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Introduction to Nature and Human Values Lecture

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Introduction to Nature and Human Values Lecture

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The prompts asked me to reflect on the different ways of viewing nature. The two ways I was mostly drawn to are "As Landscape and Ecology We Build and Manage" and "As a Premiere Source of Human Meaning". For the first, I was drawn to it because I have always hated this about humans. The article relates humans building things as a part of our natural habits therefore everything we make, including cities, is natural or nature. While I have no arguments about our natural ability to build, I do have a problem with how far we take it. We are past a point of being natural and now we only care for convenience. The other point of view that interests me is more agreeable however I had a different take on it. Price argues that humans can not survive without nature because we use it for everything. She then goes on to say that all the things we do become equally sacred because of their stem from nature. I think that there is a difference between real nature and human nature. I was looking at the mountain with the M on it and the roads carved out and the biggest though on my mind was that the mountain had been violated in some way. It is hard to find connection to nature when the beauty of it is being changed by us. I found an article called "Nature Has Lost Its Meaning" by Ross Anderson. It discusses the view that nature is for our use and the problems with that argument. If we use nature and decide it is only natural to do so, there will be no nature left to sustain us.

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Dr. Hudson discusses debate vs deliberation. Debaters are able to easily take facts and turn them into white and black either or problems. The only goal is to make your side the only reasonable/logical side. It takes a position and does not look at multiple perspectives. Deliberation includes all perspectives with a shared interest. It is about collectively thinking about problems as opposed to finding only one way to see things.

The question of whether or not it is moral for a family to secretly eat a neighbors dead dog because they heard dog was yummy. I think that this is immoral in so many ways. The first reason that I should probably get out of the way because its not a popular opinion, but I think eating animals in general is immoral. My belief in this comes from reasoning. Animals obviously can feel and love so why are their lives any less important than ours? We are all animals at the end of the day. Non-humans need more respect. My second reason as to why this is immoral is because most people who have pets have them for companionship. I do not know the relationship of the owner and dog but it is possible that it was a loving one. The owner deserves closure to bury his dead friend. Thirdly there is something to be said about property rights. That do belongs to the neighbor. The family basically stole it. My final reason is that the family has no reason besides they heard it was good. It does not say they are starving or anything to imply they need this dog. With all previous implications, that is like me eating your kid because I thought it would be fun. I think all of these thoughts seem reasonable, maybe the thought of respect is intuitive.

This reminds me of one of my favorite books in a way. I am referring to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is about a world where most of life has been wiped out and what happens to our morals. Were they made up by society for fun, or is there something innately good or bad about our actions. In the book, the line drawn between the main characters versions of good and bad are that the good do not eat each other while the bad do. I could talk about The Road for hours so I will stop here, but there really are a lot of things to be taken from The Road to be applied to this conversation.

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The Last Man Scenario is a made up predicament to place yourself in to test how you would react morally. In the scenario, you are the last person on earth and have no will too live. You have the option of nuking yourself and everything else on earth. The question is do you do it or not? I definitely would not want to nuke the earth. Just because I am tired of life does not mean that the other animals on earth are tired of it. The lecture also discussed anthropocentric views. That means that someone views everything as whether or not it has value to provide to humans. I guess that I have non-anthropocentric views because I would not nuke the earth. The earth has far more value than me and my use of if does not make its value greater.

While discussing the anthropocentric vs non-anthropocentric, I was reminded of the Pocahontas movie, specifically the song "Colors of the wind". There is a lyric saying "You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name". It basically makes the point of non-anthropocentrism. There is far more value in nature than what we think it is useful for.

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Sandel discusses market economies and societies. A market economy is a a tool that allows for productive activity. A market society is a way of life where everything is up for sale. In a market society, market ideas are put to use in almost every aspect of life.

A question brought up in the lecture asks whether or not a market society is positive and if we live in one. I would say that a lot of people do live in a market society. Anything we need we can buy, or work towards buying it, usually. Besides normal things we would buy at a grocery store, we can buy education, fun, convenience, and lots of other unnecessary or abstract things. I don't think that there is really a positive or negative way to see a market society. It ends up just being people doing what they want. There may be some unfairness but that will never be avoided anywhere. Personally I think we should all keep to ourselves a bit more and not be needing to buy so many things from each other all the time. A little independence would be great.

