Brian Griffith's Blog, page 10
September 17, 2020
African finalists for Booker Prize
Novels by Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga ("This Mournable Body") and Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste ("The Shadow King") have both made the six-book shortlist for the prestigious Booker Prize. -- BBC, Sept. 15
September 16, 2020
The social effects of environmental degradation
During the closing years of WW II in Germany, Adolph Metternich wrote a manuscript later published as The Deserts Threaten. In this, he described the course of environmental destruction in ancient times, how modern industry and plantation agriculture have accelerated the process, and how a terminal degradation of nature would be the ultimate threat to human survival. Building on Metternich’s warning, we can summarize some of the social costs of desertification as follows:
1. The less biological wealth remains, the more people tend to compete for what is left.
2. The more desperate the competition for organic matter becomes, the more society is fragmented along ethnic, racial, and sexual lines.
3. The more lifeless the environment becomes, the less experience of common ground people share.
4. The more natural resources are exhausted, the more people are cast adrift as economic refugees.
5. Where large numbers of people cannot find adequate sustenance, either the rule of law breaks down, or the law of the strongest prevails.
6. Where the health of the environment declines, human health breaks down as well.
--The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History
1. The less biological wealth remains, the more people tend to compete for what is left.
2. The more desperate the competition for organic matter becomes, the more society is fragmented along ethnic, racial, and sexual lines.
3. The more lifeless the environment becomes, the less experience of common ground people share.
4. The more natural resources are exhausted, the more people are cast adrift as economic refugees.
5. Where large numbers of people cannot find adequate sustenance, either the rule of law breaks down, or the law of the strongest prevails.
6. Where the health of the environment declines, human health breaks down as well.
--The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History
Explaining animal abuse
"Another answer to the moral problem of animal abuse was proposed by Rene Descartes, who considered the prevalence of cruelty to animals, and felt that no good God would allow such terrible suffering. Therefore, Descartes proposed that a belief in God’s goodness required the assumption that animals are simply soulless, unfeeling machines." -- War and Peace with the Beasts
September 15, 2020
Trying to save nature while waging a chemical war on pests
"These days we’re increasingly concerned to preserve biodiversity. But we’ve also deployed growing arsenals of chemical weapons to eliminate whatever creatures we deem problematic. Joanne Lauck estimates that Western culture has classified around 10,000 species of animals as pests to be annihilated from the planet. And sometimes these campaigns of selective genocide come within a hair of success, as happened with North American wolves, bison, eagles, or condors. More recently, our wars on rodents, fire ants, or potato beetles have caused massive collateral damage for bats, bees, peregrine falcons, and monarch butterflies. In general, when we rain friendly fire on the creatures around us, the environmental blowback tends to get serious. " https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
September 12, 2020
Our crusades against animals
Our wars with the beasts go way back, and they’ve usually seemed inescapably necessary. Beyond the light cast by our prehistoric campfires, the eyes glowing in the night seemed to represent a greater hostile force. As we cultivated a few favoured plants and animals, we generally regarded other creatures as threats to our chosen few. In traditional religion, we commonly divided the world into two realms – one of the beings we valued, and the other of useless pests and enemies of God. Using the logic of war, we sought to maximize the growth of certain creatures, and the destruction of others. In the past, that war effort was our great crusade for the advancement of civilization as we knew it. The war had a frontier, a front line, and an ongoing battle on the home front. Expanding outward from our various cradles of civilization, we progressively “tamed” the forests and grasslands, converting them to monocrop plantations or pastures. Then we had to defend our monocrops from encroaching weeds, insects, and wild animals. To some extent, our problems stemmed from simply overconsuming valued plants and animals. But the terms “weed” and “pest” indicated a different problem –- not a scarcity of life to feed on, but an overabundance of the wrong kinds of life. -- War and Peace with the Beasts
September 10, 2020
Our prejudices against animals
My new book War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationship with Animals is out.
“The animals that one culture likes are often hated in the next, and it seems that the animals themselves know it well. Basically, one culture’s animal partner is often another culture’s nightmare from hell. Naturally, I wonder how relations between people and animals got to be so different around the world. How did it happen that some cultures treat bats, snakes, wolves, or ravens as embodiments of evil, while other people treat the same animals with affection or even reverence?”
https://www.woodlakebooks.com/books/i...
“The animals that one culture likes are often hated in the next, and it seems that the animals themselves know it well. Basically, one culture’s animal partner is often another culture’s nightmare from hell. Naturally, I wonder how relations between people and animals got to be so different around the world. How did it happen that some cultures treat bats, snakes, wolves, or ravens as embodiments of evil, while other people treat the same animals with affection or even reverence?”
https://www.woodlakebooks.com/books/i...
September 4, 2020
The effects of desertification
Over the past 7,000 years, a desert slowly spread through the center of the Old World. The affected regions had been wastelands before in previous arid ages. But this time human civilizations were on hand to witness the desiccation. Our ancestors watched as patches of desolation slowly appeared in the landscape, like holes in worn-out cloth. The drought-stricken trees shed their leaves in summertime, leaving a look of winter. The wind, rather than gusting through fields of rustling foliage, whistled in the naked branches. Next the bubbling creeks fell silent. At night, the chirruping of crickets and frogs slowly faded to a hush. At dawn, choruses of songbirds no longer greeted the sun. Herds of grazing animals migrated from the region, following the grass and rain. High in the sky, birds of prey circled without a sound. -- The Gardens of Their Dreams
September 3, 2020
The women's versions of Chinese religions
"Over the centuries, a female-friendly counterculture evolved within Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and village folklore. There are “yin” versions of all these traditions. For anyone interested in a culture of balance between male and female powers, the women’s religions offer a world of experience and insight. Their visions of life are strikingly different from what we find in most any official religion of the East, the West, or the Middle East." A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization
August 24, 2020
Upcoming book
My new book War and Peace with the Beasts is coming out in early September (2020), from Wood Lake Publishing, of Kelowna, B.C., www.woodlake.com
