Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character

1. Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character Wendell Berry By Taylor Hays

2. Sierra Club • making interesting political decisions • there is a profound difference between what we think and what we do • no wonder

3. Sierra Club “It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the “real world” works." -Wendell Berry

4. So... how to conserve? • it's impossible to live completely neutral on the land in this economy and society • no one is perfect • distinctions: • degree • consciousness • reality vs change?

5. Biggest Problem Specialization • good for the system • bad for the individual

6. Specialization • only know how to do one thing • teachers • communicators • doctors caring for diseases • worst: inventors, manufacturers and salesmen of devices who have no concern for what the devices do

7. Another issue: Responsibility -used to be that people had issues that were universal and personal, now... -food problems are agriculturists problems; health problems are doctors’ problems; education problems are teachers’ problems, etc. -with no more problems to worry about, the American citizen only has to worry about how to make money and entertain himself. -can hardly entertain himself as he is not an “entertainer” - that is now someone else’s job

8. Responsibility • and shouldn’t we then be happy? • and yet we’re not. we can’t provide anything for ourselves, really. • morning to night we will go through the day never touching anything we made ourselves; nothing to take pride in. we don’t know what we would do if bad things happen (because we don’t need to rely on ourselves for anything else, so why would we know how we’d react?)

9. Responsibility -”If he lives by the competence of so many other people, then he lives also by their indulgence; his own will and his own reasons to live are made subordinate to the mere tolerance of everybody else. He has one chance to live what he conceives to be his life: his own small specialty within a delicate, tense, everywhere-strained system of specialties.”

10. Responsibility • public point of view • specialist system fails because it is one where everything is done by an expert, but things are made poorly; made to break. • personal point of view • specialist system fails because a person who can only do one thing can do virtually nothing for himself. • “In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists.”

11. Specialist System • community disintegrates, no knowledge of relationships • basic problems are not being solved • see time as money • in lieu of our thoughts, energy, etc • similar to charities

12. Institutional Solutions • ... like money, aren't entirely helpful • fail to solve the problems to which they are addressed • because they cannot consider the real causes • only way to solve these problems is that “one must begin in one’s own life the private solutions that can only in turn become public solutions”

13. Consumers • think in regards to responsibilities to increase capacities as a person and become effective in a different way- perhaps smaller, but more sound • a responsible consumer must: • know his needs and only purchase what he needs • not settle for the less good • must also be a producer • if you can produce, you are free from the system and can then lead to change!