This lecture kind of reminded me of a song I used to listen to a lot growing up. It is called "If I Had A Million Dollars" by Barenaked Ladies. The song is basically a guy saying that is he had a million dollars he would buy all of these crazy things for a girl and subsequently, he would buy her love. Love gets pulled into the market society as another thing we can buy. It relates back to the whole point of Sandel's argument of are there things we should not by. People are really obsessed with material things in our market society, so buying a lot of things could actually buy love, but it shouldn't.

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Cicero's creed is one of the first recorded statements that relates engineering and science to ethics. It discuses the safety of the public being the supreme law. Engineers have to take this creed into account when creating technology because of dual use. Dual use means that technology may have both good and bad uses no matter the intention. Creating technology with good intent may still be bad for the public because of dual use.

If I were placed in a position where I had to choose to lie on a report or not, I would choose to keep the report the same. For a company to come to fruition, it should pay all its dues and not be skipping any steps. Just because some company does not want to spend the money to remove a tank does not mean that they shouldn't. If my job was at stake, I wouldn't care. I am either a good worker or I am not and other company's will take me if I'm good. My boss can't know every boss in the world to put in a bad word.

Engineers can not be help responsible for anything other than their intent and whether or not they knew the risks. If someone comes up with a creative way to use a certain technology for bad, that is not the engineers fault. If the engineer knows fully well that there are obvious ways to misuse their technology and they release it anyway they are partially to blame. In the end, the only person to truly hold blame is the one who used the technology for bad.

The two documents from the challenger make it clear that there are problems with the O Rings. The first document is very adamant that there is a problem that will likely end in loss of human life. The second letter also addresses the O Ring problem but does not sound as alarming as the first. That is not to say that it was unclear. The letter ended by saying there was still no solution and it may take years to find a good one.

Gattaca is a good example of technology with good intent being used for bad. In this movie, humans find a way to make babies with the best genetic advantages. In theory, this is great because it could ensure the healthiest life for one's kids, but it ends up creating a social gap. The non-designer kids are discriminated against because technology is used to prove their inferiorities. The movie addresses dual use by showing the light and dark that can come with advanced technology. It is good for health world with terrible repercussions on the public.

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The trolley problem entails the choice between sacrificing one life to save five or not. I do not think it is ethical to change the path of the trolley to save five over one. I think that you should probably not intervene and whatever happens happens. With the same train of thought, it also would not be ethical to push a guy into the path of the train. If I liked the guy it wouldn't matter because I wouldn't push anyone unless I knew for a fact that they were a terrible, terrible person. Same thing goes for the guys in the tracks. The moral spheres chart believes that most people are ethical towards family first and then others. I may believe I would use that train of thought for the trolley problem if the five were really close relatives but not just close in relations, close in relationship. The trolley problem is brought up in The Good Place a lot. The question of whether or not certain people should ethically get in the way of heaven for other people. The Good Place takes the trolley problem to an extreme by making people actually participate in versions of the problem. It ends up showing there is no good way to solve the problem and people just get lost in crazy hypotheticals.

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Justice is looked at in two ways in the video. There is the point of equality vs fairness. In equality everyone gets the exact same treatment. In fairness, everyone gets what the need in certain situations. The fairness model better encompasses justice. It is about what is deserved and needed. I feel like our society is sometimes unfair because it is unequal in the same situations. Justice is pretty simple to me. Eye for an eye is a bit extreme, but in the end I think it is fair. Maybe not eye for an eye, but eye for an equal substitute. I think injustice is people just the opposite of my view of justice. Undeserved outcomes for everyone.
Justice is really hard for me to comprehend because I believe that things are wrong but I also believe everyone has a right to do as they please regardless of the moral reasons behind it.

