That's the way it is

Whole Earth Discipline 9, Afterword


1. What's "live value"? What in particular do we need to cure our ignorance about?


2. What's DISCOVR? What are the "most tempting" geoengineering schemes? What ancient technique invented by the Amazon Indians is under consideration?


3.Does Al Gore like the idea of "solar shades"?


4. What's the Turquoise movement? How do Turqs relate to Gaia, compared with Greens?


5. What's the Golden Rule of Time? What's Freeman Dyson's definition of "sustainable"? What did A.N. Whitehead say about the future? Why is James Lovelock "cheerful"? How has he "softened his sense of alarm"?


6. What is Brand's concluding statement? 

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Back to the garden

Whole Earth Discipline 7-8

1. What's Stewart Brand's "gross oversimplification" about romantics, scientists, & engineers? How is it challenged by Paul Hawken? What's the difference between historical and cultural pessimism?

2. Does Brand agree that we have to clean up Earth before we can leave it? What does he think of consistency, ideology, and "solidarity"? Of optimism?

3. What is Biomimicry? What are its basic principles?

4. Was FDR a hedgehog or a fox?

5. What's "bogus" about The Education of Little Tree, The Teachings of Don Juan, etc.? What does Brand claim to have learned from native Americans? Gary Snyder? Kat Anderson? What "primer on how to harness an ecosystem" does Brand recommend?

6. What are the two harsh truths of human prehistory? What is its encouraging lesson?

7. What is the "growing realization" about how to think of protected areas? How does Brand differ with Lovelock over managing nature? Must we (on Brand's view) choose between either tending the wild or leaving it alone? What is a "working wilderness"?

8. What does ecology lack, as a predictive science? What still-hypothetical device might turn it into one?

9. What makes you a native? How well do you score on Brand's "reinhabitory quiz"?

"Natural Spirit"

Whole Earth Discipline 5-6

1. What's the difference between GM & GE? Who eats GM food? What's the health impact?

2. What false assumption does Peter Raven say we make when we object to GE as bizarre? What is agriculture to an ecologist or a Gaian? Does GM threaten biodiversity?

3. What does GE have in common with cell phones?

4. Who invented the concept of coevolution?

5. What's been the main result of antibiotech lobbying? What's wrong with the Precautionary Principle?

6. What would be the impact of a "genomics of Gaia"?

7. How long has genetic engineering been "standard practice," according to Lynn Margulis? What impresses Craig Venter about microbes? What's Freeman Dyson's prediction for the future of biotech?

8. What's wrong with "Natural American Spirit" cigarettes?

9. How is "technoparanoia" self-fulfilling?

10. What are "the main news items of this book"?

nuclear safety

Whole Earth Discipline ch. 3-4

1. What technological innovation in the developing world is "connecting every stratum of society"? How does it address old worries about a "digital divide"?

2. Who, 40+ years ago, predicted an explosive population problem leading to mass starvation and coercive governmental mandates? Who did his "nemesis" say about a "demographic transition"? What was Limits to Growth? How did "urbanizaiton defuse the population bomb"?

3. What population policy does Brand now advocate? Why are birthrates still relatively high in France and the U.S.?

4. What does "walkability" contribute to a community? How is Manhattan green? What are the greenest U.S. cities? What are "Alabaster Cities"? What are examples of green infrastructure?

5. What does "cosmopolitan" mean?

6.What has been James Hansen's major contribution to the climate debate? What's been his position on nuclear power?

7. What's the goal of the Long Now Foundation? Why does Brand now consider long-term planning "folly"? What seems to be his current view of the"'seven generations' approach to future responsibility long credited to the Iroquois League"?

8. What does Brand quote Lovelock saying about dangers to civilization greater than nuclear accident?

9. What kind of environmentalists does Brand say Al Gore and Bill McKibben will be in coming years, with respect to nuclear energy? What's the new generation gap?

10. What are the "four great problems" and how does Brand now think of them?

11. What did Roger Revelle say about how we should emulate the Japanese nuclear policy?

(Also in ch.4: the comparative safety risk from coal, electricity, gasoline, natural gas, hydrogen, radiation, fear;  Bhopal; "Chernobyl National Park"; hormesis; natural carcinogens; overspending on nuclear cleanup; Amory Lovins; wind & solar; Lovelock on nuclear waste; nuclear terror; GNEP...)

green in the city

Whole Earth Discipline, 1-2

1. What's the green "whiplash moment"? What is Stewart Brand's definition of pragmatism, and how does he think it can relieve whiplash? Does he think the planet needs saving?

2. What did IPCC models fail to predict in 2007?

3. How will governments experience climate change, according to Brand's associate Nils Gilman? What change is most threatening?

4. What did James Lovelock tell Brand about the cause of his new pessimism? Does Brand agree with his bleak assessment? What are our strategic options?

5. What's "Renewistan"? Is it possible?

6. What's the common affliction of greens and conservatives?

7. Why is Gaia no savior? What is "natural-system restoration"? What can it do for Gaia? Would it be good to stop present technology? What are the auto-catalytic technologies? What's Brand's new motto?

