Philosophy, Take 2

After our last few class meetings, I would have to say that my environmental philosophy has not been changed—rather, it would be more accurate to say that it has been reaffirmed. I found that my extrapolated philosophy from Steinbeck resonated especially well with Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin wants to insist that there is no “real” solution to the problem of the commons, that the only possible solution to this predicament is through a change in “morality”--and, for me, this echoed almost exactly Steinbeck’s “is thinking” philosophy. What both of these thinkers are getting at is that in order to avoid ecological catastrophe and collapse, we have to change the way that we think and interact with the environment. Hardin calls it a change in “morality,” Steinbeck refers to it as a shift in “thinking,” but the unifying and underlying idea here is that there is something inherently skewed about modern humans’ relationship with the world around them.

Both Steinbeck and I, I suppose, would want to reference the apparently natural impulse for people to grasp the world around them in only terms of instrumental value as the root of all these problems; and if telic thinking involves finding anthropocentric-purpose, and instrumental value is defined as having value (or purpose) for someone, then this is so. This tendency to view the world only in terms of instrumental value would seem to be the major impetus behind the modern world’s obsession with consumerism (which seems to drive most of our ecological problems). Under this compulsion to consume, society leaves no stone (or double-rainbow) unturned in search of a profit--which removes almost any other type of value (inherent or intrinsic) left to people today through which they may evaluate the world around them. For how can we think non-teleologically, and non-instrumentaly, if we are conditioned to always try to find a way to “turn a buck” off of, or simply put to use, the things around us?

This seems to dovetail nicely with Hardin’s essay. Hardin argues that we must change our moral beliefs in order to better situate ourselves into a sustainable relationship with nature. He argues that we must rearrange our moral beliefs to accommodate for the realities that we are confronted with--but what Hardin lacks is a vehicle or a method to get us there. He proposes several changes in legislation and perception of freedoms and relationships in the modern world, but where I found his theory lacking was how he proposed to bring about these changes, especially in our moral capacities. And certainly Steinbeck does not propose any methods for getting people to think non-telically, but I was thinking while reading Hardin’s article that the two proposals could potentially go a long ways together in mapping out the possibilities available to us for a new and sustainable future; possibly a future where legislation and morality are determined by coming to terms with how the natural world “is” and how humans can most unobtrusively position themselves in this natural world.

Certainly more thought is required on the subject, but at any rate, I found that Steinbeck and his “is thinking” philosophy has, thus far, been a solid foundation for my environmental philosophy, and that it supports a great variety of the thought and material that we have covered in class.