Orr

1
Orrs Love It or Lose It The Coming Biophilia
Revolution

• HMXP 102
• Dr. Fike

2
David W. Orr

• Like Naess, Orr was heavily influenced by Rachel
  Carsons Silent Spring.
• Orr is the chair of the Environmental Studies
  Program at Oberlin College in Ohio.
• He gives dozens of lectures around the country
  every year on environmental issues.
• His paternal grandfather was Rev. W. W. Orr of
  Charlotte, NC.
• Source http//www.oberlin.edu/news-info/98sep/o
  rr_profile.html

3
Biophobia

• How does Orr define biophobia? 
• See pars. 2 and 11.

4
Par. 7

• What characteristics of biophobia does Orr list
  here?

5
Characteristics of Biophobia in par. 7

1. The world is not alive and worthy of respect, if
   not fear.
2. Distance yourself from animals (mere machines).
3. Have no sympathy for nature think of it only in
   scientific and economic terms.
4. Join power, money, knowledge in order to make
   nature useful.
5. Stress improvement and perpetual economic
   growth.
6. Cultivate dissatisfaction that can be alleviated
   only by mass consumption.

6
The Other Orientation Biophilia

• How does the notion of a biophilia revolution
  relate to Naesss deep ecology (next slide)?
• See the definition in pars. 4 and 5.
• In what ways do you think that biophilia and deep
  ecology (next slide) are similar/different?
• Lets approach this question via the exercise on
  the following slide.

7
Exercise

• Arrange the following terms (here randomly
  organized) in a hierarchy from most bio-friendly
  to least bio-friendly.
• Biophobia
• Biophilia
• Deep Ecology
• Conservation
• Ecosophy
• Leavers
• Takers
• Consumerism
• Stewardship

8
Biofriendliness scale

• Leavers (animals)--Action
• Deep Ecology/Biophilia/Ecosophy--Attitude
• ConservationAction and attitude (ethic)
• Biophobia--Attitude
• Takers (humans)--Action
• Bad news Consumerism (attitude and action)
  pervades 2-5 but affects even 1. Good news
  stewardship also pervades 2-5.

9
Characteristics of Deep Ecology

• Reverence for all of life
• An emotional connection to other species
• Democratic spirit
• Reduction of human population to sustainable
  numbers

• Reversal of damage
• Biodiversity and symbiosis
• Long-range view
• The Self gt the ego
• Religious/ethical component

10
World Views

• The next few slides help you explore WHY we
  arrived at the six characteristics of biophobia.
• Note that the numbers correspond to the numbers
  on the next slide.

11
Characteristics of Biophobia in par. 7

1. The world is not alive and worthy of respect, if
   not fear.
2. Distance yourself from animals (mere machines).
3. Have no sympathy for nature think of it only in
   scientific and economic terms.
4. Join power, money, knowledge in order to make
   nature useful.
5. Stress improvement and perpetual economic
   growth.
6. Cultivate dissatisfaction that can be alleviated
   only by mass consumption.

12
Re. 2 René Descartes (1596-1650)

• Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, page 228  "The
  Cartesian approach to the human story allows us
  to believe that we are separate from the earth,
  entitled to view it as nothing more than an
  inanimate collection of resources that we can
  exploit however we like and this fundamental
  misperception has led us to our current crisis. 
• One of the deepest and most lasting legacies of
  Descartes philosophy is his thesis that mind and
  body are really distinct--a thesis now called
  mind-body dualism. He reaches this conclusion
  by arguing that the nature of the mind (that is,
  a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely
  different from that of the body (that is, an
  extended, non-thinking thing), and therefore it
  is possible for one to exist without the other.
• Source http//www.iep.utm.edu/d/descmind.htm

13
Homology

• Descartes Environment
• Mindbodyhumansnature
• POINT There is disconnection on each side of
  the homology. What Descartes says about mind and
  body also applies to humans and nature.

14
Re. 4 Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

• Par. 7 Francis Bacon provided the logic, and
  the evolution of government-funded research did
  the rest.
• To take the place of the established tradition
  (a miscellany of Scholasticism, humanism, and
  natural magic), he proposed an entirely new
  system based on empirical and inductive
  principles and the active development of new arts
  and inventions, a system whose ultimate goal
  would be the production of practical knowledge
  for the use and benefit of men and the relief
  of the human condition.
• Source http//www.iep.utm.edu/b/bacon.htm

15
Re. 1, 3, 5, and 6 Consumerism

• What do you make of the obvious connection to
  Swimme, the sophisticated cultivation of
  dissatisfaction?
• Swimme But at a deeper level, what we need to
  confront is a power of the advertiser to
  promulgate a worldview, a mini-cosmology, that is
  based upon dissatisfaction and craving (par. 6).
• Orr
• Par. 7 Sixth, biophobia required the
  sophisticated cultivation of dissatisfaction,
  which could be converted into mass consumption.
  
