Multilingualism for Symbiotic Human Population Management

Multilingualism For Symbiotic Human Population Management

Two actions for a multilingual mind to manage human populations: First vote “Yes” on Initiative 522 to label genetically Modified Organisms in all food human or animal. Second push The Dept Of Interior to protect the Gray Wolf as listed as an Endangered Species as the population ratio of humans to wolves is absurdly skewed to consider otherwise delisting.

The primacy of language in the human experience is obvious and yet it demands ongoing study of its influences on human populations and the biodiversity of the biosphere. How does language diversity, human and other forms including molecular, relate to and influence populations, biodiversity, and the self worth, self esteem, and self security of a species and a habitat? This question is beyond the scope of a 7-12 page essay and has unfortunately created a 25 paged essay, but I can’t find any other force of nature comparable in power to language in shaping social animals such as human populations. Lacking an ability to fully research this in a correspondence course, I’d like to suggest a framework for understanding two upcoming socio-economic and political decisions: First Initiative 522, the mandatory labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms in Washington State up for vote November 2013 and Second the delisting of the grey wolf in the lower 48 by the US Department of Interior. Both issues will have some degree of impact either positive or negative on the self worth, self esteem, and self security of at least one individual species and the habitat of the species and the biosphere as a whole. What effect will the decisions made on these two issues have on self worth, self esteem, and self security of all parties involved? Are there any other technologies or techniques available that can do better? Yes. Multilingualism with its influence on individuals and communities in a habitat creates seeds of more value both real and potential and strengthens and encourages self worth, self esteem, and self security of both the individual and the habitat culture better than genetically engineered seeds can for human population management.

In this essay I will discuss how human language and all living communication systems is a phenomenon that is not fully understood, but there is enough experience to suggest that it extends deep through the evolutionary track as a co-creative phenomenon between species and nature via habitats. I am going against many linguists and anthropologists and biologists, I’m sure, who claim that language as we humans use and hear it is a uniquely human attribute that evolved within the confines of the human mind, therefore it is a human intellectual property. I believe that this is a biased anthropocentric assumption of logical thinking based on the current modern human historical experience. When looking at the origin of a creative work of literature, one would be hard pressed to find the source strictly in the author’s mind. If we can come to a better understanding for the origins and structure of language I think we might approach a structure for more “sustainable” socio-economic and political systems. I will draw a brief comparison of the latest research in microbiology, most importantly the discovery of the bacterium language “quorum sensing”, paleoanthropology, the study of prehistory with paleoclimatology the study of climate history, the prevalence and importance of multilingualism in indigenous societies, and the latest research in infant language learning, lastly suggestions of an evolving socio-economic system based on microbiology exist dubbed by one researcher as “microbiopolitics” that I believe could be furthered for a watershed-based economy as experienced in ancient India and other indigenous cultures. Finally to suggest a decision framework for Initiative 522 and delisting of the gray wolf and in search of a symbiotic and poetic life in space with pressures from Pop Culture, I’ll compare the the philosophy of multilingualism of the eternally wild spirit as expressed in an icon of dead things: driftwood, to the essence of that eternally wild spirit expressed in two icons of living social things: humans and wolves.

I believe that evidence from these areas of research suggests a co-creative origin of human language that would mean that humans do not solely own language as the intellectual property of one species. Most linguists and anthropologists or biologists will claim that language is solely an evolutionary product of the rational mind, a logical event of mutations in the human brain and larynx and ultimately becoming useful in the logical human mind. To formulate my opinion, I compare the creation or attempt at creation of a work of art to the origin of language and I believe that the creation of language is a natural technology that co-evolved synergistically with various layers of physical and intellectual stimulations among many hours of co-creative live cycles between species and habitat. There are some linguists who are studying creole that I have not investigated yet and I admittedly cannot discuss all sides of the issue in this essay. E.O. Wilson, award winning critically acclaimed biologist, in his book “The Social Conquest of Earth” quotes Michael Tomasello, American evolutionary psychologist and Co-director of the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology:

“What could it mean to say that language is responsible for understanding and sharing intentions, when in fact the idea of linguistic communication without these underlying skills is incoherent. And so, while it is true that language represents a major difference between humans and other primates, we believe that it actually derives from the uniquely human abilities to read and share intentions with other people...”

“It seems logical that language did not create the mind, but the opposite.”

“The rudiments of human language might have appeared as the essential enabling mental qualities that came together and co-evolved in a synergistic fashion. But it is highly unlikely that it preceded them.” (Wilson 228)

Language feels to be a co-creative force to me; in a combined phenomenon of how my body systems and microbiome bacterium “speak” among themselves regardless of my brain’s consciousness and how I shape what I want to say, pick up sounds from the environment and learn culture, language feels co-creative and therefore likely to have preceded “essential enabling mental qualities” and “co-evolved in a synergistic fashion”, contrary to this educated thought. What absolutely seems clear to me is that the origin story of mythology of language is the most important barrier to human societies progressing beyond the religious dogma that Wilson warns is limiting the society as a whole in achieving any sense of altruistic state of group selective “honor”. If the use of language in tangible applications such as the labeling of food products for customer consumption is not regulated and over seen by the governing body of the land, than how can that governing body protect the customers, the citizens and protect their self worth, esteem, and self security? Language thus seems to be the true determiner of human populations and even all species populations both as a consequence of human use of language to create a massive Pop Culture and as a consequence of their own use of their own linguistics. Language thus seems more like a phenomenon of co-creativity, an invention shared with habitats in Nature through our experiences, cultures, interactions with other organisms and therefore because of the complexity of connections between various species and their habitats, language as a phenomenon encompassing human linguistics and other primitive linguistics, multilingualism as a phenomenon of learning multiple ways of thinking and communicating is a seed in the human mind and in Nature more valuable than genetic engineering for its ability to grow self worth, self esteem, and self security in relatedness to Nature and to manage populations in a biosphere.

So what does poetry and the poet have to say about the co-creative nature and origins of the phenomenon of language? Contrary to the strict, but understandable desire to separate science from literature, looking at the scientific problem of how language affects human populations could benefit from a look at literary thinking and works of successful poets and could tell us much about the phenomenon of the origin of language. E.O. Wilson approached this challenge in his book “The Social Conquest of Earth”, but it seems as a highly disciplined scientist honed by the pressures of peer review, he stopped short of a full emersion in to the potential enlightenment on the mythic origins of language that a metaphysical literary work could provide. Four of my favorite American poets express their craft as an art of interacting with words and a moment in reality in Nature and in the mind.

e.e.cummings in a poem titled by the first line:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made 

is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

Mary Oliver, in her book “A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry”:

When writing, as nearly as is imaginatively possible (and that is very near indeed), one is undertaking the action, or has become the character (think of what Keats said), in the unfolding scene or action of the poem. Until interruption occurs, this feeling is as real as the desk on which the poet is working. For the poem is not nailed together, or formed from one logical point to another, which might be retrievable - it is created, through work in which the inter weavings of craft, thought, and feeling are intricate, mysterious, and altogether ‘mortal.’ (Oliver 117)

Ursala K. LeGuin, award winning science fiction author in her book “A Wave In The Mind”:

“So much for trusting oneself. Now, to trust the story, what does that mean? To me, it means being willing not to have full control over the story as you write it... First you have to learn how to write English, and learn how to tell stories in general–techniques, practice, all that: so that you are in control. And then you have to learn how to relinquish it... For me it's not enough to be a good rider, I want to be a centaur. I don't want to be the rider controlling the horse, I want to be both the rider and the horse." (Le Guin 224)