In Dante's Inferno, there is a lot of talk of justice in symbolic retribution. I do not like Dante as a book because it is just a guy placing people in hell for fun, but the eye for an eye view of justice shows up here a lot. Because Dante's placements are really extreme, it makes me feel like we will never be able to find out what is really fair. Yes there is a connection to the sins and their punishments, but are they right? I do not think we can know.

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Conservation is the idea that nature should be used, but sparingly. It is needed to support our futures so we need to protect it. It can lead to a lack in diversity sometimes. Preservation is the idea that nature needs to remain untouched by man. It is not our right to take it over. The problem is that we do not allow enough wilderness spaces. The then suffer from the island effect. The island effect is how small ecosystems become like that of an island. Everything gets smaller. I prefer a preservationist approach to the environment. I think that humans have overstayed our welcome and we need to dial it back. I have never heard of the Half World theory until this lecture, but I agree with it. Nature needs to be entitled to more space. Half of the world actually sounds a bit small. I think it needs more.

I have always really admired the Native American ways of life. They knew how to live in harmony with nature. Watching that video and getting reminded of the One Buffalo, One Indian article made pretty angry. I remember reading that article a few years ago and losing my mind. At the time, I was reminded of that scene in Dances with Wolves where they come across a herd of bison who were completely obliterated. When I saw that, I wanted to quit watching the movie. In the movie, the Native Americans were disturbed by this outrageous act, but I never knew hoe much the loss of the bison affected real Native Americans. The video made it seem as though it was a really effective course of action against them. All of the bad that came from people taking over western America makes me stand by my point for preservation. So much destruction has already happened, regardless of how we could move forward as conservationists, we have already hurt to much. We need to give space for complete healing.

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Consequentialism explores morality based on the outcome of actions. Whichever outcome is best must be the right thing. Deontology studies the our obligations. By being obligated to do what is right, we will be more encouraged to do what is right. Confucianism is a bit similar to deontology in that they are concerned about obligation to others. Confucianism is different in that its obligation is about loyalty to those close to you, not just anyone.

It is pretty hard to relate eastern ethics to anything because they are in a different mindset than western ethics a lot of the time. The media I am expose to does not really touch on Confucianism. There is a book I read called Dragon Seed by Pearl S Buck that I can kind of relate this too. Her book is about a family in China trying to survive WWII and the invasion of the Japanese. In the beginning of the book, the family and their relations to one another are the central focus. It is about what the son's owe their father and what the wives owe their husbands. A lot of that stuff made me very angry as I read the book because my world id do different. Looking back in it, I can see how their world view and traditions could have lead that way. They had very strong senses of duty even if I thought they were misguided. In a way it was admirable.

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In our lifetimes, there are supposedly going to be one of two events. We could experience the Singularity or the Paradox of Development. The Singularity is a point when technology will become so advanced, we will be living in a technological utopia. The Paradox of Development says the more we advance, the more likely we are to come to a breaking point. The lecture asks whether I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future and I have to go with pessimistic. As technologies advance I think people will have more polarized views. The rift will get so but that we will be in for a societal collapse. I have to say I would prefer tings to go that way. The world needs a reset.

In Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, there is lots of technological advancement, people are less opinionated because they are being censored. There are not very many problems happening, and yet everyone is unhappy. The main character loses his mind over all of this. He isn't crazy just wildly unhappy. We need to think every once in a while. Be bothered. There is no way for us to reach a perfect utopia.

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After watching the trailer for the Social Dilemma, I was really just reinforced in the way I feel about digital technology and social media. I do not trust it at all. I have no social media because if you try to sign up for it, it asks for my phone number and email. I know that since my email is a google account, it knows everything about me and I do not need anything else knowing that. I knew google knew everything about me because when I first got an email (which was required to get through high school) when I emailed anyone about anything that could be in a google add or article, I would get an alert on my phone "Here's and article we think you might be interested in".  Soon I started noticing that I was even getting alerts for things that I had talked about earlier and never even mentioned online so I was pretty sure my phone was listening to me. If I could, I would totally cut myself off from technology but I literally can not do that and function in today's world. Connection is the benefit of digital technology. Fragmentation is the divide that digital technology causes. The trailer shows connection through being able to see what your friends are doing on facebook or being able to look something up on google. It shows fragmentation through fake news, mental health, and time spent on these devices and and inability to focus.

