Aaron Antrim’s blog

“In the ancient world virtue also meant the cultivation of qualities of courage, fortitude, honesty, restraint, charity, chastity, family, personal courage, fortitude, honesty, restraint, charity, chastity, family, personal rectitude, integrity, and reverence. …The fact that this list sounds archaic to the modern ear is an indication of how far we have gone in the contrary direction.” (61)

In Orr’s list, there are some items that show up as green blips on my “possible wong-headed thinking” radar. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not opposed to honesty and integrity and I love my family, it’s just that his list of virtues from the past is overly simplistic. What about the sexual repression that came with putting a high value on chastity? Was that a good thing? Should we go back to that? What about the prescribed gender roles that can accompany family values (but don’t always have to)? What about courage when it is for the wrong causes? What about reverence when it is for false gods or corrupt authorities?

By offering one list of qualities from the past (good) and another of qualities of the present day (bad) I think that Orr is making a mistake. More often than not, the past gives us examples of what not to do. We would do better to consider the dynamics and possibilities of our changing world rather than feel nostalgia for the past.

aaron :: Oct.09.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: 2 Comments »

“Fourth, cheap oil and the automobile are responsible, in large measure, for the suburban sprawl that has conditioned us to think that ugliness and disorder are normal or at least economically necessary.” (56)

The American love affair with the car is unhealthy. When we lay out the disadvantages and costs of car travel it’s difficult to understand why we don’t cut the fuel line and get out of this bad relationship. There are plenty of ecological arguments from reducing single-occupant vehicle use but somehow for me, the most enticing arguments are about improving the urban and suburban landscape, the human environment. Arcata would be wonderfully different if there were little to no cars on its streets.

Area in the streets around the plaza could be devoted to street-side dining like in Europe, and instead of just seeing their friends and neighbors driving around, people could have actual conversations instead of car beeps when they passed each other as pedestrians. Pedestrians would be in a better position to have a dialogue with homeless street people on the street and be compassionate to those who need it, but at the same time local community members would be better able to reclaim their streets from some of the transients who are rude and disrespectful. Basically, getting everybody out of their little bubble of separation on the streets will have a positive effect on the town landscape and community.

Widespread public transportation use would have a similar effect, giving people the time and opportunity to meet neighbors and people from different walks of life in their community. Or, if public transportation was more widely available and more widely used it would have the effect of giving people more time to read news and books, work and make phone calls from their mobile phone, or something else during their commute time instead of driving. A tremendous amount of human energy, in addition to fossil fuel energy, goes into making cars run. Their upkeep, original purchase, insurance, and fuel are just flat out costly in dollar terms in addition to ecological terms. In 1997, the average direct annual cost of operating a private vehicle was $8,400 (Auto Costs Versus Bike Costs - article by Ken Kifer, biker killed by DUI motorist — in his article he determines that bikers can save between $8.20 and $48.40 per hour biking).

Today with inflation and increased fossil fuel costs that figure ($8,400) would probably be appreciably greater. This figure represents only direct costs: it does not include the cost of road construction and maintenance or the foreign wars necessary that are a direct result of our oil dependence. As a comparison, the average amount spent for food (eaten in and out) per American in 2002 was $2,245 (Economic Research Service of the USDA).

Why, with all the social, aesthetic, economic, and ecological costs of the automobile to we continue driving down the same road?

aaron :: Oct.09.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »

I remember taking the S.A.T. in fall of 2001. The entire experience of preparing, testing, and then getting the scores in the mail sticks out in my mind of exactly the sort of educational practice David Orr is criticizing. For me, it was one of the more degrading experiences of my educational career. As an ambitious high school student, but also one that felt standardized test performance was one of the least interesting and important of the qualities of an intelligent person, I was ambivalent about process from the beginning. I resisted preparing until my mother told me that even thought the SAT testing process was ugly this was not the time or place to resist preparing on principle — the outcome would close or open future educational opportunities. I went to a free SAT study session and got a free SAT study guide. I went through the material methodically and carefully and on test day I treated the test-taking as a serious duty. The fact that I am a very effective test-taker and that my scores got me wait-listed at Harvard in many ways actually did not make me feel good about myself — I felt that I had succeeded merely in forcing my mind to operate in narrowly prescribed ways, and in jumping through the hoops, had failed to use that time to develop my mind in more meaningful ways.

aaron :: Oct.09.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »

A summary of the chapter: Science doesn’t occur in a vacuum; it doesn’t happen when it is not motivated by a passion, aim, or goal, and so that means that we should stop pretending it’s possible for science to be 100% objective.

My elaboration: It seems to me that scientists often try to establish their credibility based on their objectivity. Scientists with disagreeing findings will say the other scientist was biased in some way and point out flaws in their process. Is there a way to include motives and purpose and passion in the evaluation of scientific study and findings without compromising what science is supposed to be? I gather this is what Orr is suggesting when he says that such an approach would actually be more objective because it would include a more complete perspective.

aaron :: Oct.08.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »

“When pressed, however, true believers describe progress to mean not human, political, or cultural improvement but a mindless, uncontrollable technological juggernaut, erasing ecologies and cultures as it moves through history. Technological fundamentalism, like all fundamentalisms, deserves to be challenged.” (33)

Technological fundamentalism is definitely a pervasive, real thing. It’s probably most visible in the pages of a magazine like Popular Science, which calls itself a “science” magazine but actually is really about technology. The magazine’s pages are filled with gadgets and gizmos that impress or are interesting just for the gee-whiz factor, but rarely do articles discuss topics like problems with our current technologies (other than the fact that they’re not as cool as the new stuff is going to be), how to make intelligent or responsible use of our current technologies and science, what social and environmental impacts possible uses of new and current technologies we need to be aware of, or just generally acknowledge that some technologies (and the industries that produce or use them) can have negative environmental or social effects.

Popular Science magazine is an excellent distillation of the common features of technological fetishism, which looks exclusively to technology to solve problems, and which is constantly preoccupied with the dream of the eminent technological future rather than encountering real problems with technology, science, their applications right here and right now.

I haven’t read Popular Science for many years owing to some of these reasons. I am a current subscriber of Wired Magazine to which I can direct some of the same criticisms, just not as harshly. Wired has published many intelligent, thoughtful articles, but I am sometimes frustrated by their glossy magazine perspective which nearly always paints technological pioneers as big heros and technology as a cool ideal solution to problems. Blind fascination with technology is juvenile, offering escape into a not-yet-existent technological fantasy world but nothing of substance.

aaron :: Oct.08.2005 :: Inscape / Landscape class :: No Comments »