Biocitizen has been at the New Amsterdam Market for the last 3 Sundays teaching all comers about how easy it is to make old-fashioned lactobacillus acidophilus pickles. Something an elegant, elderly Danish woman told me stuck in my mind. She said that when she was little she ate all kinds of pickled meats. It kind [...]
As I was saying…We consider our lives to be sacred, and we rebel at the thought that we are property. Accepting these truths, we can arrive at the conclusion that nature is sacred without having to look backwards in history; and this is how. Theology: Our bodies, and everything human beings have ever known, felt [...]
We use the word “nature” all the time, yet its single meaning is elusive. The word connotes the outdoors, National Parks, the passing seasons, and teevee shows about great white sharks. But what do these things have to do with “human nature”? In this usage, “nature” is synonymous with “character.” If so, “nature” is both [...]
THE JEFFERSONIAN CITIZEN Thomas Jefferson’s definitions of citizenship and freedom were deeply informed by the Epicurean tradition of Natural Law, which he adapted to suit to the frontier perspective of the Anglo-Europeans who invaded Native America. Believing that “following nature” led to personal and collective happiness, Epicurus said: “If you do not reconcile your behavior [...]
Our Place campers learning environmental philosophy in the field (youtube link!). The best part of Thanatopsis: Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements; To be a brother to the [...]
Have you ever seen the Oxbow? Our Place takes campers to it— From Thomas Cole‘s’ Essay on American Scenery It has not been in vain–the good, the enlightened of all ages and nations, have found pleasure and consolation in the beauty of the rural earth. Prophets of old retired into the solitudes of nature to [...]
The prompt was “explain this place to your mother—what it was, how it got this way, what to look for and do while you’re here.”
In parts 1 & 2 of this meditation, I’ve shown how our over-the-top consumerism makes us hog the world’s natural resources and invade nations so we can continue the hogging, and how our hoggishness corrupts our political, economic and legal culture. Now let’s consider Thomas Jefferson’s definitions of citizenship and freedom. Volumes have been written [...]
How we think of time is how we think of nature. Erland Scriviner No doubt we behold the many doomsday scenarios—today it’s the the mass extinction of flowers—with a strong sense of moral outrage. Lately, though, so many things are going wrong that we ought to be amazed. Our species has the ability to understand [...]