William Carlos Williams award winning poet and professional medical doctor in his book of poems “In Spring”:

"So long as the sky is recognized as an association

is recognized in its function of accessory to vague

words whose meaning it is impossible to rediscover

its value can be nothing but mathematical certain

limits of gravity and density of air

The farmer and the fisherman who read their own lives there have a practical corrective for – 

they rediscover or replace demoded meanings to

the religious terms

Among them, without expansion of imagination, 

there is the residual contact between life and the

imagination which is essential to freedom" (Williams 19)

All three of these artists are suggesting a fragile relationship between their intentional crafting of their use of language and words and letting the subject of their inspiration guide them: “...a world of made is not a world of born...”, “the inter weavings of craft, thought, feelings... all together ‘mortal’”,  “...it means being willing to not have full control over the story as you are writing it...”,  “...the residual contact between life and the imagination which is essential to freedom”. These voices speak in contrast to: “What could it mean to say that language is responsible for understanding and sharing intentions...” as the evolutionary anthropologist says. It does not seem that poetry is just about reading and sharing intentions. To say that language evolved without poetry is possibly the greatest albeit likely unintentional crime against humanity and biodiversity because it seems to be enabling the continual manipulation of minds and habitats for an anthropocentric single, one-way language based economic system.

With the poet in mind, the origin of language, could mean that Nature helps humans create diverse, poetic lifestyles and cultures that in turn help humans and nature get along together, to manage population densities through naturally encouraging diversity of thought in linguistic diversity like Nature encourages biodiversity. And it could mean that when language is recognized as a co-creative phenomenon between mind and matter it empowers a higher synergy and a higher sense of value which inherently limits physical consumption and expansion while enabling spiritual or metaphysical consumption and expansion with increasing layers of self worth and security. It seems that the creative evolution of a work of poetry and literature suggests a deeper meaning to the origin of human language that demands further research before multilingualism as a natural force and phenomenon is annihilated by “monocultural imperialism”, one way thinking, and genetic engineering technologies that attack self worth, esteem, and self security by attacking the poetic relationship between a species and their habitat, watershed, and biosphere.

In Thomas Malthus’s essay on human population he famously expressed the fate of starvation because of “the difficulty of subsistence” and “the passion between the sexes”. Malthus suggested that these are forces uncontrollable, but I feel they are in fact forces constantly subject to the affects that language has on self worth, self esteem, self security, and ultimately honor among others. Malthus lacked the information we have in 2013 about human nature and gene-culture co-evolution and the evolution of the planet as well as the evolution of the single celled organism, but what he lacked and that we still lack today is a full appreciation for the power of multilingualism in shaping human populations and cultures. Because of what limits a researches point of view their research is subject to rapid degradation and erosion of quality or relevance. But with language and the multilingual organism especially, we see the fundamental power of what lasts regardless of time: a desire to empathize for symbiotic survival. I will attempt to express how language is the primary concern if only demonstrated by the feelings within us and that human populations are not destined to mass starvation, but with Multilingual “Ecomind” (Lappe) thinking social populations can self regulate hunger and passion.

Multilingualism is essentially many languages in one mind and as such is a pro-social shield for the altruistic “self” seeking group honor that is mightier than the sword of psychopathic or sociopathic monocultural imperialism. Before the latter organizations attempt to use the powers from the populations of the former to annihilate honor in an altruistic society I suggest that members of the former unite fully using the multilingualism phenomenon that would otherwise be suggested as a dis-unifying phenomenon. While I have little empirical research of my own to support such a hopeful mindset, I do have my body and experiences as exhibit A: I am a symbiotic organism that maintains multilingualism in his cells, I am a product of symbiosis constantly upgrading and repairing itself with the autonomous actions of cells for as long as it can. A self who has survived thus far not because of my own singular power, or singular engineering feat, but from luck and the fundamental power of cooperation of different people and species. My existence, however fleeting, is proof of altruistic society based on the phenomenon of multilingualism which extends far deeper into biology than we have dogmatically allowed; into microbiology:

“Every plant, animal, and human requires a vast community of commensal microbes working 24/7 to keep it alive and healthy.... These vast communities of microbes – your “microbiome” – have effects on your metabolism, immunity, and behavior; and properly balanced, invisible interactions with your microbes are essential to your well-being. Microbes cover you in a thin biofilm that serves as invisible body armor protecting you from environmental insults. Microbes help digest your food, provide your vitamins, aid in the development of your blood vessels, and educate you immune system.” (Bassler 68-69) 

That our individual bodies are symbiotic systems that are constantly communicating with our habitat is little understood and yet of utmost importance. Do genetic engineers know how their product will affect this complex system of communication? Do they care? If they do not, they appear more as enemies of global peace than ethical agents of humanitarian aid. Our bodies are proof that cooperation is the dominate form of survival on the planet, the illusion that our minds are in strict control of our “self” is fading away like a cut to our skin as we gain more insight from comparative research:

“Within minutes of accidentally cutting yourself, the hemostatic flow has probably been brought to rest as erythrocytes attach themselves to fibrin threads...This is a process of meticulous and self motivated coordination and is something we have rarely admitted in our discussions... These are subtle, powerful forces at work here and they are testimony to the regulatory mechanisms on which all life depends.” (Ford 140) 

The study of microbiology suggests that the desire to talk began not in the human mind but in bacterium, the single celled organisms that survived billions of years of catastrophic change and the organism who’s networking abilities enabled multicellular life. Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler, discovered the language of bacterium called “quorum sensing” while working for Princeton University and expresses how she felt upon the discovery:

“I spend half my time thinking, “My God, I can’t believe they do this!” and then the other half thinking, “Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Of course they do this!” I agree, it’s obvious in retrospect.

I often think, “Why is it that my lab that’s doing this?” Bacteria have been intensively studied for 400 years. How could this have been missed for nearly 390 of those years? I guess there was this sort of snobbery — among bacteriologists and among scientists in general — that because bacteria seemingly live this mundane primitive life, and they have so few genes, and are so tiny, that we could not imagine they possessed this level of complexity and sophistication.

But think about multicellularity on this Earth. Every living thing originally came from bacteria. So, who do you think made up the rules for how to perform collective behaviors? It had to be the bacteria. (Bassler Nova Interview)

It seems reasonable that from this recent discovery we can speculate that the desire to talk as a necessity of survival and coordinate effort is not just a human phenomenon, but one that spread to the human mind from the hungers of the body. The human fossil records back this speculation up. 

As there is now an awareness of the depth of communication technology among microbes, the ongoing study of the human fossil record and the geologic climate record of the earth suggest a communication between the earth and the biosphere and each species via unique habitats. Humans are the only species to travel to the moon, as far as we know we are the most well traveled species. How does this travel affect our language and how did the pre-history of travel affect the development of our language? Is language a product solely of the human mind or a co-creative product of the human mind interacting with and being influenced by habitat? What does the fossil record and climate record suggest for the evolution of human language as a co-creative phenomenon? If language is inherently a product of a sort of conversation between the earth, Nature and the species, does this imply that nature co-owns the intellectual property that language technology is? Is this implication, that Nature has intellectual property rights over human language important as whether or not human cultures acknowledge this Right Of Nature to speak freely with and between species will affect the direction of a rapidly evolving species that is fundamentally shaped by language? These questions are difficult if not impossible to answer, but they are essential to understanding the implications and potential consequences of human agricultural efforts to feed billions of people on the planet. Initiative 522, the question of labeling Genetically Modified Organisms and of the decision to delist the grey wolf as an endangered species are two “Watershed Moments” socio-economic and political decisions that will change life forever. We can at least see them towards us this fall of 2013 and we can prepare by asking these questions. They are issues of a lack of multilingualism as a philosophy of action that will affect the self worth of the social individual human as a species, the social individual wolf as a species, and the social organization of the biosphere.

