What we take as a given

I would like to continue some of my thoughts from a recent post on giving up, but from a different angle.

It is clear that we live in a culture, of wastefulness and violence. Our culture is wasteful of and violent towards what our Earth provides for us, and wasteful of the potential that lies within each one of us to take bolder actions, to move us away from the destruction and violence. Yet it seems that given all of the information we have, all the data we've gathered, there is still the belief that if we just continue what we've done so far for a little while longer, we'll be able to extricate ourselves from the mess we've created. If we turn the knobs just a little bit here, make oil extraction just a little bit more efficient there, and buy organic apples shipped half way across the world, we feel that this should suffice. Unfortunately, it will not suffice. Fortunately, we can do something about it. What we need to think about most importantly is what we take as a given, and what needs to be made obsolete, in society and culture, and in our individual lives.

What we take as a given deeply affects how we choose to address the problems that face us. If we take industrial capitalism as a given, that limits the solutions and options available to us in our decision-making. If we take coal-fired power plants as a given, we may be left only with efficiency options. However, among those making larger-scale decisions, what is debated is not a restructuring of society, of culture, but the tweaks that can be made such that we can stay the current course. It is evident to me that the severity of the issues hasn't be comprehended by those most powerful in our society. (Or maybe they choose to turn their backs on the issues because it is their choices that have caused these problems.) At the same time, many individuals feel that it is okay to use chemicals on our foods, and drink water laced with hormones. What does this mean for us, those that do not support what is going on, those that know that more needs to be done, yet are still affected by the negative outcomes?


I believe that we need to free our minds from what we've been taught to accept. We must question and view with skepticism everything that is thrown at us, because what is being thrown at us is disrespectful of our lives, our health, our world. Of course, this is easier said than done. Yet it is doable, possible, and necessary. While I hope that people can break from from anthropocentrism and extend the moral community to include the environment, even if you are anthropocentric, and don't even care about the environment, think about how you are feeding your very children food that is sprayed with chemicals (that don't necessarily wash off) that are potentially carcinogenic, that the air they are breathing can lead to asthma. Indeed, a simple thought like so can lead down a path of powerful introspection, the outcome of which is outward choices that can make a difference.

Peace and the deficiencies of anthropocentrism

I was struck by this painting by David Ward, a prisoner here in the State of Michigan, whose work Ode to a dying ideal was showcased along with the art and writing of many other prisoners in Michigan at one of the best events that comes through this University. The Prison Creative Arts Project does wonderful things.

 

I was struck so much that I put a bid on it (click on the photo to see the detail of the border), and won, without even thinking once about my "not buying anything" policy...different issue, one that we can talk about later. What I wanted to write about today was exactly what Ward is getting at with his painting. We cannot go a minute now without listening to people being killed, either people in Iraq or Afghanistan (where it is almost certain that more people have been killed than has been reported in the media here), or people that are being killed so that their voices can be silenced, i.e. in places like Yemen and Libya. People are being silenced here, too. 

I have written at length about peace and the environment, initially provoked by a discussion about Just War Theory with Professor Richard Tucker (more here, here, here), and then subsequently by a piece written by Hendrik Hertzberg about Gabrielle Giffords' shooting. I re-read what I wrote a few months ago, and my mind has not changed. 

It is interesting how all ecological degradation has stemmed from our anthropocentric ethical structure, which dictates that we will do whatever it takes in the interest of humans, more likely than not at the expense of the environment. There are a couple of deficiencies of this ethical framework that I can think of off the top of my head, which I want to discuss. Firstly, I find it amazing that we think humans are the greatest thing in the world, but when it comes down to our differences, we will resort to violence to make sure that power stays concentrated with certain people. There is a clear discrepancy, it seems then, between doing all that we can to keep humanity alive (anthropocentrism), and then resorting to violence to kill humans when we don't agree. Of course, someone that has power might say then that it is in the interest of the broader humanity that their power is being used as violence against others, but that is unjustifiable. In this case, we don't act anthropocentrically.

