philosophy – Susan Feathers

How quickly we forget

When I was a teenager, I would ride my horse deep into the Northern California wilderness. I came of age living in big nature. Given California’s growth and development, that ride would now be impossible. Yet phylogenetically, big nature is deep in all of our psyches. So I began to wonder why we were so rapidly destroying it. Years later at my first job at the University of Houston, I was studying children and parents’ environmental views and values. I found the children knew what air pollution was; but when we asked them if Houston had a problem with air pollution, they said, “No, we don’t have pollution here.” At the time, Houston was the most polluted city in the United States. – Peter Kahn, Environmental Psychologist

Environmental Generational Amnesia (EGA) was identified by Peter Kahn when I was working as an environmental educator. It began to answer my puzzlement about why people could not see the degradation of nature over time.

Kahn explained this phenomenon occurs as each generation takes the environment in their time as the norm.

Now, in America, I am wondering if this phenomenon works with memory of a democracy. We take what is before us as what it has always been.

In Kahn’s recommendations to counter environmental generational amnesia he worked with urban planners, for example, to build in features that allow local residents to experience more robust nature in a built environment.

Could we do the same for each generation to remember and know the origins of our Republic by experiencing aspects of a democratic society through out our lives as The People. Our form of governance is dependent on robust citizen and representative action and participation.

We could start by considering how to identify fairness, developing respectful listening; teaching check and balance by designing situations where kids can participate in situations demonstrate how it works to protect representation, free speech, and other key characteristics of a democratic society.

I recall a teacher in high school who designed his homeroom to function in this manner. He did something else: he taught us the Latin and Greek derivation of many words in our language so that we could derive meaning from root words

Do you agree that a type of democratic generational amnesia may be a force that works to undermine democratic governance which is dependent on individuals possessing more than rudimentary knowledge (i.e. memorizing definitions).

The Rights of Nature

For too long, the dominant culture has cleaved humans from the web of life, insisting upon human separation from and superiority to the larger living world. That assumption has been translated into law, governance, and other realms of practice, justifying the treatment of nonhumans and nature as treasure troves for endless exploitation. However, the grip of this mode of thinking is beginning to ease, leaving space for new ideas and actions to sprout through. MOTH – More Than Human Life Program, https://mothrights.org/about/

Among thoughtful people across disciplines, the understanding that human beings are woven into the fabric of Nature – animal, plant, river, ocean – all is part of a whole that is interconnected beyond the human imagination. Recent research on trees, for example, demonstrate how certain trees “mother” others and pass on their knowledge to new generations. We’ve learned how fungi are a living glue and generative structure that is ubiquitous in nature and microbes in human beings are a living brain in the gut lining. The more we learn, the more we are humbled before the whole of life on earth.

Now, as great harm is evident through the combined activities of human beings which weakens and disappears species, robs whole forests or rivers of its life sustaining powers, we are called to reconsider whether the Earth is for human taking. What of the rights of all beings who make human life possible?

Emergence Magazine Podcast my readers will note is a well I return to frequently to gain new perspectives on the nature of our relationship to the whole of life. Western philosophy separates humans from nature, thereby providing rationale for extraction and overharvesting for economic gain and for power over others. Ironically for America, present at the time of exploration were millions of Americans with intricate knowledge of how to live on a piece of land without ruining it (Aldo Leopold) and a conceptual understanding of the web of life and its spiritual nature. To me this is one of our nation’s greatest sins. Yes, I consider it a sin because a thinking person through observation alone can observe how life is wildly interconnected and sacred.

Two links for readers to explore:

Emergence Magazine Podcast: Song of the Cedars. https://emergencemagazine.org/podcast/

Robert Macfarlane and the MOTH project https://mothlife.org/staff/robert-macfarlane/?fetch=single-staff and https://mothrights.org/about/

In Song of the Cedars listeners experience the oneness of life with an exceptional group of humans interwoven in the panoply of a healthy rain forest.

Consider whether the exploitation of a mineral from the earth should come with a cost paid back to that mountain based on the legal rights of nature. While listening to this podcast, I thought, “Wow. to think there are people who are engaged in integration in the web of life. I thought these are our most important people, guides and wisdom keepers.”

Let me know what you think about this movement. What is your experience with the rights of nature if any.

Robert Macfarlane Books

Photo from Kentucky Native Plant Society: Purple Coneflower

To Govern Ourselves

Fundamentally grounded in values, ethics are a moral sense of right and wrong. Ethics are demonstrated through one’s actions in everyday life; when a person cares about someone or something, their conduct conveys that care and respect, inviting the same in return. Ethics direct all members of a community to treat one another with respect for the common good. ~ The Land Ethic essay by Aldo Leopold.

As I learn more about the writing of our Constitution, it is clear to me that at least a few Founders, if not all, adhered to moral and political philosophies from classic literature to John Locke. To read from these foundational documents, is a window into the quality of education and personal pursuit of truth and morality that defined these men. Our Founders dared to establish a nation based on the belief that all people are have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They also believed that societies are capable of governing themselves without the need for a King or despot to control them.

However, to live in such a manner, communities function best when there are ethics and processes by which individuals can strive to become their best self.

In the Declaration of Independence, these words encompass centuries of human understanding about an ethical basis for living your life. John Adams in particular understood Happiness to mean the freedom to pursue a life of learning to understand and practice our moral obligations to each other.

Aldo Leopold, centuries later, would broaden the Declaration to include the ecology of the Earth in his essay, “The Land Ethic.”

A Land Ethic®. expands the definition of “community” to include not only humans, but all of the other parts of the Earth, as well: soils, waters, plants, and animals – “the land”. In a Land Ethic®, the relationships between people and land are intertwined; care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. Thus, a Land Ethic® is a moral code of conduct that stems from these interconnected caring relationship. Aldo Leopold

Today’s post bringing the Declaration of Independence together with The Land Ethic is my way of pausing to reflect on the turmoil created by persons in power who follow no true ethic in governing America in 2025. There is no moral code or ethical basis in hurting citizens or the community of living beings that make our lives possible in the first place.

What is our moral and ethical basis for living in contemporary America?

[Next post will consider how Albert Schweitzer discovered the ethical basis for living.]

David Hume Revisited at the National Constitutional Center

David Hume and the Ideas That Shaped America

See the National Constitution Center site for this discussion. Includes bios of the David Hume scholars and additional resources to explore after the program.

What can modern American citizens and our political leaders learn from Hume? How were the views of our founding fathers shaped by the great philosophers of their time? How do they influence modern understanding of our Republic today? See this link to Federalist Paper 10 which considers the power of a government system to stem the tidal pull of dangerous fractions.

Jeffrey Rosen leads the discussion with three scholars of Hume. Original sources are suggested and links embedded in the chat during the discussion and provided on the wesite link above.

These same ideas are not only alive and well in our current political deliberations but also illuminate what has gone wrong and why. We can all use a dose of Hume and Madison to understand the forces that can threaten or aid the pursuit of happiness, meaning the common good.

Highly recommended to readers on this blog. Please forward to friends, neighbos and teachers and leaders in your communities. It is a non partisan discussion for all political persuasions to consider and for understanding the original thoughts and ideals that influenced the founding of America.

Hats off to the National Constitution Center, its guest scholars, and to Jeffrey Rosen for his able leadership.