Ostensibly for nature writing

my audience

2006-04-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

My audience has differed throughout my writing, with a consistent appeal to scientists and rational people in general, but with only a limited amount of logos to this point. This limited amount of logos is meant to be enough to appease the scientist, while the ethos and pathos are also more often presented.

Early in the semester (blogs 1 and 2, and essay 1), I was trying to reach a larger audience, one that was not familiar with the world of science I know and love so much. Really these people need not even be college graduates, but it would definitely help for them to have a love of nature. In blog 2, I attempted to address the age old question of free will vs. determinism, but to argue determinism in a romantic way, by likening our true inability to choose (as manifested in our perception of choice) to the similar “choices” made by lower beings.

Blog 3 is my first, and only, expression of frustration with the modern day “environmentalist”, which is that of an irrational alarmist. Like Timothy Treadwell, if you are too crazy then it actually hurts your cause when you associate with it. Bears are not people, but that misses the point entirely. “Do we eliminate things that are not people?” is the question, and Timothy misses that. Whether or not we respond to rising CO2 levels is not the real question; “how do we stop the world from warming?” is the question, and it remains unanswered.

Throughout my ecological narratives run the theme of faux logos, abused pathos and ethos, and the general theme of my work this semester is to beware of the men wearing white coats. As a man wearing a white coat intending the writing to be, at least in part, for my kind, this seems self-undermining in a way. How much more undermining is it to see scientists on TV and the radio proclaiming things like anthropogenic global warming and interspecies evolution as proven fact! Neither of these scientific theories is firmly rooted in a vast body of indisputable supporting evidence: global warming papers frequently reek of pseudoscience and one has to wonder…if they are the driving force of evolution, where are all the interspecies fossils? In this class I was only able to address the former, but I have been trying to write in a style that is more widely applicable.

That is to say, when reading my Blog 4 or final essay, I am not only trying to convince you that you have been bamboozled by scientists gone wrong, but trying to incense you, the layman or the scientist, to get to the bottom of the data yourself. When you let other people make your conclusions for you, in science or otherwise, you are open to many a hoax. Unfortunately, in the case of global warming, this hoax may result in a misappropriation of funds resulting in a stop in CO2 greenhouse gas production, a fall of an economy (in the US, and then overseas), and still the world heats up or gets too cold (depending on the amount we’ve over or under estimated anthropogenic global warming). I badly want scientists to reconsider the data, and try harder before jumping to conclusions.

I feel that, by being repeatedly pitted against religious groups in the media, scientists today feel the need to jump on the bandwagon more quickly, or deny the bandwagon altogether, because admitting you are wrong is tantamount to being a failure of unimaginable proportions today. Even Einstein made mistakes, most notably including a “cosmological constant” in order to maintain a flat universe, despite his having warped space-time years earlier with general relativity.

WOLF!!

2006-04-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Graph 1. Long time trend

Graph 2. Recent exponential growth

My ancestors, the MicroCaucasians, have been recording history for about a hundred days. I myself have only lived for only fifty hours, and my eldest grandfather is approaching 6 days old. MiCrostopher Columbus discovered MicrAmerica in the twentieth second of the first hour of the 41^st Day of our Lord.

Ever since we can remember, there has been snow on the ground and ice in the river here in MicroBoston. Now, however, the ice is breaking and the snow is melting. All of our leading scientists are agreed that there is an incredible upward trend in temperature, and it’s easy enough to see from graphs 1 and 2 that things don’t look good.

That exponential curve is a scarily good fit, and, if our scientists’ predictions are correct, the temperature in Boston should be well over 300 degrees by the time our Earth circles the sun completely for the first time. At that rate, all of our glaciers will have melted, and we will be well on our way to becoming fish food!

Of course this scary trend leads the inquiring mind to some questions. First of all, what is causing such a drastic rise over the last 35 days. The first answer that comes to mind is that we, as Human MicroBeings, have done this to ourselves as MicroAmericans! That rise over the last 35 days is roughly correlated to the beginning of our MicroIndustrial Revolution, which you recall took place in the early part of the 50^th day. We know that emissions from our smokestacks are capable of trapping heat near the Earth’s surface, so that is most probably the cause, according to all the country’s top scientists[1].