Secondly, although it may be more manageable for us to think that we should act in the best interest of humans, particularly from an "evolutionary" standpoint, we inevitable degrade what it is that sustains us. We want to protect our own, and if that means that we need to blow off the top of a mountain to get coal so that our homes can be heated in winter, so be it. But if we think about the longevity of humanity, certainly blowing off of the top of a mountain and consequently polluting streams and rivers is in no way protecting our ability to further ourselves. Anthropocentrism, in this case, just has the ability to cave in on itself, particularly when it comes down to an ever-burgeoning population and the struggle to keep ourselves alive in the future. The future that we have envisioned for ourselves, full of batteries and gizmos and computers, is no less violent toward nature than our present society.

The very act of war itself is unsustainable in the truest sense of the word, while at the same time flying in the face of anthropocentrism. Peace does seem to be a dying ideal.

On the importance of problem definition

I have written at length (more than thirty posts) on the issue of problem definition. I want to come back to this issue now, particularly because I was made to think about this during a wonderful discussion that I had yesterday.

I gave a presentation yesterday titled Why do we waste? An ethic of trash, waste, pollution and degradation to a group of mechanical engineering graduate students. (I had given this same presentation last semester to the Graham Doctoral Fellows.) In this presentation, I talk about the perceptions of trash, and whether trash is a natural outcome of "modernisation."

"Modernisation" has given us many, many things, including this keyboard I am using to type this blog, as well as pharmaceuticals and drugs. Various tensions are brought out when the issue of medicine is raised...always. The medical field is probably the most environmentally impactful field of all, with copious amounts of radioactive materials, chemicals, gloves, plastics, metals and paper used. A few of my medical school friends have mentioned this, too. We got involved in a discussion about whether there is "beneficial" trash and waste, i.e. the trash and waste that is produced in making a machine that detects cancer, or the trash and waste that goes into making drugs. This is of course a difficult issue, and one that people may come to loggerheads to. It all comes down to our ethic, whether we place humans at the center of our ethic (anthropocentric), or whether we place the environment and everything that constitutes it at the center of our ethic (biocentric, for example). If we say that humans are the most important thing, period, then it is not surprising that such an ethic will lead us down a path that may result in blowing apart a mountain or damming a river to save a human life. Would we drain an ocean to save a life? Where is it we draw the line? This question is overwhelming, and there is no answer to it. But, I believe it is important to think about, because the outcomes that result from our ethic have major implications.

When we think of medicine, we think of the human impacts of the endeavour. But just as with everything else we do nowadays, guided by anthropocentrism (and Western elitism), we undertake the endeavour at the potential expense of that which sustains us - the rivers, the land, and the air.

More thoughts on ownership and "development"

I have been hearing the word "development" more and more recently, not only because I have been reading how the concept of "sustainable development" has co-opted more deeper understandings of sustainability, but also in class and in various discussions I've been having. When I say "development," I mean the human undertaking of modifying the environment, building buildings, constructing colonies, and producing products, necessarily involving the violent use of nature. I feel that many people my age also think about sustainability and environmentalism in terms of "development" - how might we be able to continue along trends historically dictated, but more efficiently? This of course is a natural tendency of our society, and does nothing to stem the environmental onslaught we've been undertaking for centuries now. I want to focus this post on human modifications of the environment, particularly by people who "own" that environment.

It seems to me that notions of ownership stem from notions of freedom, which allow us to do potentially ecologically degrading things, in general for personal, i.e. monetary benefit. While getting dressed yesterday morning, I heard a little story about Aubrey McClendon, the Chairman and CEO of Chesapeake Energy. A billionaire, McClendon owns several hundred acres of fragile dunes on Lake Michigan, in the postcard town of Saugatuck. (This is where the Kalamazoo River feeds Lake Michigan.) As I heard on the Environment Report, McClendon is planning a "development" of a marina, condos, houses, and a golf course. I don't know about the politics of this ordeal; there are people better equipped to understand the environment around Lake Michigan than I. But in all of the news stories I've read, McClendon is called a "developer," and Singapore Dunes is called a "development." 


