Some light-hearted – yet also troubling? – news from the Associated Press: endangered Chinese pandas are on loan to Australia, and both states are urging them to make babies. Verbally urging. In speeches. Surely this is a no-fail solution, right?
Yesterday when we were talking about The Lord of the Rings I got to thinking about how earth tends to be used in movies. More specifically when we were talking about the birthing of the orcs from the mud and earth, there seemed to be a hesitance in the room. It seemed that no one wanted to say, “The earth is a source of evil!”
Clearly there is a problem with saying the the earth is evil. It gives us food, water, not constant earthquakes, and a place to lie. In general we seem to all agree that it is a good place.
The main discussion that I am trying to get to is that in a lot of the stories and films in the world there is some evil under the surface. There are orcs and other beasts growing under the surface, but there is also the demons caged underneath the surface. The description of the earth, using these scenerios, is endless. The earth could be an evil thing that is trying to get ride of us, it could have an evil center, or it could be sacrificing itself to hold these beasts. I like to think that if there is some evil demon thing under the surface of the earth it would be caged there and the earth would really be taking one for the team.
Is the earth a cage or a source?
I was working on my final paper today when I came across and very interesting song…
Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Of the Golden Future time.
Soon or late the day is coming,
Tyrant Man shall be o’erthrown,
And the fruitful fields of England
Shall be trod by beasts alone.
Rings shall vanish from our noses,
And the harness from our back,
Bit and spur shall rust forever,
Cruel whips no more shall crack.
Riches more than mind can picture,
Wheat and barley, oats and hay,
Clover, beans and mangel-wurzels
Shall be ours upon that day.
Bright will shine the fields of England,
Purer shall its waters be,
Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes
On the day that sets us free.
For that day we all must labor,
Through we die before it break;
Cows and horses, geese and turkeys,
All most toil for freedom’s sake.
~ “Animal Farm” by George Orwell
I found this song interesting, because although from a fiction story, it seems to bring up an interesting argument. Is it true that animals would be better off without human presence? For one, it can be argued that all animal cruelty will cease to exist. Nature would be able to function the way it’s supposed to, without the intervention of humans doing things like controlling the weather or playing god by saving species that should be extinct. In addition, animals could be free–dogs would no longer be subjected to human civilization, as would cats and horses. Cows and chickens would no longer be farmed just for the pure desire to eat. Tuna would be happily swimming in the ocean, instead of watching their numbers rapidly decline. Condors would be happily living without humans destroying their habitats. And marine animals would be able to live in non-polluted waters.
Yet there seems to be a major issue forgotten. Some animals have become dependent on human life. Dogs, cats, and horses are still able to live in the wild, yet they thrive in human societies today. Cows and chickens may be bred simply for food, but in the wild they will all be eaten eventually. Condors may have been able to live without human destruction, yet the reason condors are still around are because people saved the last pair alive in Bir Sur, California to breed until numbers could go up. For some species, it is non-negotiable: humans are more of a problem than they help. But for other species, humans have changed the traits that are the strongest, and now they are dependent on human society.
Religious bias aside, I think that Pagans had it right. They didn’t fight wars against people of a different creed, and not only did they not persecute nature, they respected it and prayed to it. We could learn from them.
There are, some that could learn more from them than others. In my class, we talked about reducing our carbon footprints. Looking back, I realize I missed out on something huge. While we did discuss reducing our carbon footpritns in our daily live, we did not discuss special circumstances. The big one, is Christmas.
From a certain spot a few miles from my house, I can pinpoint exactly which house mine is. In the dark. This is not because I’m a geography master and can find it with my night vision. No, it is because my neighbor across the street has so many Christmas lights that you could see the light pollution from space. You could see my whole block from even further in space, but this one particular neighbor has a certain design that makes it quite easy to tell.
Back in the California state energy crisis (I beleive it was 2003), I had the naive suggestion that if everyone turned off their Christmas lights until Christmas Eve, we would not be having an energy shortage. No longer quite so naive, I actually think that there needs to be a law such as this. It is outlandish that people have so much Christmas lights for over a month some times. What a waste of our natural resources. There is absolutely zero religion in these lights, or in huge light up, blow up Santas on people’s roofs. If there was a real Santa (and I assure you there is not), he does not wanna see that. If a third of our approximately 300 million people country have Christmas lights, for the typical thirty days that people have them up, they probably use enough electricity for a small country to run for a year.
think of how bad this would be at Christmas-time
Christmas trees are even worse. We strip land of its natural plants to grow trees that we cut down and then throw away. Growing these trees often uses lots of pesticides. There are so many things wrong with that statement its not even funny. I don’t care about the decorating of the trees, I’m not gonna say your abusing it by putting ornaments on it, because you shouldn’t even have the tree in your living room.
Artificial trees are even worse. PVC in fake Christmas trees often contains lead or other metals and can be quite dangerous. Especially since they are often reused (we love to buy) more and more terrible ones are put into American homes. Studies have shown that you would have to have one artificial tree for twenty years to have the same environmental impact of one natural tree. Also, the vast majority of these fake trees come from China. The factories are polluting, as are the ships that transport them here.
You know what else is made in dirty factories, uses excessive raw materials and often has to be shipped from China. Presents. Our crazy consumerism has decided to use Christmas as an excuse to buy, buy, buy. While it does do wonders for the economy, each little bit of positive growth there is negative for nature. Oh, and we drive to the store. Again and again and again.
I also found the article Katie blogged, about how University of St. Andrew’s deciphered the “language” used by Campell’s monkeys. I found this interesting because many people believe that language is one of the main characteristics that differentiates a human. It’s something that we can proudly say we possess that puts us above all the other creatures.