There are, however, a few lone scientist’s who dare oppose the obvious. Dr. MicroBoney of MIT still clings to the outdated notion that the change could be environmental, and that this could explain at least some, if not all, of the climate change. He harkens back to stories that are written about in our earliest texts of a tropical climate before the recent freeze. He claims to have been able to demonstrate a periodic trend in the Earth’s temperature using ice cores from the North Pole.

Other scientists are skeptical of this view. “It has been positively shown that greenhouse gasses trap heat in our atmosphere, and to not accept that as the primary cause of the warming is ludicrous,” says Dr. Myopia of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

However, while scientists and laymen alike bicker about the cause, the issue remains: temperature is going up. Rather than invest more to find out exactly why, shouldn’t we take steps to preserve our lifestyle as we know it? As we discover contributors to this warming, let us try to do away with them. If it’s excessive greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then away they must go. If it’s a natural climate change, then we should prepare for the worst anyway.

Maybe we can even modulate the things known to warm the atmosphere to keep everything at the right temperature for kilodays, even megadays! For the future, what we need is action; sound, scientifically based action.

Let it not be said that we drowned without a fight.

[1] By general vote of the Proceedings of the MicroNational Climate Control Organization, hour 2:minutes 1-5:day 75

Environmentalists vs. Rational people

2006-03-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

Between man and nature, it is unclear exactly where we stand. Do we have a responsibility to control the world around us, or let it be? What does it mean to let it be if we are a part of it already? Have we poisoned the land? The real problem today is the person who answers these questions: the environmentalist.

In my own life I see daily the effects of mankind’s self delusion on Earth. The Earth exists for us, think most, and we are not one and the same. Moreover, most people don’t even look out for their own wellbeing, their most fundamental moral, when it comes to environmental issues. The world is a big place after all, and what can my little factory, building, or beaker matter? We think “I can just fill up a swamp with garbage”, and the land around it becomes poisoned for miles. We think “I can build a city below sea level” and it gets washed away. Man is pretentious, bullheaded, and stupid when it comes to working with nature.

In cases where man doesn’t look out for his own immediate (or short-term) welfare, we may rightly call him stupid or foolhardy. We must take a stand on issues that can be righted today, problems that are immediate and clear, and not issues of our children and grandchildren. Why focus on the composition of the upper atmosphere and warn of future disaster when toxic smog risks us cancer lives each day? Why warn of melting ice caps when we can just avoid building cities underwater in the first place?

There are ways to avert disaster that don’t require an immediate worldwide united effort and united philosophy, and this is good, because that is impossible. There is only one instinct in which all humans of all cultures are united: self-preservation. Thus, it is to this sense in everyone we must appeal with nature preservation arguments. Warn not of future peril, because there is no sense of self-preservation after we are dead.

Rather than broad ecological changes, worry about shorter, human hurting changes. Rather than warn of an apocalypse in 50 years, warn of rising heating costs next year. It seems that environmentalists have the wrong sort of idea: change the world by changing every person. Change the world by convincing everyone it needs changing, for their own, immediate, good!

The environmental issue impacting me most is the misguided recommendations of environmentalists. Of course I generally try to appeal to logic, and it seems only logical, to me, that you can not change everyone. It is not an “every little bit helps” kind of thing. The world needs some immediate changes, and you can probably even rightly argue that its people need broad philosophical changes to survive over long periods of time.

So environmentalists, how do you make useful changes? Start with the most immediate issues, and be straight with people about what you know and don’t know. One of the things that kills me is when people misrepresent their knowledge of a situation, and such is something I feel has been happening a LOT with regards to global warming. Please, leave prediction to scientists, and scientists, don’t be influenced by your opinions.

the answer

2006-03-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

As I lie on my back in this tall pine forest, I can’t help but wonder: where does all this beauty come from? Am I the first to wonder? Surely men have thought about the origin of life, but ever lying like this?

Have they observed the grandeur of the trickling stream? Have they, in a weekend of escape, seen the creatures I observe with my eyes? How could one watch the red ants, the wolves, or even ourselves, without wondering about something more?