As I have written about previously, it is fascinating how we feel like we can "own" things that have existed long before we walked the surface of the Earth. The political boundaries we have drawn for our communities and states and nations follow no particular boundaries of nature, except in the cases of mountains and rivers. Maybe more thoughtful boundaries may be watersheds. Regardless, the boundaries we define also bind us to place such that we can "own." But ownership is one thing, and doesn't necessarily imply ecological degradation. Ownership can in fact be leveraged to protect tracts of land and water from human influence. But when ownership is coupled with "development," the coupling necessarily involves modifications to the environment, which imply monetary gain. Very few people are interested in "developing" anything if it doesn't make them money. "Development" itself is a very anthropocentric concept. It implies that everything the "development" takes place on is useless and worthless, and bears no mark of complexity and time. It also presumes that humans know what is better than an undisturbed dune formation, or old growth forests. Yet, Lake Michigan existed long before Michigan was colonised, and the forces that have resulted in each grain of sand on those dunes of the Lake have been acting for much longer than we can comprehend, in ways we will never be able to know fully. Notions of ownership have in fact produced just the opposite of what we would want - what we would want is for our nature to sustain us for as long as possible, but in our quest to own, we have degraded. Just the reverse of how we think is what might be more logical - we are owned by this land, this air and this water, and our fate is tied to our respect to those forces.

Harming nature and creating trash in the name of medicine and health

Health is a concept I think about frequently: What does it mean to be healthy? What does it take to be healthy? How do other people influence one's health? How do nature and the environment influence health?


It is easy to look up the standard definition of health, written by say, the World Health Organisation (WHO): "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." What is striking about this definition is its anthropocentrism. What this definition implies is that health is contained within a human or a group of humans, and one is well when all is in sync within oneself and within a social group. When you ask someone what it means to be healthy, more likely than not they will reply that health ends with her. As long as she eat wells, mind absent of stress, and are surrounded by good people she can have a beer with, she is healthy. Unfortunately, we live in a continuous world (at least macroscopically). Air and water and nature begin where the human body ends, contained in its skin. Health includes our surroundings. It is not only that our environments influence our health, but we influence its "health," too, and consequently are influenced in return by it. Yet, because of how medicine is practiced in many places around the world, our conceptions of what it means to be healthy, and what it takes to be healthy, are firmly at odds with the natural world. Consequently, we cannot define health that ends merely in a healthful mind and healthful body.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, medical waste (and trash) includes bandages, gloves, syringes, surgical instruments, culture dishes and glassware, etc. This list also includes "highly hazardous, mutagenic, teratogenic and carcinogenic chemicals, such as cytotoxic drugs used in cancer treatment and their metabolites," as well as nuclear wastes, and chemicals that aren't metabolised in our bodies.


The common perception of the problem of medical waste is not that waste itself is a problem, but how this waste can spread disease and harm other humans; indeed medical waste is thought of as a public health problem. Here's what the WHO says: "Health-care waste is a reservoir of potentially harmful micro-organisms which can infect hospital patients, health-care workers and the general public. Other potential infectious risks include the spread of, sometimes resistant, micro-organisms from health-care establishments into the environment...Wastes and by-products can also cause injuries, for example radiation burns or sharps-inflicted injuries; poisoning and pollution, whether through the release of pharmaceutical products, in particular, antibiotics and cytotoxic drugs, through the waste water or by toxic elements or compounds such as mercury or dioxins."


But the medical industry is a disposable industry. The value of the human life is worth more than the value of all it takes to produce the chemicals, plastics, metals, and elements to provide health - and we end up "disposing" these materials, either incinerating them, or landfilling them. Patient care generates, on average, 5 to 6 kg of waste per bed daily, or about 750 to 800 million pounds of waste annually in the United States. Of this, about 6% constitutes biomedical waste while the remainder consists of general waste, i.e., paper, plastics, and food (full text here).


Brian shared some thoughts with me a few days ago: Is avoiding the spread of disease fundamentally at odds with reducing waste? It just struck me when working on the ambulance: for the care of one patient, we create more waste than you do in a year. I'm not sure it has to be that way. We already autoclave and reuse a ton of equipment, but some seem impossible to circumvent. Gloves are a good example.


Can we be healthy in full harmony with nature?

