Back when I was in grad school, I once attended a talk given by a fellow member of the Semitics department on . . . Ugaritic, maybe? (I was in the Christian-era side of the program so I had only a passing interest in the pre-Christian semitic languages, honestly.) I recall that the talk was given by one of the more brilliant students in the program, and was correspondingly deep and technical. I could appreciate the depth of what was being said without actually being able to follow all of it in detail.
After the talk, there was some light applause, delivered with genuine respect (funny how you can *tell*, isn't it?). Then the department chair stood up to give his comments, and he started by chiding the presenting scholar: there was a serious deficiency in his paper. He had forgotten to draw out all the implications of his study . . . what would be the impact of his research on women's issues?! We all had a hearty shared laugh, and the rest of the evening went on pleasantly.
What was the joke? What you have to understand about the field of Early Christianity (which is the umbrella under which our department kind-of, sort-of rested), is that there is quite a lot of interest and funded research on women's issues in the early church. (I think this is true for a lot of liberal arts, actually, but I *know* it's true for early church history). There aren't a lot of conferences on Ugaritic, or paid seminars on cuneiform in early Mesopotamia; certainly not compared to the number conferences on the status of women in early Judaism, or oppressive patriarchal structures in early Christianity, etc., etc.
An example of this in Christian-era Semitics is recent trends in studies on Appa Shenoute, a most important early Coptic monk. The *only* recent, popular book published on Shenoute is from a scholarly feminist viewpoint: "Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery" by Rebecca Krawiec. (http://www.amazon.com/Shenoute-Women-White-Monastery-Monasticism/dp/0195129431). More hard-core Coptic scholars see books like this and shrug philosophically--since there's a ton of work that needs to be done in Coptic studies, and precious little interest and money to go around to get it done, the more exposure and interest the better. They just need to rewrite their papers a little bit to build off of or respond to issues raised by Krawiec, and they get a ready-made excuse to have their papers read by a wider crowd and to get into more conferences.
And *this* was the joke--this is the little dodge that arises from the basic realities of academic life, and that all academics become familiar with over time. You do the work you want to do, but you keep an eye on the winds of fashion (and of funding!), and you learn to tap into them to achieve relevance in your field, as much as you can. Sometimes it results in some rather absurd stretches to connect two things that are not really connected, but that's just academics. Everyone does it, or at least everyone knows about it; it's forgiven and then laughed about.
This is the origin of what I like to call the "Funding Hook", found in many (if not most) scholarly papers. There's often a very recognizable part of a paper that aims at this "tie-in" to what's currently relevant. Oftentimes, (unless the topic as a whole is already obviously "in style") it's easily identifiable in how it stands out from the rest of the paper--it's the part that says, "hey, this line of research is relevant and important! Someone should totally pay me to write another one!" Now, I say "funding" and use the word "pay", as if there was always literally money that was at stake. This isn't always the case. Oftentimes, what is asked for by the "Funding Hook" is not so much money as it is recognition of relevance and importance. But these may as well be money, because those things are what constitute the real currency of academia anyway.
What does this have to do with global warming? Quite a lot--it is something you absolutely should keep in mind when reading academic papers in the field of climate science. Because it's easy to see, if you pay attention, that global warming has given everyone in the climate science fields the *mother* of all funding hooks:
"So in conclusion, we need to continue my research in this area, or else maybe the whole world will burn and die. The end. P.S. My research assistants now take PayPal and coupons to Starbucks."
If there is *any* tie-in to global warming, then a paper can instantly claim relevance and importance of an (almost literal) earth-shattering scale. And almost any research having to do with the weather at all, or geological processes that might affect the weather, or anything that may have an effect on the biosphere, meaning anything to do with plan or animal life, can be spun plausibly as having something to do with global warming. So this happens a lot.
The problem is aggravated by the structure of an academic paper. All academic papers have the following three parts:
1) The introduction. Pretty straightforward, really--it's what you (and your adviser, if any) come up with initially. You tweak it at the end after the rest of the paper is done to whatever extent the research didn't go as you expected it would.
2) Presentation of research / arguments. This is the meat and potatoes of the paper. Here you have to be rigorous and definite. You don't use words like "could" or "maybe". If you have something to say, you say it and you defend it with evidence. If you can't come up with enough evidence for a point you wanted to make, you cut it from the body. (Or, you should.)
