(Untitled)

[robotar]

the root of our problem of environmental degradation isn't a political, scientific, or economic issue; it is a cultural one. the schism between man and nature, the baconian method, cartesian philosophy, the abrahamic religions are the foundations upon which capitalism, nation-states, and industry are built. understanding this, i've come to build

Comments

In which I demonstrate jumping to conclusions

[luckaduck]

Before I read this entry thoroughly, I caught a few words near the end of the last paragraph. When I read "long live autodidacticism; and death to orthodoxy" I interpreted that to mean disregarding (or, more inflammably, overthrowing) conventional education, which has long been a touchy issue with me

In which I eat vegan-friendly humble pie

[luckaduck]

Anyway, during my time at Dartmouth and throughout my first year at Gallaudet I have come to agree with and identify with Jenny Holzer's pithy statement, "alienation produces eccentrics or revolutionaries." I tend to shy away from cliche triumph-over-adversity, self-congratulatory statements but it is because I experienced alienation in undergrad (at an Ivy League school, as an impoverished, openly gay person of color with roots outside of New England) and in grad school (as a hearing person, despite my Deaf parentage, and as a person of color-lots of queers in grad school, though) that I was spurred to action after a few years of my angry teenage activist persona laying fallow. I became an ardent activist for making higher education more accessible to groups (specifically, racial and ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged populations, and people with disabilities) that are underrepresented in academia in large part because of the way that much of Western civilization has turned credentialist in the past century or so; today's

[cap_scaleman]

Interesting thoughts. Have you heard of discordianism and the belief that religion have on chaos and order existing side by side everywhere?

[grolby]

I don't know if I buy this kind of theory. I think that it's too declarative - people are basically the same in underlying psychology, but that underlying psychology turns out very different people with very different needs. In any case, unless population levels fall dramatically, urban living is essential to the preservation of the planet. We need to do it better, of course