Alberta high-school students can take a very valuable lesson from Lynden Dorval's suspension by the Edmonton school board. After refusing to heed repeated warnings and deadlines to complete a certain task - giving the consequence-free mark of "not complete" to assignments not handed in, instead of zeros - he received meaningful disciplinary action. Setting aside whether this suspension and the policy behind it are just or practical, this is the real world and employees get in trouble when they don't follow the rules. He is being punished for holding his students to the same standard of behavior that he is being held to by his superiors, under the umbrella justification of doing what's best for the students. The lesson here, as students who passed their English classes by actually handing things in already know, has to do with irony. Of course being a students is not the same as being an employee, and nor are high schools me...
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Comments
But seriously, this was a great first video and I hope to see more (even though I can get free live lectures anytime).
Despite what I said earlier about your argument, echoing certain points, as it does, made by the protagonist in "Life of Pi", concerning the relative welfare of zoo animals (with which I fully agree), you still provided a lot of food for thought here. Especially in the second part of the video, where you wade into the theoretical deep end, suggesting a a mistaken identity between our human values, considered from an aesthetic standpoint, and what is innately valuable to the animal itself (or "nature", as-distinct-from-humans, which becomes more problematic).
Your comment about different lines of argumentation suggests that you assume a categorical difference between "human desires/values" and innate value (however defined). Am I correct? If so... the implications seem to spread far beyond the scope of this post, and I feel ill equipped (and too tired) to explore them in any detail at this time. But they are interesting. That's all.
I agree that when environmentalists use the "we should protect nature because it's beautiful" argument, I feel like they're making a last-ditch effort. Trying to appeal to the capitalist nature of the world and explaining but no, we shouldn't kill the rain forest because "we need it for resources, think of all the untapped medical cures!" These folks, I thereby can only conclude, are probably the type of environmentalists who would be morally okay with killing a rat, or other common pests in North America, so long as it's toward 'progress' or a better human system.
I often think though that people who use that argument don't really believe it- they're just selling out, because it's much harder to explain to some people (as I had this very argument with Katie Tyson not too long ago) that there's something innate and /correct/ about the way nature is without us meddling with it. When I use the word beautiful to describe nature, I don't mean asthetically appealing to my personal eye, or there's something selfish about it, I feel like it's beyond me, perfect, balanced, full of life and death and very little notion of good, evil, morality, and that the human constructs we have built over time to philosophically come to terms with our own existence living in this enormous societies is so far from the way nature functions, that I can't even conceptualize it, or word it, or understand it, especially not relaying this to a non-environmentalist trying to explain that the way we humans do things is just not the way we ought to. Maybe a lot of us watch Planet Earth or go to zoos because we don't feel normal just going out on a hike, or spending a day at the lake. We feel like we're not part of these things any more, we don't relate to them, so we much prefer going to a societal construct of nature within our own city, the San Diego zoo, or watching Planet Earch in the comfort of our own homes.
I recently went to the petting zoo at Beacon Hill park, and each time I go I'm always in awe how the peacocks are left to their own devices, free to wander the park, free to fly off anywhere if they wanted to, but they always come back to the zoo, there's food there, children to gawk at their magnificence. They're the most calm out of all the animals on display there. I would even go so far as to say I think they like it.
And I am tired. I'm still in an adjustment period with this new getting-up-at-7-every-day thing.
That said, a zoo's environment has vastly varying effects on different animals. Some have longer life expectancies in captivity, some in the wild. Obviously this will vary from carnivore to herbivore, and from zoo to zoo. So, I agree. Let's give zoos a break. What are we to do with these animals anyway? Should we shut down zoos and release gorillas who have never been outside of a captive environment into the wilds of Rwanda to be slaughtered for bush meat?
Now the question of beauty and nature and environmentalism. I think perhaps we need to address WHY something is beautiful. Why is Planet Earth so glorious? It is certainly an extension of the same instinct of viewership as is displayed in zoos, however it is both more and less fulfilling. In the zoo I appreciate the beauty of the animal itself, but divorced from its natural environment. In the wild and via David Attenborough's smooth narration, you can appreciate the animal AND its environment and how the two are symbiotic. I think that we define these things as beautiful for the very reason that they healthy. I think we can generally agree that an eco-sphere untouched by human beings is generally more 'healthy' than, say, downtown LA or Chernobyl. It is also more beautiful to our aesthetic eyes. So when an environmentalist argues that we should preserve something because it's beautiful, they're simply pointing out that human beings value things that we haven't disturbed or destroyed- because our interference usually leads to a decrease in the health of a wild animal or its habitat. It's a rather circular argument.
We are hardwired, I think, to identify when our (or any other) environment is healthy. Just as we find human being with good skin, shiny eyes and healthy hair attractive (all signs of inner wellbeing), we also find attractive a landscape unscarred by logging, where the plants have rich colour and are uneaten by acid rain, where the animals are free to interact with each other as they have done for millenia and in proper balance, where the water is clear or the savannah is the right shade of tawny yellow. We are more in tune with our environment, in an animalistic sense, as opposed to a purely human, and rather artificially divorced, aesthetic standpoint, than you give credit for.
Besides, who says the "monkeys don't think the environment is beautiful"? Animals have the same instinctive understanding of health as humans do- the diseased monkey does not get to mate. The milky eyed or patchy furred camel is the one looking on from the sidelines while all the other camels at the dance are feeling each other up to "Stairway to Heaven". Gorillas have been shown to understand the concept of "beauty"- yes, in the abstract sense. There is no reason to assume that these animals cannot identify these healthy- that is, beautiful- features in the landscape in which they live too. They may not be able to understand when human beings act to protect their habitat and then send thank you cards, but they do understand when their environment is sick or abused.
Of course the essential upside of watching Planet Earth is that we can appreciate this beauty without destroying it. A camera crew of 15 people does all the work, rather than 6 billion humans traipsing through the amazon dropping candy bar wrappers and complaining that there is no cell phone reception in darkest Brazil.
The environmentalist's plea to protect something because it's beautiful, is a plea to keep something healthy. I think it is that simple. So perhaps we should trust our animalistic side- the side that equates health and beauty- and accept that if we want to protect it because it's beautiful, the animals living there probably would appreciate it too... Human beings appreciate it- we are animals too, after all.
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