Culture

The text you'll want to read is, The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students. By Allan Bloom with a foreword by Saul Bellow.

Most importantly for a discussion of culture and its relation to ecology is part two, chapters entitled, The Self beginning on pg 173, Culture beginning on pg 185, and Values beginning on pg 194

Why read this book?
The book is the sine qua non for understanding America in the 20th century, especially the latter half. Allan Bloom would be a member in good standing of the AAII, the American of Association of Intelllectual Intelligentsia, were such an organization to exist. The author's use of arcane syntactical constructions should have been sufficient in and of itself to have, "angered all the right people," as it is said he has done with this book. At times he is a painter, dabbing his canvas with Socrates, Smith, Locke, Plato, Nietsche, Machiavelli, Kant, Rousseau, Toqueville and other intellectualists in ways which readilly anger the right people. Would you have the temerity to suggest that J.C. is a mortal equivalent to Moses, Homer and Buddha? And by inference is significant if only for western culture's inherent need for myth. How about these? "God is myth." "It is not the truth of their thought that distinguished them, but its capacity to generate culture." These are not quodlibets but, rather broad slashing statements.
The Washington Post in a review of the book described Bloom as, "a scalpel-bearing and eloquent curmudgeon." Consider this quote: "A religion must, it seems, be invented for the sole purpose of defending capitalism." And he adds that religion was now intended to encourage capitalism's propensities. Propensities used pejoratively. Scalpel? Hardly. Erol flynn would have been proud. He is a swashbuckler and truth is the sabre he fearlessly wields. He expresses truth not only with impunity but with encouragement from the likes of Saul Bellow and a host of others..

Religion, culture, myth, truth, values, reason. Let's suppose that Allan Bloom has said something significant about these concepts. And further, that the Gaussian bell curve of learned opinion were to be such that 2SD accept, however implicitly, his suggestions, inferences and statements as true. Whatever could that have to do with ecology?
Simple.
Two of the most important, most fundamental concepts of ecology are habitat and species diversity, more commonly refered to as biodiversity. Both habitat and biodiversity are being destroyed at ever increasing rates by humans. That fact is key for understanding what ecology has been in a past perfect sense and what ecology will have become in a future perfect sense. If one wishes to understand why humans do not stop this ecological destruction, these six concepts must be examined, and not only pro forma. For they determine the motivation of humans to do what humans do. If you are on the other side of the previous conditional statement, i.e. if you don't really give a hoot about habitat, relax. There are a bazillion diversionary activities in which humans can engage themselves and never even think about ecological destruction.
We have chosen Allan Bloom's book because he speaks candidly about these crucial concepts with impunity. Do we hope that some impunity will rub off onto ourselves? Well a little impunity would be nice, wouldn't it?
Because we know that what we plan to say about ecological destruction and its causes won't be liked by those on the right or the left or in the middle.
We plan to agree unabashedly with Dom Deloise that old King Bob is wearing no clothes, viz. ecology.

The new American president said last week that, "the evidence for global warming is, just not scientific." We know some Buddycom members will want to know how or why he could make such a preposterous statement. We would ask the president, "Quo animo?"

Green Peace and almost all other such environmental groups are at best pretentiously silly show-offs. We know that some Buddycom members understand why that is true. Some do not. But for most it is a problem of the will. They will not consider it much less understand it.

And so we fully intend to explain how Allan Bloom helps to understand ecology. After all we have to fill up the rest of this page. In the mean time just remember what the Ecological Society of America estimates about species extinctions. At least 50% of species will be gone in evolutionary microseconds. How can they know? They understand concepts like habitat and MVP, Minimum Viable Populations, Chi-squared and statistics. You know. Boring stuff like that.

And practise your multiplication. 136 species per day times 7 days per week times 52 weeks per year times 10 years per decade, that's about 500,000. But guess what jelly bean? You can't count every organism. Not even if you are trying to count elephants. And they are so big that they can be counted with satellite photography.

And practise denying that po' folks have about as much value as biodiversity.

"There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth...namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own knowledge." --Roger Bacon, English philosopher and scientist, 1220-1292