3) Conclusion. Here you do two things. First, you simply sum up the argument of the paper. But *then*, you also discuss relevance and application. *Here* is where you can relax on the rigor of academic argument, because here you can do things like pose possibilities (that could be followed up by future rigorous argumentation) and reflect on the importance of what you've just covered, even if the importance is subjective. You can even be poetic and flowery here, if you want. You can sneak in those points that you had to cut from the main body because you couldn't get enough hard evidence for them. And, of course, the funding hook fits perfectly in this section as well.
The upshot here is that the global warming funding hook is pretty much always found in the *least* academically rigorous part of the paper, the part of the paper that *academicians* know is to be read with a somewhat cynical eye. What happens, then, is that you have all these papers in climate science written in which the dire possibilities are raised, but with the minimum of scientific rigor. "Sure, maybe the temperature could raise 4 degrees C in the next century . . . who's to say it couldn't? It's a possibility. That'll make them think twice before cutting funding for my series of studies on wheat growth in Argentina."
This problem is compounded *again* by the way in which the media reads academic papers. To a media person, the same three sections I outlined above look like this:
1) Summary information. A very sketchy (and probably distorted) version of this is going to go in the body of the article to explain what's going on.
2) Blah, blah, blah.
3) Blah, blah *HEADLINE*, blah blah.
So there you have it: a prefect recipe for the very least dependable parts of academia being constantly presented to the public as the state of research.
Now, I don't want to say that *all* dire warnings of global warming catastrophe are just poorly understood "maybe's" that scientists have thrown out. There are plenty of papers in which the elements of risk regarding climate are the meat-and-potatoes part of the paper itself. But in my experience of watching a parade of climate-scare headlines over the years, more often than not when I click through to the actual article I find that the take-away point being trumpeted is really just a "maybe". I encourage everyone who cares about the actual state of the earth, and who doesn't want to be led away into irrational panic by the never-ending stream of alarmist headlines, to start clicking through more often and reading the actual articles.
You should start seeing that at least *part* of what is actually endangered in this world is really just the academic budget.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Laudato Si, the Environment, and Beauty
There's a point in the new encyclical that I think is quite profound. It's the section in which the Holy Father talks about the ugliness of city life in some modern mega-cities (pp. 44 and 45, and then 150 and 151). In some ways, it seems like an odd juxtaposition; in an encyclical where dire warnings of planet-wide crisis are given, exhortations to build more parks in inner cities seem a little anti-climactic.
But I think there's a deeper point to be made here. I think there is a profound connection between the cultural environment and the impact on the ecosystem that man has. There is a connection between respect for the beauty of dignity of man and respect for the beauty and dignity of the earth.
It's fair to say that the worst environmental disasters so far have occurred in communist or socialist countries. For a great rundown of some of the disastrous highlights of Soviet destruction of the environment, here's a post from The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/13/if-you-think-communism-is-bad-for-people-check-out-what-it-did-to-the-environment/. There are also plenty of links to learn more, and the author also reflects on three reasons he thinks communism resulted in such ecological destruction. But I think he missed an important reason.
When I look at pictures of blasted natural landscapes from Soviet Russia, I find a striking resemblance to Soviet-planned cities, another type of blasted landscape. Here are some great pictures to peruse: http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/2473/suburbs-in-contemporary-russian-visual-culture#.VYllv0ZUR-A. Is it much of a stretch to think that people who create and live in cities such as these wastelands of aesthetics might easily fail to see what's wrong with turning one of the largest seas in the world into a desert wasteland?
I think there is a common idea between ugly Soviet architecture and the wastelands that the Communists created in nature, and I think it is materialism. Materialism rejects the transcendent dimension of existence and focuses only on measurable, material goods. In architecture, this means that efficiency only becomes the rule, while beauty is continually sacrificed. The needs of man are reduced to sustenance and satisfaction of animal needs only--they become so much cattle, rather than full human beings. In the same way, the goods of the Earth become reduced to so much raw material: cities are nothing more than factories of humans, and the goods of the Earth are simply the inputs.
Under materialism, higher goods are not valued; only mundane things are considered real. The transcendent is not revered; only the immanent is considered. The horizon of man having thus been shrunk, it makes sense to me that long foresight--the ability to defer the fulfillment of present desires because of long-term consequences--is also curtailed. So the reckless use of currently available goods of the Earth in such a way as to destroy them, to the detriment of future men, seems much more likely in a materialistic society.
The Holy Father mentions consumerism many times in Laudato Si. I think his point could be broadened and improved somewhat by replacing "consumerism" with "materialism", because I think it is really the materialistic character of consumerism that causes environmental issues. I think doing this replacement connects multiple threads in the argument of the encyclical beautifully, and it explains why so many great ecological disasters have been wrought in explicitly anti-consumerist societies.