• Par. 10 Beneath each of these endeavors lies a
  barely concealed contempt for unaltered life and
  nature, as well as contempt for the people who
  are expected to endure the mistakes, purchase the
  results, and live with the consequences, whatever
  those may be. It is a contempt disguised by
  terms of bamboozlement, like bottom line,
  progress, needs, costs and benefits, economic
  growth, jobs, realism, research, and knowledge,
  words that go undefined and unexplained.
• Par. 16 People must come to see their bondage
  as freedom and their discontents as commercially
  solvable problems.

16
A Troubling Contrast

• Par. 8 What metaphors besides "board feet,
  tons, barrels, yield," etc. do we use to talk
  about nature?  Can you come up with others?
• Par. 17 What does Orr say about stewardship?
• What metaphors are more in line with stewardship?

17
Sample Nature Metaphors

• Here are some areas (nouns and adjectives) to get
  you started.
• Garden
• Resource
• Divine
• Wilderness
• Pristine
• Female
• Source http//www.wsu.edu8080/amerstu/ce/summe
  r97/ta/Metaphors.html

18
Question

• How can we be good stewards of nature when we
  have the wrong metaphors to describe our
  relationship to it?
• Perhaps by changing our metaphors
• Argument as war vs. argument as dance (Lakoff and
  Johnson)
• Our relationship to nature is USE vs. our
  relationship to nature is ____________.

19
A Further Problem

• Not only metaphor is off. In addition, we tell
  ourselves the wrong myths about nature.
• Par. 6 This par. mentions myth twice. Let us
  consider the whole par.
• What kind of myths do we have about nature? Cf.
  Gores emphasis on story.

20
Paul Bunyan and Babe
21
Paul Bunyan
22
Paul Bunyan

• Source for the previous two slides
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImagePaul_Bunyan_an
  d_Babe_statues_Bemidji_Minnesota_crop.JPG

23
Myths About Man and Nature

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQtvTE3m5jpM (BH)
• http//youtube.com/watch?vD_45epTAZLg (FDB)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v66wmmN1GLcsfeature
  related (L)
• http//youtube.com/watch?vDvVRMrUYvYs (B)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vc5wmUkpOCKE (RFK)

24
The Upshot

• Par. 11 Biophobia sets into motion a vicious
  cycle  This sentence describes the notion of
  feedback loop.  The idea is that a biophobic
  orientation feeds itself.
• Fortunately, that would probably work for
  biophilia as well.

25
Examples

• Two microphones
• Gores film Higher temperatures ? arctic ice cap
  melts ? more open water ? higher temperatures ?
  arctic ice cap melts, and so forth.
• Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point Example of
  public transportation in NYC.
• The Box, the Peabody Gym.

26
Topophilia An Extension of Biophilia

• Par. 20 loving the setting that is familiar to
  us.
• And there is hope in doing so because we want to
  preserve what we love.
• What is the relationship between topophilia and
  biophilia? Can there be one without the other?

27
A Third Orientation The free-rider problem
in par. 12

• Are you an environmental free-rider?  Do a Jeff
  Foxworthy thing 
• If your cell number doesnt have anything to do
  with a telephone, you might be a redneck!
• "If you(r) ____________, you might be an
  environmental free-rider."

28
Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas

• Does the principle of repression apply to
  environmentalism?  If we continue to repress
  nature, will it bite us on the backside? 
• Here is Jesus, speaking in the Gospel of Thomas 
  If you bring forth what is within you, what you
  bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring
  forth what is within you, what you do not bring
  forth will destroy you.  Is this true or false
  as regards the environment? 
• Cf. technology in the Aliens movies. The monster
  is the thing that is repressed.

29
Collective Shadow

• Par. 15 is mass biophobia a kind of collective
  madness? Is it, in other words, the
  environmental equivalent of a negative political
  movement like the Nazi party?
• How to address a problem in collective
  consciousness
• Acknowledge it individually.
• Work locally.
• Hope for a tipping point.

30
Lewis Thomas, Antaeus an-tee-uhs in Manhattan

• But I think it was chiefly the plastic that was
  at fault in the death of the ant colony on
  display in Manhattan, which seems to me the most
  unearthly of all mans creations so far. I do
  not believe you can suspend army ants away from
  the earth, on plastic, for any length of time.
  They will lose touch, run out of energy, and die
  for lack of current (The Lives of a Cell 26).
  

31
C. G. Jung, CW 10, 882/466-67

• Yet the danger that faces us today is that the
  whole of reality will be replaced by words. This
  accounts for that terrible lack of instinct in
  modern man, particularly the city-dweller. He
  lacks all contact with the life and breath of
  nature. He knows a rabbit or a cow only from the
  illustrated paper, the dictionary, or the movies,
  and thinks he knows what it is really likeand is
  then amazed that cowsheds smell, because the
  dictionary didnt say so.
• END