of the group, Muriel Sibley (1991) described the events
as the US began bombing. Iraqi soldiers were sent to take the peace campers
to Baghdad for evacuation. The campers sat to protest this move, forcing the
soldiers to carry each one onto a bus. As one soldier placed an elderly woman on
the seat of the bus, he said, ”I am sorry mother, I am only doing what I must.”
She took his face in her hands and replied ” I too am sorry. I am only doing
what I must.” They didn’t stop the Gulf War. They did refuse to be silent in
the face of evil.
Living a life consistent with sustaining the planet requires a new ethic which
builds upon the assumption that each person is of value and that each person
does make a difference. The principles of such an ethic are best articulated by
contemporary social movements for peace, women’s equality, human rights and
the environment. It is not surprising that from each of these movements come
similar guidelines, because the issues we face are deeply intertwined.
As I interpret this new ethic, I find there seem to be two fundamental assump-
tions. The first is that humans are part of an interdependent web on this planet,
not the pinnacle of creation. The second is that perpetuation of the complex
web is good. That is, causing or allowing life on earth to die out is the essence of
evil. Derived from these assumptions are a number of guidelines for how humans
should live. These include the recognition that we must give up the emphasis
on the rights of the individual and stress instead the responsibility each bears
to the rest, and particularly to those who will live seven generations after us.
In shifting toward responsibilities to others, we must rediscover community in
the midst of our anonymous urban settings. As Nel Noddings (1984) writes, we
must move to an ethic of caring, an ethic based on relationship.
Women in each of the social movements emphasize the destructiveness of hier-
archical structures, not simply because such structures usually exclude women,
but because they place an emphasis on status and position over others, rather
than on equal relationships. Perhaps if we could return to valuing relationships
instead of possessions, we might make our own ”ecological footprint” smaller.
Non-violence must become a central value, not only because we have the abil-
ity to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, but because the attitude that
promoted the development of weapons that could end life on Earth represents
a way of thinking in which domination is paramount. Abuse of human rights
and of the environment arise from striving for domination of nature, of women,
of people of color, of those who dissent.
An ethic of sustainability demands an internal revolution in which we live out
individually what is needed collectively. Reducing, reusing, and recycling are
still uncomfortable and unfamiliar to most of us. I recall the good advice I
Copyright 1999 Trumpeter
received from my interpreter when I was in Moscow a few years ago. He told
me that he was absolutely at my disposal. ”If there is anything you need”, he
said, ”call me and I’ll tell you how to live without it.” Perhaps we need a 1-800
number to tell us how to live without whatever we see on television.
The myth of Sisyphus is not simply a statement that life is absurd, but rather
that meaning is to be found in the journey up the hill each time, not in the
hope that this time we shed the rock forever. Buddhist scholar, Joanna Macy,
writes of visiting a group of monks in Tibet (Macy, 1991). The monks were
reconstructing their ancient monastery which had been reduced to rubble by the
Chinese. Her heart fell at the magnitude of the task and its almost foolhardy
nature. When the monks were asked about Chinese policies and the likelihood
of another period of repression, Macy saw that such calculations were conjecture
to the monks. Since you cannot see into the future you simply proceed to put
one stone on top of another, and another on top of that. If the stones get
knocked down, you begin again, because if you don’t nothing will get built.
In the end, the power of one is in the everyday putting of one stone upon
another, working in community, speaking truth to power and refusing to join
forces with the pestilence.
Bibliography
Camus, Albert. (1947). The Plague. Stuart Gilbert transl. New York: Alfred
Knopf.
Frankl, Viktor.(1955). The Doctor and the Soul; From Psychotherapy to Lo-
gotherapy. New York: Vintage Books.
Everett, Melanie. (1989). Breaking Ranks. Gabriola, Canada: New Society
Publishers.
Macy, Joanna. (1991). World as Lover World as Self. Berkeley, CA: Parallax
Press.
Noddings, Nel.(1984). Caring; A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Ed-
ucation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sibley, M. (1991) Victoria Peace Walk, April.
Suzuki, David, 1989. It’s a Matter of Survival. Toronto: CBC Radio.
The Power of One 6
Citation Format
Ashford, Mary-Wynne (1997) The Power of One Trumpeter: 14, 1.
http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.1.2
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Copyright 1999 Trumpeter


The Power of One

Lousley, Cheryl

Our Shared Home: An Écomusée Initiative

Johnson, Brian

Trumpeter (1997)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Intro to Education
Brian Johnson
Trumpeter
BRIAN JOHNSON was a student on AEI’s Fal-
l Newfoundland/Mid-Atlantic bus. Here he struggles with
understanding the meaning and value of expedition education.
¡POEM¿The other day I watched my teacher’s kite soaring high above a grassy
meadow next to the sea And I said to myself, ”This is education?” ¡POEM¿The
other day I hurled snowballs at my classmates as we scrambled over a rocky
mountain top And I said to myself, ”This is education?” ¡POEM¿The other day
I had my first taste of partridgeberry pie late at night in a small harbor town And
I said to myself, ”This is education?” ¡POEM¿The other day I watched the Earth
wrap the moon in a milky shroud And I said to myself, ”This is education?”
¡POEM¿And now, I remember how I used to learn In crowded lecture halls with
untouchable teachers And I say to myself, ”This is education.”
Citation Format
Johnson, Brian (1997) Intro to Education Trumpeter: 14, 2.
http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?6.14.2.19
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