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Dual use is the idea that things can be used multiple ways for good or bad with side effects that can be good or bad regardless of intentions of the creator. The Trinity Project was the first atomic bomb that got tested in NM before dropping atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The impact of halting the spread of nuclear weapons immediately after the Trinity test or Nagasaki would have greatly impacted the cold war and the advancement of nuclear energy and the islands used to continue bomb tests. I can not guess how it would have impacted the cold war because either the USSR would not have been as driven to advance or they would have continued to advance without fear and done whatever they wanted. The islands destroyed however would have been better off remaining unharmed to allow the native peoples to continue to live their traditional way of life. If nuclear energy had not been advanced there could be a lot more costs to energy but the environment could be safer so it is hard to say if that is a negative or a positive over all. The bomb dropping really confused the scientist's ethics. They were happy it had worked, they were finally going to finish the worst war in history, but they were immediately devastated by the mass destruction and lives that it had cost. This shows dual use through the bomb working as it was supposed to and yet the emotional side effects were great.

The video game franchise Fallout is about surviving the wasteland hundreds of years after nuclear war breaks out. In Fallout4 you begin before the war living a technologically advanced life from all the advantages of nuclear advancements. Nuclear material can be found in the alarm clocks ever. Then war with China comes and you go into a cryogenic pod/bunker too survive the blast. You come out two hundred years later to a world that is wrecked. It makes you wonder as a player if the advancement of nuclear technology for good is worth it for the mass amount of devastation it can also bring. Is it worth it to have a super cool alarm clock if one day you may have to be surviving a radiated wasteland?

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Watching the I am Red video put me in an emotional state. I can see why they personifies the river to make this video because it made me feel really connected with it and at the end when you realize it is dying I literally started crying. I am actually crying as I write this which is admittedly a little weird of me. For applying personhood to rivers as an ethical debate, one has to wonder what else qualifies for personhood if a river does, but I actually really like the idea. As we place human value on things you have to wonder if a persons life is not worth it in compared to the river in some way or if it is a toss up. I always think of the trees around me as natural. Specifically the leafy trees outside of the Trads I really appreciate for being beautiful and making me feel like going to look at more nature on a hike, I am now realizing that they are not natural at all. I do not know where my drinking water comes from for sure but I always thought it had something to do with a combo of rives from snowmelt and an aquifer. I would say that this is a societal failure. The engineering aspect is just the work done to meet people's wants. The wants of the people are what causes these problems and lack of care. Ramifications are an unappreciation for our water. We just look at at a magically never ending stream sourced from our sink.

Environmental Justice is the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens are split between all people.
Reconciliation Ecology promotes the health and well being of both human and ecosystem. This needs to be applied to the Colorado River because it is so important to our well being and needs its own well being to remain a resource for us. To allow for reconciliation ecology we must have environmental justice to allow all people to see the effects both good and bad of our water use so that all people are concerned for our rivers.

There is an artist named Alexis Rockman who has a lot of art about water. The piece that comes to mind in this lecture is called Gowanus. It was painted after a dolphin once once swam up a NY canal and died from pollution within the same day. The painting depicts mystery liquids being dumped into the already green water. Under the water is a seriously deformed and tormented creature/creatures? (you would have to look at the picture to understand). The picture shows how the destruction of water will lead to massive ramifications and injustices. The environment can not adapt correctly to our misuses of it.

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Redlining is an attempt by bankers and insurers to keep minorities homes in certain communities. The urban heat island effect is the death and illness expected to be seen from rising temperatures and pollution in inner city locations. Redlining causes minorities to live in these conditions. These minorities suffer these conditions while those outside of them are unaffected and therefore unconcerned. This is a main cause of environmental injustice because the sharing in environmental problems is unequal. I used to see news about the Flint water crisis and I think that it applies here. Due to bad government decisions the water here was switched and contaminated by lead. It is just another example of how redlining leads to environmental injustice.