  Paleoanthropology, the study of prehistory with paleoclimatology the study of ancient climate provide evidence of the dynamic relationship between the creation of innovative species and their technologies and the geologic events of the greater biosphere. With cranial endocasts and the vertical position of the larynx bone in hominid species researchers help determine when language was achieved. Some think it occurred nearly overnight, some think it took millions of years of evolution. (Johanson 106) Some think it occurred near the time of the breakout from Southern Africa after a severe Ice Age. There is evidence that one of the other humans, Neanderthals had a primitive language. (Johanson 107, Finlayson 106) While the exact time of the origin of human language is unclear, it is more clear that it was finally brought fully about by stress and tragedy. The catastrophic explosion of Mount Toba, on Sumatra, nearly 75,000 years ago is believed to have created a “bottleneck” in the early Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens population and to have created a powerful need to speak and collaborate. (Fagen xv) After this event Homo Sapiens traveled far and wide spreading out across the globe creating many languages and mythologies and nearly hunting many species to extinction. So does Mt Toba have intellectual property rights over human language? That sounds ridiculous, but what sounds more reasonable is that, as the archaeologic and paleoclimatologic records show, the bio-technologies of all species are products of a co-creative relationship with Nature as a fluid and dynamic force attempting to achieve an equilibrium in exchange across identities.

The origin of human language has been called one of the greatest scientific problems ever confronted and is “the grail achieved in social evolution”. (Wilson) It is therefore still a frontier of speculation and research with great meaning and implications for human experience and for human populations. While it might be true that the gardener who holds the seeds of an agricultural society holds the future of that society, the future is first held by the gardener who holds the seeds of thought: Words and the power of suggestion, the power to place labels on Nature. Ironically this power came from Nature and further energy exists to overcome catastrophe and stress as seen in the evolutionary records. Language shaped the mind before society could exist to grow to the massive numbers we see today. Researcher and scholar of geography Jared Diamond discusses the individual and social importance of language in his recent book “The World Until Yesterday”:

“...your language serves as an instantly recognizable badge of your group identity.” (Diamond 376) 

“...multilingualism is widespread or routine in traditional small-scale non-state societies... People regularly encounter and have to deal with speakers of other languages. To trade, to negotiate alliances and access to resources, and (for many traditional people) even to obtain a spouse and to communicate with that spouse requires being not merely bilingual but multilingual. Second and further languages are learned in childhood in the home or socially, not through formal instruction.” (Diamond 383)

Multilingualism encourages self worth and improves cognitive function in children and prevents cognitive disfunction in elderly. (Diamond 383+) 

The human fossil and archeological record compared with the earth’s geologic climate record reveals an increasingly detailed story of the “gene-culture co-evolution” (Wilson) between human culture and Nature. In the light of this comparison multilingualism becomes not just a phenomenon of human language, or interspecies microbial communication, but of a communication between the biosphere and the species. This would appear to further the argument that Nature has intellectual property rights through the human language–habitat co-creative relationship.

The origin of human language and the true potential of multilingualism to manage human populations is being uncovered with recent studies of infants brain waves while they are absorbing a person speaking. Patricia Khul, co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington has discovered that,

““Babies all over the world are what I like to describe as ‘citizens of the world.’ They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages, no matter what country we’re testing and what language we’re using.”

“When babies listen, what they’re doing is taking statistics on the language that they hear.” (Khul)

Her research was conducted using an advanced brain recording and mapping system and has shown that babies need a person present in order to activate the statistics taking which is important when considering the intense social nature of early human life. Is this evidence of language as a co-creative phenomenon between the babies’ brain and the habitat, social and ecological to effect meaning? One implication for this universal skill is a survival tactic that enabled babies to survive with any culture they happened to grow up in regardless of their parents culture. A programed cultural survival skill appears to be a means of survival not just for the individual or the group, but for the sake of social survival as well. 

What can genetic engineering offer to all parties of this phenomenon that multilingualism cannot and vice versa? How will genetic engineering affect the self worth that language encourages in a person and in a species? How is genetic engineering affecting human and microbe cultures? How is genetic engineering affecting the human as symbiotic organism, a thinking and talking social being intimately connected to microbial communities who are “thinking” and talking amongst themselves as well for the greater good that enables our health?

Another way genetic engineering may degrade self worth and esteem is in the value of the regional food and wine protection designator system in Europe, the Appellations of Control. One anthropologist, Heather Paxon suggests “microbiopolitics” as a structure for socioeconomic systems that has been evolving rapidly in the artisan cheese industry that can better help people shape human population issues of Pop Culture by focusing on the “terroir” or flavor of geography and the uniquely tasting personalities of microbes:

“In the post-Pasteurian ethos of today’s artisanal cheese cultures—recognizing microbes to be ubiquitous, necessary, and, indeed, tasty— microbiopolitics is newly productive of modern craft knowledge and expanded notions of nutrition. It produces new materials (microbes) for thinking about con- junctures of cultural tradition and agrarian landscapes, along the lines of what the French call terroir (see Barham 2003; Trubek 2005). And it creates new alliances among cheese makers and among farmers, scientists, merchants, and foodies.” (Paxon 18)

It is likely in this arena, the artisan craft person’s arena, that human populations with the aid of a multilingual philosophy, will find their greatest strength in developing self worth, self esteem, and self security collaboratively with that of a watershed habitat. Having worked for a relatively new artisan cheese creamery in the city of Port Townsend, WA in 2010-2012, called Mt. Townsend Creamery, I can attest to the dynamics and challenges of meeting a reasonable price point that enables a thriving and trusted artisan food business. The scrutiny placed on such creameries in the USA is severe to say the least and one must wonder how the term “artisan” can withstand the scrutiny of a massive Pop Culture supported national government regulation and inspection system. The size of the giant on the artisan’s shoulders is challenging their own ability to maintain a unique “self” in the artisan economy that must interface with the Pop Culture economy. The structure of the economic system that these artisan food producers are trying to maintain a living in does not reflect “microbiopolitics” or even the nature of the water cycle, yet the flavor of their products will by necessity of microbiology and the artisan way, reflect the flavor of the watershed. The artisan crafts person in the USA is once again after a couple hundred years, back at the front lines of cultural progress.

