Helping Ourselves, Hurting Nature

By: Jeremy Harvey & Jeff Goodemote

As Leopold said, he at first was very trigger happy and wanted to kill all the wolves so his land would be a "hunters paradise", but as he watched the "green fire die" in the wolves eyes, he realized that he was killing the mountain as well. Leopold thought about this and concluded that if he was to extirpate all the wolves on the mountain, he would in-turn be helping the deer overpopulate the mountain and kill all three; wolf, deer, and mountain. "I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer" (Leopold 2). This is saying that when we try to make nature "better" everything becomes out of place. Collard was right on track with this in his "Rape of the Wild", when we try to make things better for mankind, it usually is at the expense of nature."Nature is still referred to as 'Mother Nature', although the phrase no longer reflects its original meaning...It stirs up fantasies of conquest in the language of hunters who claim to 'love' nature even as they kill her animals...It is clear that the word 'nature' does not so much define what we see but how we see. The hunter loves not nature but how he feels in it as he stalks his prey." (Collard 4-5) The original meaning of nature was untouched, and natural. But to a hunter, such as Leopold it is viewed as a place of paradise, but when they have other predators for competition, such as the wolves, they can't hunt for the prey as easily, in Leopold's case the deer. Leopold had an experience with nature that most hunters don't have, he saw that by killing off the wolves he was really killing the mountain. Most hunters don't care if the land dies, they only care about how much meat they get from the kill. When we as society take mother nature's resources, we are slowly killing nature, just as Merchant said. "The image of the earth as a living organism and nurturing mother served as a cultural constraint restricting the actions of human beings one does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold, or mutilate her body."(Merchant 43). This quote supports how we take from mother nature and yet we never give back to her. This also demonstrates how we are killing mother nature slowly and not thinking twice about it because it is for our own use.

In the article The Impact of Wolf Hunting Much Greater than Commonly Assumed is saying that the more we hunt and kill the wolfs the less of them we will have and they will not breed as quickly. Also that we are the ones responsible for there small population. DeFranza says that the chances of a hunter killing a breeder are very high. Which tells us that because the chances of killing the breeder are so high this slows the breeding rate down for wolves, meaning the breed will eventually die.

In Leopold's writing, at first he is all about killing the wolves to to make it better for him to hunt, but after he kills one of the wolves he sees that by doing so he is killing the mountain and the deer he wishes to hunt. He begins to actually understand that the wolves are a very important part of the mountains well being and if he interrupts that connection than he can ruin his land and everything that lives on it. In DeFranza's article, he supports this realization by explaining that how the breeders are being killed and there is less and less wolves being born. The hunters could learn from Leopold's story to stop hunting and realize what they are doing and to stop being selfish. Also these hunters learning from Leopold's reading could put forth effort to help this problem and fix it.

Image credits:
http://www.physorg.com/news181671301.html
http://www.designpics.com/dpcomp.asp?MediaID=1793089
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/oregon_ranchers_wary_after_pac.html

Truth

http://truths.treehugger.com/video/good_vs_bad.php
By: Jeremy Harvey, Jeff Goodemote

I think that when reading truth and lies, Nietzsche is saying that we need truth to live, but also says that that truth is a lie. Also the point I think he is trying to drive home is that the only reason that truth is considered to be good, and not evil is because society makes it that way and that it is generally excepted. But if someone were to say otherwise, then it would be considered out of the norm. Nietzsche states that "The liar is the person who uses the valid designations,the words in order to make something which is unreal to appear to be real," (pg.2)This supports what I am saying because the person who is telling the lie may in our standards, be telling the truth. which we destinguished is whatever society wants it to be, or whatever is accepted at that point in time. Nietzsche also says that the things we perceive to be true also could be one big illusion and compares it to the spiders web on the river blowing in the wind. When we see a particular thing, such as a clock, we first think of the word "clock", then we think of an image of a "clock". Even though we could be looking at a nice grandfather clock, we could be thinking about a clock that has meant something to us in our life. Its a metaphor of us seeing and image and then comparing that to a image we generally think of with that particular item. Because usually people see a clock as a boring machine on the wall and don't think of the ones we don't see on a regular basis that are colorful and bring life to a room or building. So since we have a preconceived notion of certain things, we dont see the individualism of the thing or being. Nietzsche in his writing displays dualism by comaping lie to truth and in turn comparing these to good and evil.

In our media clip we see the dualism of good vs evil. It is talking about how Sally is using more resources than she needs. Even though she knows using all these resources are wrong, she is torn into the good and evil sides. She has both voices inside her head trying to convience her into doing the good or evil thing. But in the end of it all she realizes how wasteful she is being and finds out that her consumption of just her resources that she is using for her benefit takes up more than her fair share. When she learns this she starts to make a change and starts conserving more of her resources. This clip demonstrates how we as humans can be so wasteful and potentially harmful to nature beacause of many resources we have at our desposal and how often we use them and hardly ever conserve. Also we see in this clip how much sally is unaware of what she is doing which shows us how ignorant we are with the resources we have. All in all this clip and the outcome is what we should be doing on a regular basis.

Nietzsche in his writing says that good is truth, and in our media clip Sally's good side says that she should recycle and conserve resources. While Nietzsche says that a lie is evil and then sally's evil side that says its not a big deal if she wastes valuable resources. In both scenarios this displays dualism from the good and evil stand point. When Sally sees all the appliances she is using and not recycling she sees the truth in wasting the resources, while her evil side is trying to lie to her by creating the illusion that she isnt doing anything wrong, just like Nietzsche says that the so called facts can be abstract illusions that we perceive to be true, but nobody actually knows if they are true.

Image credit: http://www.new-scienceinventions.com/tag/energy-in-physics