Limits, of another kind

I have mentioned in a few posts that there are limits to the human mind. There are limits on cognition, understanding, complexity, interconnectedness, scale and intricacy. Nature is truly complex, truly interconnected, truly intricate and of a magnitude of scales. We cannot comprehend everything, and we will never understand everything. At some level, it isn't worth trying to. We want to know things so we can control them. We want to know various laws of physics and chemistry such that when we want to make a computer or atomic weapon, we'll know how to do it. But there is also a loss of freedom, as Wendell Berry states, of the living species we try to know and understand. Knowing more species of plants and animals, although will give us a clearer understanding of our negative impacts on the planet, can lead to exploitation of their skins and bones, blood and enzymes.

But there is a limit of another kind I'd like to talk about. I started thinking about this after my friend Lydia sent me this picture:

Lydia is a Geology PhD student, and her work takes her to Tibet and Western China. This photo was taken in town of Xidatan in the Qinghai Province of China. She said to me, "This, I would say, is probably one of the cleaner towns we saw. I'm not sure if that truck actually dumped a pile of trash in the middle of the town, but that's kind of what it looks like." Well, Lydia, I think you're right. That looks like a pile of trash to me, in the middle of pristine Earth.

Clearly, our ethic for living on this Earth has been dominion, domination and anthropocentrism. This has left us with no where on Earth that is untouched, unscathed, unchanged or unmodified. Wherever we go, we must leave our mark - our mark through trash. Is there a way to define our limits to dominion? Is there a way to say we will leave a pristine patch of creation (for the religious readers out there), Earth, soil, water and air to itself and the forces of nature? The problem with our communities and societies is that we don't live in a place anymore. We are on the move, always looking for something new, something different, something to change, something to extract. Indeed, if we defined our boundaries, we would have to have greater moral, ethical, social and cultural imagination to make sure our Earth in a particular place can sustain us, the frogs, the fish, the birds and the trees of that place.

Developing an ethic of trash

This project has so far tried to understand the reasons we accept and condone trash creation. I have tried to describe what it might take to create a paradigm shift in how we relate to people if trash creation was not an option. A problem such as trash is created based on where we define our "center of the universe." What is it we value? Do we value our time over others' time? Do we value our lives over the lives of other creatures? Do we value our lives over the lives of mountains, watersheds and the atmosphere? Do we value our wants over the wants and needs of others? What is evident to me, which may be fairly obvious, is that as with most environmental problems, trash is a problem of anthropocentrism. As soon as we take a step back and look at how we have conducted ourselves, we will realise that our anthropocentrism has led to a lack of respect for things that we deem "extraneous" to our daily activities. Why care about the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch when you have a job, that although is extremely boring, is paying to keep the fridge stocked with food? I know everyone says that of course we think only about ourselves in our day to day lives. But creating trash seems like the one tangible (visually, and in smell) environmentally damaging thing that we do daily and everywhere near and dear to our places of living, working and being human. We store trash in our homes, garages and backyards. There are trash cans on the corners of streets, overflowing with double-cupped Starbucks cups and plastic wrappers. Yet our valuations of efficiency, convenience and life deem trash creation legitimate and almost necessary.

But this is how the "industrialised" and "developed" countries conduct themselves. How about "underdeveloped," "Third World," "developing" countries? What must they be going through? Well, let's take the example of Tuvalu, the paradise-like island nation in the Pacific. Tuvalu is a nation that may not exist in a few years, because of rising sea levels due to you know what. But apparently, another environmental disaster seems like it will beat our rising levels - trash. Hmm...it seems like they are having the same problems that we in the West are having. I just came across an article from Radio New Zealand International saying the following about Tuvalu: "Discarded waste is strewn everywhere: plastic, metal, old appliances, rusted out cars, fridges." If I am reading this very recent article correctly, their drive to have the "luxuries" that the West has - plastics, appliances, and cars is what may result in their demise. (Why would people need cars on an island of 10 square miles?) So it is indeed a Western-derived ethic of anthropocentrism that leads to trash. I can attest to the fact that the amount of trash in India has increased (geometrically? exponentially?) in the past 10 years, and this has coincided with a marked Westernisation of India and its culture, customs and mindsets.

The one way we can adequately address the issue of trash is by redefining the "center of our universe," not by building more incinerators that pollute our air and water, not by digging more landfills. We must ask the question - What is it that we stand for?