As the co-creative structure of the multilingual mind can enable greater empathy in societies and greater control by individuals over their relationship to populations so can the structure of the flow of water in a watershed as it has always been the physical limit of sedentary human populations. One of the most important if not the final assessment of a sustainable human population is: Who gets the water? Multilingualism and diversity of thought help negotiate this challenge more effectively and empathically. Activist Vandana Shiva has thoroughly researched and expressed this problem in “Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit.” As a testament to learning from ancient cultures in India, decentralized gardeners who worked with a watershed and listened to it gained much more stability in a cooperative social flexibility with the flow of water than centralized gardeners:

“What Marx and Wittfogel failed to grasp was the freedom of cooperative management systems from dominant bureaucracies. That Indian irrigation systems relied on decentralized maintenance and not on centralized control was lost on these Western scholars. Wittfogel’s characterization of Asia’s water systems [in his essay Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power] has not gone unchallenged. Economic historian Nirmal Sengupta has pointed out that vast networks of irrigation systems are not necessarily large projects. They can be a close-knit and locally managed network of microprojects. Sengupta has also shown that stagnation was not endemic to these traditional irrigation systems but that flexibility was central. Cropping patterns changed annually according to water availability. With water resources under local control, decisions on land use were easier to make. Modern irrigation on the other hand, uses centralized water control and distribution. Agricultural systems using modern dams are also less able to alter their cropping and irrigation practices to suit the availability of water. In addition, these large systems erode human rights and cause serious ecological damage.”

Shiva’s assessment of the inadequacy of western thinking and acting in working with Asian cultures to manage human populations reinforces the theory that multilingualism is a more powerful technology than genetic engineering as genetic engineering is predominantly a Western, namely USA, thought process. The history of “Water Wars” across the globe and especially in Asia could predict a violent future of strife over water access. With a new generation of children becoming adults empowered with a mind full of multilingual thinking options, maybe such wars will not have to be fought regardless of who invented what technology to search for or find water and bring it to the surface. Like the ability to find and express water into a biologically diverse garden, the ability to find and express the right words in a conversation of infinite variability, multilingualism and language is a technology co-owned with Nature. Words are like drops of water and as a universal substance of social life and all life, both water and words shape human populations as a co-creative phenomenon and thus deserve certain inalienable rights as collaborators in the “self” of humanity to meet the lips of all people in pure form. To violate this is to gradually if not rapidly to destroy everything worth living for and being aware of. History does not necessarily repeat itself nor is it written correctly and truthfully. This inadequacy of Western thinking that Shiva cites, I believe could be remedied in reorganizing our western political and economic systems to fit with watersheds and water cycles more closely represented by the cooperative multilingualism of indigenous societies.

Of those countries strapped with massive human populations that over burden their habitats, China and India must access their ancient sources of self worth, esteem, and self security via the vast resources of cultural diversity amassed over thousands of years. While the task is daunting and population issues have created horrendous pollution issues in Asia, these anciently endowed cultures should not be influenced by the United States government while the US Constitution does not recognize the Rights Of Nature. In the event that the US Constitution does reflect the Rights Of Nature it could then have something legitimately profound to share in legal practices and experiences in articulating and defending these rights among our watersheds. The US Constitution does not currently reflect this kind of philosophy and therefore has no authority over the relationship between human populations and their relationship to ecological habitats and watersheds in Nature. As China and India have diverse linguistic heritages that were also literate, they have the potential to demonstrate more directly how the origins of language affect a culture’s relationship to the landscape and biodiversity. They may have the opportunity to demonstrate the invention of language as a co-creative process between the human mind and habitat and thereby begin to reverse the destructive trend of a Pop Culture society even before the wilderness and indigenous culture rich USA can muster the self esteem will power to do so.

Starvation is not as inevitable as Malthus suggested when human individuals and communities work more directly together and creatively together beyond cultural and  political boundaries with a kind of multilingualism with the soil and with the plants or animals of their agricultural focus within the structure of an entire watershed system. Modern industrial agriculture would suggest that old saying “go big or go home” and would suggest that efficiency should be followed to the smallest scale; the trend in corporate food systems in America is shockingly mechanistic and essentially anti-multilingual. What if “go big” meant ‘embrace the entire watershed as a co-creative being to produce unique artisan foods’? This could bring new practical results to “playing with the bigness of our littleness”... Right now the farmers of industrial agriculture do not attempt to communicate with the plants and animals they grow, they seek only to dominate and subjugate and humiliate them. (FOOD INC) That method is suicide as the science of microbiology shows that the “self” is intimately connected with other beings. 

Organic agriculture and more specifically bio-intensive and bio-dynamic gardening techniques of companionship planting have been honed over thousands of years and in large part from some of the countries now struggling the most with over burdening population concentrations believe e.e.cummings that “a world of made is not a world of born”. The world of born is far more valuable and “the hell of a good universe next door” is accessed through a multilingual mindset in gardens of biodiversity. Intercropping is a proven technique of planting for biodiversity in space and in time. (Riotte, Rodale, Jeavons) These techniques are a kind of multilingualism among plants and soil communities where the farmer or gardener is working to achieve a co-creative relationship with the soil, plant, and animal. This is the most important difference between farming with heritage seeds or seeds saved from the garden or farm worked and genetically engineered seeds, the former strengthens high self esteem and strong relationships, the latter destroys self esteem and relationships. The people tending biodiversity gardens appreciate what the landscape and the plant and the animal living there have to say. Genetic engineers do not care, they do not listen, and they do not want to know the language of the plant, animal, landscape because they do not want to lose control. In all good human agricultural systems, like good conversations, like good poetry, there is a tendency to let go of control and let the conversation flow co-creatively between co-authors of speech. Genetic engineers feel that altering species is the best alternative for dealing with climate change because species are not as smart as human beings. (Genetic Chile, Technacolyps) This is a philosophy that will lead to more problems because it is fundamentally against the flow of language evolution which is moving species along a river of greater and greater complexity of awareness in symbiotic relationships. It is shaping life as a co-creative phenomenon between multiple forms of intelligence, the ecosystem habitat community, the species, and the water cycle. If we assert the co-creative intellectual property rights that Nature deserves over human language and all language systems, we will further prevent starvation and ecologic collapse by encouraging greater cultural diversification which strengthens self worth, self esteem, and self security of relatedness between societies and watershed habitats. Starvation is more a tragedy of a lack of multilingual thinking or a diversity in communications systems with and listening to the earth than of too much eating or too much sex or not enough food.

CLOSING SUMMARY: 

Choosing poetic wildness in death and life: Driftwood, Humans, and Wolves in Washington State

On the North Pacific Coast of the United States of America a cold sea mist drapes driftwood and sand as the surf pushes and pulls at the piles of bleached white logs laying them up in haphazard tangled ways as a barrier between two worlds. The wild poetry of dead trees on the beach has helped me understand something about the magnitude of this genetic engineering technology and importance of Initiative 522. No matter what happens in the human world of plant and animal engineering, driftwood will always exist as long as cold temperate forest shorelines exist and will always be wild and free in death. Driftwood in its bleached white glow in the moonlight on a sandy beach is like the person with multiple languages in one mind, a soul alive and free stretched between two worlds and a phenomenon of empathy that can more effectively carry earthlings to explore the stars than unpoetic genetic manipulations. Nature is poetic life and death and human culture should be too.