Some look to science, and some to God, but if there is an answer, where? Could the world be a form of liar’s paradox? Could “This world is not” be the true reason for all? Gödel showed that all our logic is bound to be incomplete: does this not imply that truth lies in illogic?

What is it that separates us from the other, lesser animals? Is it our ability to use nature? Do other animals look at the world unasking? Are our questions even worth asking? The answers are plain as day, written on the face of every mountain is “EXPLORE: what are you waiting for?”
An orange leaf falls from a tree in the twilight, and flutters in the air, all the time asking “where should I land”? The beaver roams the forest “where is just the right tree?” The alpha chimp looks across the land wondering “where is the right chimp for me?” Can it be that what we take for instinct is really a biased interrogation?

Are we so unbiased ourselves? Does our “intuition” influences our decisions more than we like to say? Can it be that we even so deceive ourselves that we have free will? When we hunger, do we not look for food? When we thirst, do we not look for water? What food, what water, are more advanced choices indicative of more free will?

Could it be that the rapid market proliferations in the US today are the result of each human’s desire to seem free? Because I chose diet pepsi today and Sierra Mist yesterday, I must be free…right? So on to the beginning of time, did not the Roman Caesars do such brutal things merely to show their free will?

Perhaps we are just an animal like the chimp or the beaver, but with an additional question: “what can I do to be free?” I know you think it’s unlikely, but why are you so quick to reject it? Is there any choice you can think of that your decision was absolutely irrational? Would you be so proud as to say, in the end, you are able to think outside your synapses?

Is there any doubt that we are higher than all the other animals? How could they be worthy if we cannot even understand their ways? Where is their culture? Where is there art? Where are their sports? If they can’t even waste their time, how can they be as great as we? Aren’t we, after all, living a broader experience than these animals?

Don’t we have a choice?

21W.775, Blog 1

2006-02-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

When I was 16, I went to the coast and sat on the shore. The thick, salty air of the sea filled my lungs, and forced me exhale my deepest thoughts. I sat on a gentle slope down to the ocean, the azure waves lapping my feet. Their power, breaking as far as I could see, their continuity, their dedication to crash without ceasing on the shore, at my feet, just for me. What manner of living is this for the water near the shore? To be tossed in, pulled back, and recast without end.

Now I am 21. I strode along the side of a building today, clutching my lunch tightly, and returning to my room. I see my building: grey, five stories tall, and showing all of its seventy-odd years. As I climbed the flights of stairs leading to my room, the waves seemed less foreign. My feet lead me as the moon’s pull leads the waves, one foot after another, out and in. Each night I crash on my own shore, each day I travel the same small space, lapping the surface of the Earth.

This very Earth I clutch to wanders and wanders himself. Round and patient, my Earth spins and listens, spins and watches, spins and spins and spins. Just last year, as he gazed at his moon, the Earth wondered at it’s motion. What kind of existence is this? To circle idly around another body. I go where I want, weaving my way between Mars and Venus, and every so often passing by the others, thought the Earth.

But now, looking deep into the heavens, the Earth is silent, immersed in thought, considering his very motion. The colors and sounds are all so perfectly arranged that surely they were built for me. Why else would everything be about my size if it weren’t for me? I’d passed so many planets, he thought, spinning to keep my eyes alert, and now I am home again. Strangely familiar this: am I myself a moon?

Deep in my heart, a tiny blood cell lives. He gazes at his own hemoglobin, and laughs mightily: How can these little pieces lead such a fruitless existence? To live each day just to transfer his food to me, mindlessly droning on and on with his meaningless task, while I maneuver my way through all manner of tunnels, always jostling for position.

My proud blood cell was being thrown from my ventricle today, when a funny thought struck him: I’ve been here before. Just a while ago, I’m pretty sure this was the place. The same whoosh of unstoppable force, the walls narrowing just so; I’m sure of it! What is my purpose here? Can it be that I am just a tiny bit myself?

I finished my lunch and went for a walk by the river. I looked at the river, rolling mightily, just like it did yesterday. I look at the sun, roaming magnificently and uneventfully through the sky. I feel the pulse of my blood, the gentle pull of the moon, and wonder: if we are all pieces, then pieces of what?

welcome

2006-02-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

welcome to this page...it is my nature writing blog