This new experiment was a very controversial claim in the first place because previous efforts to teach chimpanzees language was not successful. They showed “little or no ability to combine the sounds they learned into a sentence with a larger meaning”. However, Koko the gorilla, from the 1970’s, was able to pick up on American Sign Language, and communicated with humans and formed syntax by combining words. And “species like gibbons and whales make complex vocalizations in which the order of the sounds seems to have some effect on their meaning”. I’m not sure on the specific differences between speaking and signing, but it seems like some animals are able string together words to make phrases.
Some people might object to this kind of experiment because it shows that the characteristics that were thought to be uniquely human aren’t quite unique anymore. Those characteristics seem to be present in other species as well, only less developed. Although our form of communication is obviously more complex than that of animals, it is not something that we can say belonged only to us.
I’ll admit it. I was texting yesterday on our hike. My phone occasionally would beep in my pocket, and I would receive dirty looks from my fellow hikers. I was simply trying to find out who did or did not get into college, which is a fairly important topic to most seniors right now. The dirty looks were followed by retorts such as, “You are ruining nature!” This made me think that in our society today, we have such distinct boundaries of what is civilization and what is nature. As Lucas has discussed, our generation is not going out into nature nearly as often as those who have come before us. Because of this, nature has become a kind of escape from reality. That is why my cell phone ring was so disruptive. We do not want any crossing over of these distinct worlds.
However, the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounds to completely separate these two worlds. Is a redwood grove considered nature? The answer, I think, would be unanimously yes. But is a redwood grove with less than 50 trees and one that has probably been artificially placed next to a school building considered nature? This answer would be more controversial. This is the exact reason why I think it is so hard for the worlds to be mutually exclusive. Right now, the expectation is that when you go into nature, you are only in nature. You don’t bring your phone and you try not to think about all the work you have to do, but you simply enjoy nature. I think that many more people would go out into nature if this weren’t the case. Obviously, they wouldn’t want to ruin nature by bringing in a car with a bluetooth (I guess that wouldn’t really be in nature then), but people simply don’t have the time these days to go cold turkey without some form of technology. Whether the reasons or work related, personal, or anything else, technology has become such a part of our lives that they follow us everywhere, even into nature. Technology has caused a blurred line between these two separate worlds.
Mud on my shoes. Mud on my pants. Mud everywhere. The wind is strong and the rain is serene. With every ascending step I place on the slippery parts of the trail, I slide down about half of distance I make, doubling my efforts. At times, the mud almost pulled my snuggly-fit shoes completely off. Such gooeyness. I run to the grass, where I may experience temporarily relief and rid of the extra layers of earth that had gathered underneath my shoes. Why am I so reluctant to step in mud? Why does it invoke a sense of grossness or dirtiness? I don’t understand. I’m not afraid to put my hands in dirt while gardening or whatnot and I’m definitely not hydrophobic. But still, the mixture of these two elements is quite unpleasant. Humans have become too accustomed to the cleanliness of civilized society. We always try our best to shield ourselves from nature, for example by wearing boots and water-resistant jackets. I know these things help prevent us from getting cold and sick, but there are some who live quite well off even more adverse weather. There are those who survive subzero temperatures during piercing blizzards. Others can live in blistering hot places that would for sure cause us much agony. So I say to myself and others, love the mud we have in the nice chaparral we live in. Embrace nature and do not be afraid of getting dirty.
Hey guys. As you all know, we will begin our Lord of the Rings class on Monday. For homework, I want you guys to visit and read this site: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/influences.html
Also, read the short intro to the Industrial Revolution in Europe from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Due to time limitations, I will not be able to show most of the films. For those of you who haven’t watched the movies or don’t know the story, just go around online and look for summaries. Be prepared to discuss the destruction of nature, the different races and their connections with nature, the perception of good and evil, or anything else related you guys want to talk about.
Thanks!
As I was browsing the New York Times website a couple days ago I came across an article that proclaimed scientists had managed to decipher a language spoken by Campbell’s monkeys that live on the Ivory Coast. After months of recording sounds and dialogue, Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland believes that he and his researchers have deciphered the monkeys’ primitive form of syntax by recording the types of calls that occur after natural and artificial stimuli. The male monkeys have six different calls, with each call meaning something different. Each call can then be strung together with other calls to create a sort of message or sentence. For instance, “krak” means that a leopard is present, and when added with the suffix “-oo”, it means a the leopard can be heard but not seen or that another species of monkey has seen one.
This is a very controversial claim, however, because for years researchers have attempted to teach chimpanzees language with no success. They have tried to teach the chimpanzees “words”, but the chimps have been unable to combine them into longer sentences.
I think that it is a little bizarre that humans believe they can understand what an animal is thinking or saying. I wondered how a researcher goes about deciphering an animal language, and if it is similar to understanding human languages from the past.
Hey everyone, our hike is still happening tomorrow rain or shine.
Meet at 11:00 at Windy Hill Open Space Preserve
HOW TO GET THERE
Windy Hill Open Space Preserve is located in the Town of Portola Valley. The parking lot at the lower portion of the preserve is located on Portola Road. From Highway 280, exit Alpine Road in Portola Valley. Go south on Alpine Road about 2.9 miles to Portola Road (the first stop sign). Turn right on Portola Road and travel 0.8 miles to the parking lot on the left side of the road.
Bring rainboots, hiking boots, galoshes, parks, raincoats, umbrellas, the works.
Also, if you have, bring some ORGANIC LOCAL OR NATURAL food for our picnic. We may have to refuge at Lukes house, but it is what it is.
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