A label on a product such as on GMO foods is in a way like driftwood, a line between worlds and in a way like the multilingual person an assertion of the value of self worth and self esteem and self security that they have for other worlds. While the genetic engineers may see the label as an attack on their product’s viability, are they asking citizens of the democratic country of the USA to give in to an attack on their self worth, esteem, and self security? Are they ashamed of their product? Does their self worth depend on the annihilation of another’s self worth? Indeed, these corporations apparently don’t care about the fundamentals of listening to the voice of another as they don’t listen to the voice of Nature nor of the species they violate to profit from without communicating with.  These corporations are a virus-like mutation of human society promoting individual selection above group selection, a group of selfish individuals that depend on a philosophy of self degradation of the other for the improvement of their own. Labels on foods made by the economic system are essentially a language connecting the maker with the user, the producer with the customer. While the ancient “customer” of wild nature, Cro-Magnon man, would have chosen products from Nature without a label, he would have chosen carefully for the expected affect on his self security or his seed would not have traveled far down the genetic line. Evolution on earth has created increasingly complex systems of symbiotic relatedness pushing selfish, parasitic gain to the boundaries as a check on the degree of multilingualism in a species immune systems and self security. To advocate not labeling a product is to suggest that the customer is worthless and unworthy of talking to. To vote for not labeling a product is to vote to degrade ones own self worth. A lack of a label is a lack of care for multilingualism which is a trait of monocultural imperialism and in the immediate effect simply bad customer service.

This fall 2013 will produce an assessment of the degree of customer service between human societies and Nature self worth of both the human microbiome and of a watershed with Initiative 522 and with the decision to delist the grey wolf as an endangered species in Washington State. While a person or an ecosystem can receive insults and recover their self worth, esteem and security, there are points beyond which the self is unrecoverable; there is a definite risk at stake. We will choose not just whether to label a source as genetically modified or not and whether a predator is healthy, and can be culled to protect private interest in cattle stock, but whether or not to believe in the unity between the creative mind of nature and the creative mind of humanity, we will choose to label self worth of the individual and self worth of an ecosystem. Both decisions will be a physical expression of a metaphysical link of human self and the self of Nature that language via multilingualism between species provides. The label or lack of will be a symbol of self worth between species natural and transgenic: Who’s creative self do we value more? What will be left of “us”? Will we be, like driftwood bleached and beautifully strewn forever wild along the shore, but fully beautiful and wild only in its death as an expression of the futile love affair between water and earth? Or will we be like the grey wolf wild in a socially interconnected and fundamentally multilingual life, free, a co-creative force with and of Nature with habitats via a hunger not to consume everything in site, but to relate to the lay of the land and to explore the furthest extent of social awareness? Wolves are a force of Nature that through the trophic cascade effect balance and encourage the self worth and self security of an ecosystem, indeed a mountain and river watershed. They are an icon of wilderness that has been a fixture in the imagination of human mind and a legend of how to survive in an arctic tundra environment. The wolf has multiple intrinsic values to a habitat beyond human ownership of land for ranching. (Grambo, Lopez) If taken from the perspective of multilingualism, ranchers may see the value of learning the “language” of the trophic cascade effect to improve the self worth of their ranch land and of their cattle.  Could they gain a higher price in the market if their cattle are pushed to a higher level of herd species health by wild wolves? Could their beef gain a price point comparable to wild Alaskan salmon? 

If we choose the former, not to label GMO foods and thus to proliferate genetically engineered seeds and pollen and if we chose to allow hunting of wolves without fist adjusting how our ranching methods affect the shared habitat with wolves, we humans will be wild only in our rapid social death, our architecture and our bones (with the exception of our plastic) will look beautiful strewn about worn in the weather, but in life, we will be fundamentally degraded in self worth, esteem, and security as our sense of relatedness to our habitat and the biosphere will be confused if not completely lost. 

We have an important choice to make that in essence demands the self to be valued and protected via food labeling systems by political and economic systems. If we choose the latter, to demand labeling of GMO foods and to forever protect and rebuild wild species like wolves not just for numbers subject to political and economic interpretation, but to a higher level of self worth and self esteem and self security of a species, a habitat, a watershed in a sort of multilingual co-creative communication with Nature, we might remain and grow and evolve even stronger as a human self, albeit “civilized,” but more and more aware of our co-creative symbiotic relationship with Nature as wild and as beautiful in life as the grey wolf, calling out to the stars and to the universe as a whole with a definitely ferocious origin, and yet a powerfully empathic desire to know the truth of the other in a universe expanding epic: a life like poem.


by Dorian Blaine Curry

Bibliography

1. Alter, Jonathan. “Woman Of The World.” Vanity Fair. June 2011. 140+.
2. Brown, Lester. “Food: The Weak Link”. Utne. Jan-Feb 2013: 46-50.
3. Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds For All. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1997.
4. Diamond, Jared. The World Until Yesterday. New York: Penguin, 2012.
5. Bahn, Paul G. Journey Through The Ice Age. Berkley: University of California Press, 1997.
6. Bassler, Bonnie. “Microbes as Menaces, Mates & Marvels” Daedalus 141 (2012): 67-76.
7. Bassler, Bonnie. Interview. TED.com.
8. Bassler, Bonnie. Interview. Nova.com
9. Bradley, Fern Marshall ed. Rodale’s Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. New York: Rodale Press, 2009. 
10. Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds For All. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1997.
11. Campbell, Joseph. “Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth with Bill Moyer”. New York: Double Day, 1988. 
12. Clottes, Jean. Cave Art. New York: Phaidon Press, 2008.
13. deBotton, Alan. “12 Rude Reservations About Sex.” Psychology Today. Feb. 2003. 54-61. 
14. Europe: A Natural History. Prod. Patrick Morris, Klaus Feichenbe BBC Worldwide Ltd. 
15. Fields, Helen. “The Frog That Roared”. Smithsonian. January 2013 54+
16. FOOD, INC.. Dir. Robert Kenner. Magnolia. 2008.
17. Ford, Brian. “The Secret Power of the Cell” New Scientist. (24 April 2010): 26-27.
18. Goodell, Jeff. “Gore’s Grim Prophecy.” Rolling Stone. February 2013. 39-42.
19. Hammer, Joshua. “Yemen: Days of Reckoning.” National Geographic. (September 2012): 80-105.
20. I AM. Dir. Tom Shadyac. Homemade Canvas Productions. 2011.
21. Johanson, Donald and Blake Edgar, From Lucy To Language. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.
22. Jung, Carl G. Modern Man In Search of a Soul. Orlando: Harcourt, 1933.
23. Jung, Carl G. The Earth Has A Soul. Berkley: North Atlantic Books, 2002. 
24. Kuhl, Patricia. “The Linguistic Genius of Babies” TED-X Rainier. Benaroya Hall, Seattle. 09 October 2010. Kirckpatrick, David. “With A Little Help From His Friends”. Vanity Fair. Oct 2010. 176+
25. Kirschenmann, Frederick. Cultivating An Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher. Berkley: Counter Point Press, 2010.
26. Lappe, Francis Moore. EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think To Create The World We Want. New York: Nation Books Perseus Book Group, 2011. Malthus, Thomas. “Essay on Population”
27. National Intelligence Center (NIC). Global Trends 2030.
28. Nocera, Daniel G. “Can We Progress from Solipsistic Science to Frugal Innovation?” Daedalus 141 (2012): 45-52.
29. Pringle, Heather. “The Origins of Creativity.” Scientific American. March 2013. 37-43.
30. Riotte, Louis. Carrots Love Tomatoes. North Adams: Storey Publishing, LLC, 1975.
31. Sagan, Carl. “Cosmos” TV series 1980.
32. Shiva, Vandana. Water Wars. Cambridge: South End Press, 2002.
33. Surviving Progress. Dir. Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks. 2011
34. Sasselov, Dimitar. The Life of Super-Earths. New York: Basic Books, 2012.
35. Somerville, Chris. “Deciphering the Parts List for the Mechanical Plant.” Daedalus. 141 (2012): 89-97.
36. Sproul, Barbara. Primal Myth: Creation Myths Around The World. New York: Harper Collins, 1979. 
37. Tarter, Jill. “Call To Join SETI” TED.com Long Beach February 2009.
38. TechnoCalyps. Dir. Frank Theys. 2008.
39. Tilman, David. “Biodiversity & Environmental Sustainability Amid Human Domination of Global Ecosystems” Daedalus 141 (2012): 108-120.
40. Tucker, Abigail. “Born to Mild: Are We Born Knowing Right From Wrong?”. Smithonian. January 2013. 35+
41. Weaver, Bill. “Many benefits of cover crops and crop rotations”. Country Folks Grower. April 2013. 23. World Wildlife Fund. “Living Planet Report 2008”
42. Woolfson, M (2000). "The origin and evolution of the solar system". Astronomy & Geophysics 41 (1): 1.12. doi:10.1046/j.1468-4004.2000.00012.x.
43. Wilson, E.O. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: WW Norton and Co.

