Biodiversity (1988) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Part 12: Ways of Seeing the Biosphere
Part 12: Ways of Seeing the Biosphere
Pages 463-490
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From page 464... ...
~ ~'s~ i-St T~tt~r<;~ C;~ ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ ' S S ~ S S ~ ~ \ O ~ S ~ ~ ~ 5 ~ S ~5~ ~ ~ ~ ~ S a, ~ } \.
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From page 465... ...
Ordinary or sublime, such encounters constitute just one of several dimensions of our total involverr.ent with the natural world. It is the fundamental dimension, though, because experience provides the raw material out of which the more conceptual dimensions are formulated.
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From page 466... ...
Experience teaches that this process of pigeon-holing can lead to interesting or useful ideas. The intellectual s standard operating procedure, therefore, is to discriminate, dissect, and simplify, reducing the infinite variety of things and processes to a ~ Such identification with nature is probably the emotional root of the cognitive experience of intrinsic value.
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From page 467... ...
Instead, commercials are designed to arouse and to evoke pleasurable emotions and desires. More precisely, they bypass the cognitive centers, communicating through our basic physical desires (oral, sexual)
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From page 468... ...
On the other hand, if our objective is to motivate people, the best way to do this is probably with pleasurable experiences and memories. If neurobiology has told us anything about the mammalian brain, especially the human brain, it is that the mind and the body are not separate.
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From page 469... ...
What is the message that we want to get across A Buddhist sutra teaches, "Each thing has its own intrinsic value, and is related to everything else in function and position." Ecology affirms it. But what then?
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From page 470... ...
The argument becomes The five word poems are reprinted from Scrarchmg the Beat Surface, copyright @) 1982 by Michael McClure, with permission of North Point Press.
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From page 471... ...
The alto relieve statuary is uncanny. The lazy intellectual mind scans the opposite page and finds text describing the statuary in a foreign language.
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From page 472... ...
The carved stone reproduces muscle tone that is healthy and without contradictory strains. The faces of the Pharaoh and goddesses are as interesting, or as uninteresting, as the faces of snow leopards.
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From page 473... ...
Three~quarters of the way into the tape is the clear piercing crow of a bantam rooster making his reply to the mise-en~scene about him to the calls of his ladies, to the sparrows, to the sounds of traffic, to the growling of the leopardess, to the morning sun, to the needs of his own being to vocally establish his territory. The crow of the tiny rooster is smaller but no less perfect or monu' mental or meaningful than the statement of the leopardess they make a gestalt.
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From page 474... ...
Galaxies in balls. Near stars and white mist swirling.
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From page 475... ...
I love this meat of which I'm made! I dive in it to find the simplest vital shape!
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From page 476... ...
I was little, and I remember waking up hearing the battered corrugated tin shade catch in the wind. It was loosely tied with wires to long wooden poles above the doorway of the little stone and mud house that was my grampa s sheep camp.
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From page 477... ...
"Keep your eyes peel it," he'll tell me, softly waving his firm, dark, and weathered hand in front of his face indicating some imagined far horizon or space I was to see. Over and over I heard him tell me, "Keep your eyes peel it." I knew he meant "keep your eyes peeled," stay watchful, be alert.
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From page 478... ...
He ate his blue com atole, never touched his eggs, and before his mother could question his rushing about, he was out of the house running toward the dry, flat lowland. "In that stretch of long horizons, underneath the spiny, thin branches of a spindly tumbleweed, lay Lizard, watching the running boy approach.
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From page 479... ...
Laughter suddenly burst forth from the lizard on the ground with such force it caused Ponci to jump back. Lizard lay rolling in mighty shakes of laughter, his skinny belly rumbling.
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From page 480... ...
In his weariness, his feet continued to lift as he trotted toward home in the gentle wash of sweet rain." The breathing in my ear stopped, and slowly the room came back into focus with my nose smelling the moist earth. There's a man with a large watering can sprinkling the dirt floor to settle the dust.
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From page 481... ...
We can all remember many of the disparaging comments that were made about concerns that a species of snail darter interfered with the building of a dam. Staying power in defense of biodiversity probably depends on a world view that grounds it more deeply than sentiment, however natural and healthy that sentiment may be.
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From page 482... ...
Although this is all true, it still floes not go far enough to explain our sense of the importance of biocliversity. It does strongly support the sense of the intrinsic value of other living things.
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From page 483... ...
But often in ordinary human experience, the ones that are lost do not differ sufficiently from others that remain to affect any but the most perceptive human beings. Judged simply by their potential con' tribution to the richness of human experience, many species seem to be of limited importance.
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From page 484... ...
A king who uses his power to amass riches for himself at the expense of the suffering of the ruled is a despot, not one who exercises rightful dominion. There is no justification here to suppose that human dominion over other creatures is a sanction of selfish exploitation.
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From page 485... ...
jOHN ~ COBB, jR. / 483 unlike so many who have asserted their dominion, we are acknowledging that with power comes responsiLdity specifically, responsibility to Cod.
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From page 486... ...
This wholesome view of our planet did not persist into the next century. Science was developing rapidly and soon fragmented into a collection of nearly independent professions.
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From page 487... ...
The information it carries is prima facie evidence for the presence of life. But more than this, if the Earth's unstable atmosphere was seen to persist and was not just a chance event, then it meant that the planet was alive at least to the extent that it shared with other living organisms that wonderful property, homeostasis, the capacity to control its chemical composition and keep cool when the environment outside is changing.
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From page 488... ...
For the first time, we have from these new, these geophysiological models a theoretical justification for diversity, for the Rousseau richness of a humid tropical forest, for Darwin s tangled bank. These new ecological models demonstrate that as diversity increases so does stability and resilience.
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From page 489... ...
Gaia works from an act of an individual organism that develops into global altruism. It involves action at a personal level.
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