The opposite of this sort of materialism is to value beauty and to live with dignity. And I think you can see the power this sort of philosophy can have in the history of American environmental movements.
The United States has a long history of pride in the natural beauty of its land. The beauty of nature has inspired almost religious fervor in many Americans over the years. "America the Beautiful" is essentially our national religious hymn, and many if not most Americans really mean it when they sing it. This fervor for natural beauty expressed itself also in the establishments of many societies for the appreciation of this natural wonder or that natural beauty. John Muir's Sierra Club is probably the most well known of these, but there were countless other local groups or individuals who had similar passions. One great example from many: if you've been to Skyline Caverns in Front Royal, then you've heard the odd, quasi-religious recorded speech from Walter Amos they play for all the tourists at the end of the tour, and you've experienced an example of this peculiarly American piety toward nature.
The enormous popularity of the pastimes of hunting and fishing is another important locus of this natural piety. As pastimes, hunting and fishing are really more about communing with nature than about catching game, so although it may go against some stereotypes of people who don't hunt or fish, the typical hunter or fisher is a nature enthusiast and a lover of the beauty and harmony of the wilds. It was really these people who kickstarted the environmentalist movement in the US, and they did it out of love and respect for the beauty of America. This is why I'm proud to be a member of the Izaac Walton league, even though it does have some obnoxious and incorrect views (specifically, on population control and fracking). In its origins, the League was founded with reverence for the transcendence that is in nature, and I still see that attitude in its current members that I talk to.
It's also worth noting that much of the *real* success America has had in local environmental issues came initially through these grassroots groups: the Clean Water Act, for example, came about because of the Izaac Walton League. The environmental movement in the United States has since been hijacked by radical anti-humanists who are primarily interested in acquiring power at the Federal level in order to fundamentally transform society, but the original environmentalism in America was grassroots, sane, and practical.
And they achieved real change *not* by attempting to force change upon an unwilling populace. Again, the issue of respect for the dignity of man comes into play. A very frequent question you will find on the lips of the radical environmentalists is, how do we get our desired policies into effect, when the people as a whole are against them? Disdain for the stupidity of the masses is rampant in these circles. It really is akin to the old Communist attitude that people are cattle, and that the intellectual elite need to trick or bully them somehow into doing what they know is best for them. This attitude is fully on display, for example, in the German climatologist Schellnhuber, who invented the magical "2 degree C" limit for climate change. There was no science involved in this limit, but after he came up with it, it became accepted fact somehow that we *must* limit global warming to 2 degrees C or less, or disaster would come on the whole world. Schellnhuber frankly admits that this limit was invented as a purely political ploy in order to get the kind of political action he wanted: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html.
The American experience, however, proves that this approach does not have to be taken. If you can instill a love of beauty, a respect for transcendence, and a desire for dignity in life and in culture, then you can get people to make the right choices for the environment for themselves. So in the end, the health of the human ecology--culture--really does turn out to be of radical importance for the health of the world ecology.
This area of thought is where, in my opinion, all the best moments of the encyclical can be found (chapter 6, for example, on "Sacramental Signs and the Celebration of Rest", is sublimely beautiful). To my mind, the most productive use to which we can put this new Encyclical is to meditate on our culture, and try to find ways to make beauty and dignity things which are more widely cherished.
But I think there's a deeper point to be made here. I think there is a profound connection between the cultural environment and the impact on the ecosystem that man has. There is a connection between respect for the beauty of dignity of man and respect for the beauty and dignity of the earth.
It's fair to say that the worst environmental disasters so far have occurred in communist or socialist countries. For a great rundown of some of the disastrous highlights of Soviet destruction of the environment, here's a post from The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/13/if-you-think-communism-is-bad-for-people-check-out-what-it-did-to-the-environment/. There are also plenty of links to learn more, and the author also reflects on three reasons he thinks communism resulted in such ecological destruction. But I think he missed an important reason.
When I look at pictures of blasted natural landscapes from Soviet Russia, I find a striking resemblance to Soviet-planned cities, another type of blasted landscape. Here are some great pictures to peruse: http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/2473/suburbs-in-contemporary-russian-visual-culture#.VYllv0ZUR-A. Is it much of a stretch to think that people who create and live in cities such as these wastelands of aesthetics might easily fail to see what's wrong with turning one of the largest seas in the world into a desert wasteland?