American Conservation Movement

American Conservation as a result of empathy and pity from personal crisis

by Dorian Curry

This is an essay for a university course I am taking on Sustainability. It is the first of four that I will post here. It is my latest expression of Geographic Empathy.

After the USA presidential election process has finished once again, I am less impressed with my nation state home, the land I was born on. I did not feel strongly for either candidate, mainly for how they both choose political conflict over progressive conversation. I yearn trust a process that mimics this Geographic Empathy in some way really supporting the indeginous cultures of place, both people and other species. 

I am curious as to where following this feeling will take me and how it will change me. Some day I might like to travel my mtDNA Mana Line back to my original beginning the Rift Lake Zone in Africa. (I am Haplo group K) I'm sure that kind of journey would impress on me a true sense of how others live.

Conservation is the effort to maintain an individual identity and a way of life in response to an identity crisis in an effort to prevent further crisis or tragedy. The degree that we understand our interconnected identity is the degree that we effectively conserve our resources. An event on March 6th, 1867, attacked John Muir’s identity and threatened his way of life influencing him to drop a promising career and follow a feeling he had that became the core of his conservation philosophies that would influence the policies of a nation. An event on February 7th, 1894, attacked Gifford Pinchot’s identity and altered his way of life so profoundly it directly influenced and altered his conservation efforts for the policies of a nation. Both of these individuals were passionately involved in wild land recreation as a way of life that contributed to their personal identity. John Muir’s crisis was not an actual tragedy, but Gifford Pinchot’s was. This contrast in particular influenced their difference in philosophies on Nature and the conservation of public land. Their different emotional response to these crisis and thus their response to Nature created a rift that grew into a polarized Conservation Movement.

I rely on the following standard definitions taken from the American Dictionary of
the two main feelings I believe have most greatly affected the Modern American Conservation Movement:

empathy
noun
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

pity
noun ( pl. pities )
1 the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others: her voice was full of pity.
2 [ in sing. ] a cause for regret or disappointment: what a pity we can't be friends.

I also rely on a definition of Nature from E.O. Wilson, world renown conservation
biologist, as published in his book The Creation: 

“Nature is that part of the original environment and its life forms that remains after the human impact. Nature is all on planet Earth that has no need of us and can stand alone.” (Wilson 15) 

Clearly human nature is considered separate from wild nature. The importance of the influence that an individual identity crisis has ultimately finds it’s source in this seperation. As Jared Diamond points our in his book “Collapse”, the crisis of a small society becomes tragic when society becomes global. But if a global society were not so separate from Nature both physically and intellectually, would we still face collapse? A crisis event changes the individual’s self distinction from Nature, suddenly the world seems different. I believe that a crisis creates a differentiation in mindset, and an opportunity to see the self of wild nature next to self of human nature. A crisis event acts in a similar way to the beauty of Nature which allows us to “stand beside our self”. The wild, natural self collides with the domestic, human self regardless of the plans or powers of either side. In doing this we (domestic humans) become wild again, if only for a few moments, days, months, however long each individual experience and emotional wave takes. In becoming wild again, for a moment, we have the chance to see a new self, this is the opportunity to put new energy into a conservation movement.

John Muir was very unique, phenomenal. He was an athletic and curious child. His grandfather took him on naturalist walks in Scotland near Dunbar. His father beat him, in traditional Scots style, hardening his mental stamina and resiliency, while also leaving a marked aversion to agriculture. He persisted and as a young man he took

initiative to educate himself and published a brief article on the discovery of a rare flower. (Worster)

He tells the story of finding a rare orchid, the Calypso Borealis. “It seemed the most spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met. I sat down beside it and fairly cried for joy. It seems wonderful that so frail and lovely a plant has such power over human hearts. This Calypso meeting happened some forty-five years ago, and it was more memorable and impressive than any of my meetings with human beings excepting, perhaps, Emerson and one or two others.” (John Muir “Calypso Borealis”)

Muir realized his feelings were unique. He understood that he had a sense of relatedness to nature that other’s lacked at least in degree. A woman he met and whom offered him shelter could not relate to Muir’s enthusiasm for sharing a moment with a beautiful being, but she could sympathise with Muir and feed and shelter him. Could she not relate to that beauty herself? "Mony a puir body has been lost in that muckle, cauld, dreary bog and never been found." When I told her I had entered it in search of plants and had been in it all day, she wondered how plants could draw me to these awful places, and said, "It's god's mercy ye ever got out."

While he knew his feelings were unique, he didn’t know just how much so. Before the crisis event he was somewhat unsure of his best talents and focus in life, but leaning toward a career as an inventor, “I am determined not to leave [Indianapolis] until I have made my invention mark.” he said in a letter to a friend. (Worster 105) In a case of tragic irony, the invention left it’s mark on him.

On March 6th 1867 John Muir’s personal identity was attacked by a crisis event that threatened his way of life. He was adjusting a belt on a circular saw with a file when

“The file slipped in his hand and flew upward into his right eye, piercing the edge of the cornea... In a few minutes the injured eye turned sightless...within hours the left eye temporarily went dark too... he feared that he had been completely blinded.” (Worster 111) According to the biographer this was a “...pivotal, tragedy in Muir’s factory career.” (Worster 105) And according to the actions and commitments of his life there after, it was the shaping event of his professional life.

John Muir was suicidal with despair. His loss of eye sight was “... a loss darker than any ‘pleasant amusement,’” darker than any loss here to fore in his life. He went blind. His right eye, he mourned would never again look upon “a single flower, no more a lovely scenery, not any more of beauty.” (Worster 111) Jeanne Carr consoled him through the healing process by letters, but “nothing that anyone said could brighten his mood of suicidal despair and discouragement” The family he lived with took care of him for over a month. (Worster 112) After he recovered Muir left all thoughts of engineering and inventing behind when he set out for “A thousand mile walk to the Gulf”. He had previously turned away from agriculture, now he turned from inventing and toward a new self, one with only a good feeling to rely on, albeit a very good feeling as he expresses well in his writing. (Muir Wilderness Discovery Books)

When John Muir’s invention attacked his natural self, his natural self responded and overcame the crisis with Muir’s phenomenal sense of empathy. He seemed to know he was different and yet he acted as if he were just one of the trees climbing up into them to see what it was like in a storm. The event he endured was an important shock, but his crisis was not a tragedy. In this case it was just enough of a boost to get him moving forward. It must have felt tragic at the time, but it cannot quite compare in degree to Gifford Pinchot’s personal crisis event which became fully tragic.

On February 7th, 1894 Gifford Pinchot’s identity was attacked and his way of life taken from him: His romantic partner, Laura Houghteling died of tuberculosis. This was a significant loss of a dear friend whom he hoped would be his wife. “For at least two years he was ‘clad in black from neck to foot,’”(Miller 192) Laura was a significant part of Gifford’s life and she would continue to be long after her death.

They met at the same age of 28 while horse back riding in North Carolina and continued to meet at social gatherings. He wrote, “My feeling for Laura has raised my conception of my life and duty, has made me purer and better, and has brought me very much nearer all the good things and influences that have so far been the best part of my life. I believe just as wholly that my life work will be far better because of her, and my chance to help fellowmen and do God’s work in the world very much wider and
better.” (Miller 189)

The biographer Char Miller relates that Gifford Pinchot and Laura Houghtelling openly shared a unique and inspirational friendship that extended beyond the merely physical relations of some romantic affairs. “they spoke fervently of their dreams and aspirations; they became inseparable.” (Miller 186) The air of tragedy surrounded them, but they hoped for the best, “Gifford knew all about her tuberculosis... Laura’s tragic state was fuel to his devotion, a responsiveness his friends encouraged.” (Miller 186)

He had visions of Laura that he noted in journals occurred while he developed policy on conservation, and cannot be ignored as influencing and guiding his

conservation philosophy especially with the dedication of his book on conservation policy. “My Lady and I are one in the sight of God.” (Miller 193) Muir and others commented on his strange habit of not sleeping round the camp fire on social outings. (Egan) This further distanced him from others and from a sense of relatedness, he felt pity for his loss. This pity expanded and influenced his pity for the forests and for those living and working in forests and for those home-makers struggling against the developers.

Gifford Pinchot’s loss affected his core philosophy of conservation, to protect the home-making family. Five years after Laura’s death he wrote that “The first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon.” (Gifford Pinchot National Geographic Oct 1899) Five years after Laura’s death. In 1910 he wrote, “The single object of the Public Land System, as President Roosevelt repeatedly declared, is the making of and maintenance of the prosperous home.” and “Of all forms of conservation there is none more important then holding the public lands for the actual home-maker.” (Pinchot “The Fight...”11)

In direct contrast to Muir, Pinchot expresses a philosophy of dominating Nature, not relating to it. “Next to the earth itself the forest is the most useful servant of man....The object of practical forestry is precisely to make the forest render its best service to man in such a way as to increase rather than to diminish its usefulness in the future.... Under whatever name it may be known, practical forestry means both the use and preservation of the forest.” (Pinchot chapter one line one “A Primer of Forestry”) Even here it is difficult to gather his true feelings as he expresses two opposing points in one sentence. How can we both use and preserve? In my supposedly modern thinking, at least, the line is drawn between use and preservation with the passage of the WIlderness Act in 1964.

Possibly the most telling indicator of the impact that this personal crisis event had on him was his final tribute to Laura, when he dedicated his book “The Fight For Conservation” to her with her initials “L.H.” in gothic script on the dedication page. This was indeed an honor to a dear friend indicating his commitment to the conversations and the dreams they shared. The book was published in 1910, the year he would be fired from his position as Chief Forester due to a controversy over public land use involving R. Ballinger the Secretary of the Dept. of Interior.

This crisis was similar to Muir’s in that it was an identity crisis, but Pinchot permanently lost a part of his identity where as Muir regained his. Pinchot was emotionally devastated and love sick for decades afterward. He lost his identity as a home-maker and would not regain it until he married again over twenty years later. In further contrast to Muir, Pinchot did not react with actions of further relating to nature and his fellow conservationists. He had difficulty relating to others. Was he on a “higher plane” he may have been, but it is apparent that he was experiencing a greater pain than Muir. Muir could relate to the forests, the flowers, the mountains, but even he could not understand this kind of pain that Pinchot was experiencing. They could certainly relate to the medicinal powers of space and exercise outside. Pinchot gradually relaxed his grip on the pain of his loss and in one epic fishing trip off the Catalina Islands, he reeled in a marlin and eventually his efforts to conserve the “public interest”. But the damage of the two different crisis had been done. Two similar passions for Nature and outdoor recreation split into two distinct emotional responses to different crisis.

Who had experienced the tragic loss he had? When camping with Muir and others in the forests, he would go off and sleep by himself, not with the others around the fire. (Egan) It’s not surprising that he would have trouble relating to them. He may have, as the journalist Timothy Egan and others suggest, have been meeting with Laura in spiritual communion. In this desire for spiritual communion with the unseen he was similar to Muir. However, Muir’s was a passion for the living spirit of non-human beings that only empathy could enable. It certainly appeared as a form of pity for his loss to the chaos of Nature.

Empathy for Nature is a mixture of what E.O. Wilson calls biophilia and what Aldo Leopold called the Land Ethic and the compassion Rachel Carson demonstrated by publishing her book “Silent Spring”. I feel it as a desire to know the land and the beings living there and respect the collective and individual unique personality. I will address empathy for the scope of this paper as it is the most positive and powerful energy for happiness tempered with a reasonable pessimism of life as a painful survival of crisis. I will focus on the growth of empathy within John Muir in contrast to but not absent in Gifford Pinchot. I will discuss how they responded to a personal crisis event and how that response influenced two divergent conservation philosophies. As they are not alone in this phenomenon I will briefly reference other individuals who’s personal, emotional reactions to a crisis affected their involvement in the conservation movement. I will briefly suggest how the management of feelings that result from crisis could be better understood and cultured for future land management.

Pinchot expressed feelings of separateness. In the introduction to a book on the development of the Progressive Party, the author describes Pinchot’s absolute focus on

a conservation politics barren of feelings. “It took time for me to appreciate that here were the makings of a new policy...” (Pinchot Breaking New Ground”) (Fausold 18) “And T.R., as I expected, understood, accepted, adopted it without the smallest hesitation. It was clearly inline with everything he has been thinking and doing. It became the head of his administration.” (Pinchot Breaking New Ground 326 ) (Fausold 19) “Pinchot’s book...set forth the conservation of natural resources as the issue regarded as most fundamental to all other government questions.” (Fausold 39) Yet he told his parents in a letter that “My feeling for Laura has raised my conception of my life and duty...” (Miller 189) He was certainly a caring and empathetic person. But his reaction to his crisis in pity limited his feelings of empathy.

As a result, I find it difficult my self to relate to the federal government’s management policies of all federal lands and waters. It is this fundamental lack of feelings and specifically empathy in the formation of policy that disturbs me most. While the foundation of our democracy, the middle class, is toiling and paying taxes, working in the conservation agencies and non-profits and some private groups, the government seems to lack any true feeling. While I depend on careful scientific study based on logic, I also depend on the good will of the emotional content within the searcher. I have to ask myself how is the conservation agency determining “the public interest” and the “greatest good” if they cannot act on the innate feelings of empathy? This is the core of the conservation issue as discussed in an assessment of the first fifty years of conservation since 1908 to 1958 edited by Henry Jarrett published by “Resources for the Future Inc”. Who is the “public interest” really serving?

This merger is the only thing I think John Muir really lacked. In his zealous response to his personal crisis he tabooed technology and invention. It nearly blinded him, so I don’t blame him, of course, but he might have been the original “bioengineer” and expert in “bio-mimicry”. One who could empathize with Nature and progress human industry down a “sustainable” path. Regardless, we have inherited a wealth of expressive, emotional content through his books that have demonstrated the model for a passionate conservation lifestyle.