I think there is a common idea between ugly Soviet architecture and the wastelands that the Communists created in nature, and I think it is materialism. Materialism rejects the transcendent dimension of existence and focuses only on measurable, material goods. In architecture, this means that efficiency only becomes the rule, while beauty is continually sacrificed. The needs of man are reduced to sustenance and satisfaction of animal needs only--they become so much cattle, rather than full human beings. In the same way, the goods of the Earth become reduced to so much raw material: cities are nothing more than factories of humans, and the goods of the Earth are simply the inputs.
Under materialism, higher goods are not valued; only mundane things are considered real. The transcendent is not revered; only the immanent is considered. The horizon of man having thus been shrunk, it makes sense to me that long foresight--the ability to defer the fulfillment of present desires because of long-term consequences--is also curtailed. So the reckless use of currently available goods of the Earth in such a way as to destroy them, to the detriment of future men, seems much more likely in a materialistic society.
The Holy Father mentions consumerism many times in Laudato Si. I think his point could be broadened and improved somewhat by replacing "consumerism" with "materialism", because I think it is really the materialistic character of consumerism that causes environmental issues. I think doing this replacement connects multiple threads in the argument of the encyclical beautifully, and it explains why so many great ecological disasters have been wrought in explicitly anti-consumerist societies.
The opposite of this sort of materialism is to value beauty and to live with dignity. And I think you can see the power this sort of philosophy can have in the history of American environmental movements.
The United States has a long history of pride in the natural beauty of its land. The beauty of nature has inspired almost religious fervor in many Americans over the years. "America the Beautiful" is essentially our national religious hymn, and many if not most Americans really mean it when they sing it. This fervor for natural beauty expressed itself also in the establishments of many societies for the appreciation of this natural wonder or that natural beauty. John Muir's Sierra Club is probably the most well known of these, but there were countless other local groups or individuals who had similar passions. One great example from many: if you've been to Skyline Caverns in Front Royal, then you've heard the odd, quasi-religious recorded speech from Walter Amos they play for all the tourists at the end of the tour, and you've experienced an example of this peculiarly American piety toward nature.
The enormous popularity of the pastimes of hunting and fishing is another important locus of this natural piety. As pastimes, hunting and fishing are really more about communing with nature than about catching game, so although it may go against some stereotypes of people who don't hunt or fish, the typical hunter or fisher is a nature enthusiast and a lover of the beauty and harmony of the wilds. It was really these people who kickstarted the environmentalist movement in the US, and they did it out of love and respect for the beauty of America. This is why I'm proud to be a member of the Izaac Walton league, even though it does have some obnoxious and incorrect views (specifically, on population control and fracking). In its origins, the League was founded with reverence for the transcendence that is in nature, and I still see that attitude in its current members that I talk to.
It's also worth noting that much of the *real* success America has had in local environmental issues came initially through these grassroots groups: the Clean Water Act, for example, came about because of the Izaac Walton League. The environmental movement in the United States has since been hijacked by radical anti-humanists who are primarily interested in acquiring power at the Federal level in order to fundamentally transform society, but the original environmentalism in America was grassroots, sane, and practical.
And they achieved real change *not* by attempting to force change upon an unwilling populace. Again, the issue of respect for the dignity of man comes into play. A very frequent question you will find on the lips of the radical environmentalists is, how do we get our desired policies into effect, when the people as a whole are against them? Disdain for the stupidity of the masses is rampant in these circles. It really is akin to the old Communist attitude that people are cattle, and that the intellectual elite need to trick or bully them somehow into doing what they know is best for them. This attitude is fully on display, for example, in the German climatologist Schellnhuber, who invented the magical "2 degree C" limit for climate change. There was no science involved in this limit, but after he came up with it, it became accepted fact somehow that we *must* limit global warming to 2 degrees C or less, or disaster would come on the whole world. Schellnhuber frankly admits that this limit was invented as a purely political ploy in order to get the kind of political action he wanted: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html.
The American experience, however, proves that this approach does not have to be taken. If you can instill a love of beauty, a respect for transcendence, and a desire for dignity in life and in culture, then you can get people to make the right choices for the environment for themselves. So in the end, the health of the human ecology--culture--really does turn out to be of radical importance for the health of the world ecology.
This area of thought is where, in my opinion, all the best moments of the encyclical can be found (chapter 6, for example, on "Sacramental Signs and the Celebration of Rest", is sublimely beautiful). To my mind, the most productive use to which we can put this new Encyclical is to meditate on our culture, and try to find ways to make beauty and dignity things which are more widely cherished.
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