National Forests should be lands of multiple use, but the use of machinery and motorized access should be more heavily restricted in order to better protect the identity of the places from the dividing and soundscape disruptive effects of mechanized use. The forest is more like the food garden, it can provide our sustenance, but only adequately if we respect it’s identity and needs for personal survival.

National Parks are not being protected adequately because the nature of the boundary system does not mimic the nature of the watershed identity system. Case in point, the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite and Elwah dam in Olympic are direct violations of the sanctity of the watershed and thus violations of the National Park Organic Act which states that parks shall be “left untrammeled for future generations”. The identity of the parks extends physically beyond the lines we draw and the impacts occurring outside lines that are drawn improperly are negatively affecting the identity of the park and the visitor’s experience of that identity. It is the government’s role to protect identity, but to borrow a favorite conservationist phrase, “it cannot protect what it doesn’t know.” And it cannot know what it does not try to empathize fully with.

National Parks should be more interconnected with forest management, but more

strictly reserved as sacred glades within the larger forest. The initiative currently ongoing in Olympic National Park to establish all of the rivers there as Wild and Scenic Rivers is a great initiative towards this goal by protecting intact watershed systems that cross agency boundaries. Human induced boundaries are meaningless to the life systems that both humans and wild life depend upon. Parks should be reserved as sacred for both humans and wildlife. They can do this only if they embrace the highest land ethics of systems thinking. The methods of empathy that Muir demonstrated, if translated into policy language could help this progress.

All National Wildlife Refuges, regardless of mineral resources must be sanctuaries first and foremost for wildlife to rest, recover, reproduce, feed. !It must be preserved untrammeled or mined for three main reasons outside of an over arcing empathy that establishes it’s right to exist for it’s own being. It should serve as a place for international political peace negotiations and cooperative scientific study without the distractions of commercial use. It should be an international park. It must not be disturbed in an effort to decrease climate change by limiting the release of methane as permafrost melts.

The arctic national wildlife refuge is an especially unique reflection of intact biologic identity and because of this must be protected to keep it intact without compromise, because to break into it and further disrupt it would be to further break our selves. The greater arctic NWR and “...the coastal plain symbolizes the fight to save for future generations what they see as the nation’s last intact arctic ecosystem and one of America’s greatest wildernesses.” (Alaska 70) The arctic is sacred to more than one political nation or indigenous nation. This sacredness is symbolic of the sacredness of the cellular nature of all life connected by the global water cycle. It is possibly the most direct analogy of the human as a microcosm of the earth in that it relates the land directly to individual identity through water. Going further we can see a correlation between the emotional concept of empathy and the physical and chemical properties of water. In this way it is even more important to protect it from any forms of development. ! To break the arctic is to break into the heart of the human Identity as a member of all life connected by the global water cycle. The attack on the arctic for mineral mining is yet another identity crisis., one that could become tragic due to the global consequences of rapid sea level rising without our ability to adjust. Protecting it is a means of expressing our national empathy for the interconnection of global life regardless of political opinions and methods. If we hold to our leadership role of protecting wilderness with National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and Wilderness Areas, we can improve our relationship in the global economy and assert the inherent connection of personal and national identity to the intact health of wild lands and wildlife. The arctic is extremely important for both symbolic and physical consequences.

Effective conservation is that effort that maintains an identity and the ways of life connected to it after identity crisis. The earth has gone through many identity crisis since it’s formation in the cosmos and the Milky Way galaxy. To save earth from human invention we should just leave. Hop on the fastest space train and get off the planet. Would we then take an economy of pity and separateness to other planets? Would we mine and destroy identities without feeling? The key to conservation is the key to human consciousness and lies within the fact that empathy is an innate biologic feeling. It alone can enable the mind through the powers of imagination and curiosity to expand through space and time and get us a better feel of what is really happening.

A recently published study of neuroscience by the University of Chicago on their website demonstrated empathy in rats and further reveals the importance of choosing this innate feeling over other feelings. This article emphasized that feelings are both a choice and an innate survival function. The study builds on others, but suggests a deeper source of a universality of this feeling that provides epic potential when matched with the modern, electronic social behaviors of humans. "On its face, this is more than empathy, this is pro-social behavior," said Mogil, who was not involved in the study. "It's more than has been shown before by a long shot, and that's very impressive, especially since there's no advanced technology here." "When we act without empathy we are acting against our biological inheritance," Mason said. "If humans would listen and act on their biological inheritance more often, we'd be better off." The potential to follow the enigmatic Muir’s lead, as it turns out, is to follow our own lead. The middle class is the powerful empathetic class.

In conclusion, John Muir demonstrated that a human being can recreate in wilderness seeking a relationship with Nature and come out a better, more empathetic being able to express his feelings for others, in a self sacrificing way, to protect the identity and way of life of others. In the greatest contrast to Gifford Pinchot he demonstrated how the world responds to empathy more than pity. Muir became a legend because he chose to deny much if not all of the luxuries of industrial society. In doing so, however great, he also created a polarity, albeit unintended, between the feelings that resulted of Gifford Pinchot’s personal crisis. Pinchot demonstrated how a commitment to a profession can inspire respect and authority. However, he also demonstrated how all consuming a personal crisis can become if supported by pity rather than aided and essentially rescued by empathy. Pinchot was essentially love sick and mentally distressed at the loss of his identity as a result of the loss of Laura Houghtelling. 

Without empathy, other beings trying to help and understand the crisis and thereby avert a final tragedy, how can any being survive? Of these two outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists, Muir has the more enduring and enriching legacy, because his feelings in reaction to his crisis are more easily related to. He demonstrated how empathy through artistic communication skills could inspire many generations and many different cultures. He demonstrated how universal the language of emotional content in art can be. He had as Richard Feynman expressed “the joy of finding things out” a combination of science and art and he shared it with us all. He demonstrated the initial model of how empathy for nature expressed through art can lead people toward a higher awareness of their self and their relationship to Nature. Most importantly he demonstrated that the middle class holds the most power for conservation effort because of the potential energy that is stored up in the emotional content of empathy. Empathy, as a type of love, possibly the fifth love, is a far greater force than pity as empathy inspires genuine, passionate action. The future of conservation will depend on intentionally growing this feeling of empathy and growing an awareness of the human as an interconnected being empathizing with all life.

 Works Cited:

1. Alaska Geographic. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Anchorage: Hart Press, 1996 Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Penguin, 2005 
2. Eagan, Timothy. The Big Burn. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2009 Fausold, Martin L. Gifford Pinchot Bull Moose Progressive. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1961 
3. Miller, Char. Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism. Washington: Island Press 2001 
4. Muir, John. Our National Parks. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1901 
5. Muir, John. “The Calypso Borealis”, The Life and Letters of John Muir edited by William Frederic Badè (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924). 
6. Pinchot, Gifford. The Fight For Conservation. New York: Double Day Page and Co., 1910 Pinchot, Gifford. A Primer of Forestry. http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/ Publications/primer_of_forestry/chap1-2.html
7. Sierra Club. http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/ 
8. www.usda/fs.gov
9. http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2011/20111208-empathy.html
10. Worster, Donald. A Passion For Nature: The Life of John Muir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008
11. Wilson, E.O. The Creation: An Appeal To Save Life On Earth. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006