8. Who are our role-models as "benevolent ecosystem engineers"?

9. Is Brand a romantic about village life? What's wrong with subsistence farming? How does Asia represent the new "normal"? What good things come of urban density? What's Kleiber's Law? What's the key to creating a more environmentally sustainable society?

10. What does Brand think created cities?

11. What good does it do to "unleash woman power"?

Daisyworld

Vanishing Face, 6-7

1. What was the possibly-not unreasonable speculation of Lovelock's original Gaia paper on "planetary atmospheres"? Why does he think it was widely derided as New Age nonsense? Why didn't he call it the "Earth system hypothesis" instead?

2. What state of disequilibrium on Earth does Lovelock call "infinitely improbable"?

3. What did Lynn Margulis add to Gaia? What was Holland's objection? What was Lovelock's and Andrew Watson's "real life, real-world" reply to the claim that "a lifeless Earth could regulate its temperature at  levels habitable for organisms"?

4. How was the original Gaia hypothesis misstated? What criticism did Lovelock accept? What does he now say regulates climate?

5. What was "the most important step in the history of Gaia theory"? What kind of world is Daisyworld? What had biologists failed to realize about evolution?

6. What is Gaia's predictive track record? What prediction is the "jury still out" on?

7. Why don't scientists like to talk about "goals"? What do engineers and physiologists know about them? How does Gaia exhibit "fight or flight"? How does Gaia keep the planet habitable? How does this confound conventional biologists?

8. What is geophysiology? What are its implications for scientific reductionism?

9. How do we arrive at our conceptions of reality? What does Lovelock say about our definitions of life?

10. What's wrong with rational Cartesian thinking? Why does Lovelock still insist on calling the Earth Gaia?

Gaia going, going...

We've got more urgent things to do than try to save the planet? Maybe the coming climatic catastrophe (from our POV) will "select a better class of humans"? Wow. Does James Lovelock have grandchildren?





Vanishing Face of Gaia, 1-2

1. Why does James Lovelock consider the word "Earth" inadequate? What does he expect to experience in space?

2. What's the root cause of the climate crisis? What do Al Gore, the IPCC, business, & governments still not understand? What's our "proper place"? What should be our species' goal now?

3. How does Lovelock's view differ from that of most climate scientists? What is their allegedly-errant assumption? Who does he blame for their mistake?

4. How are we like flood victims? What's our greatest hubris? Should we fear wild nature?

5. What will the British Isles, New Zealand, and a few other temperate places be "for humanity," in the coming crisis? Can they "save the planet"? Can wind, solar, and biofuels?

6. What did William James say is our "trouble"? Which JPL scientist best understood Gaia? Why have Americans been slow to grasp it? Who manages the climate? Do we need the "moral equivalent of war" to confront it?

7. What have environmentalists mistakenly opposed? How have they "sown the seeds of their own destruction"?

8. What's Lovelock's response to the criticism that his position is hopeless? Does he think we should "plant a tree"? Does he think we've heard his (and Tim Flannery's) wake-up calls? What kind of philosophy do we need now? Will Gaia nurture us through our troubles? How are we a "vital part" of her?

9. Does the welfare of humanity come first, for Lovelock? Do our needs coincide with the planet's?

10. What kind of science is "biogeochemistry"?

11. Would a 60% global reduction in fossil fuel emissions be good?

12. What do humans hate above all? What did Bertrand Russell say about this?

inspired

Native Science, 7-9

The High School girls' softball game with Sewanee ran long, and I didn't have time to get today's quiz together yet... so again I invite your suggestions. What's worth knowing in these concluding chapters? Some topics do jump out, to me: the "creative life force," ho'zho, supernaturalism, the Blessing Way and Shield Way, the significance of  dawn, the practical dimension of native astronomy, reincarnation, alchuklash, tlamatinimine, ancient calendars, medicine wheels, Nazca lines, the Hubble Telescope, the symbolic meaning of breath and of circles, the indigenous relational philosophy, how western sciencee needs native science...

And... how do you feel about the commodification of the 7th generation, as instanced in the image here?

animals' place

Native Science, ch.5-6

1. Native peoples have traditionally perceived animals as co-creators of life, in many ways ______ to humans. (inferior, equal, superior)

2. Participation in the world of animals elicits what part of ourselves? What parts of ourselves do we project upon them?

3. What is bio-phobia? How do native cultures resist it? What is their "natural orientation"? What role do Shamans play in this?

4. How does "meaning pass from generation to generation" in an oral culture? What is "coming into being"?

5. What's the significance of "Coyote stealing fire from the shamans" and the Great Turtle myth of the Iroquois?

6. What is "indigenous" about Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic"?

7. What do native peoples mean by "multiverse"?

8. What is the indigenous perspective on "human rights"?

9. What's the Navajo concept of ho'zho?

10. What ancient native pathway courses through middle Tennessee? What icon of contemporary mass culture is rooted in indigenous locomotion? Springs and waterfalls symbolize what?

11. Western science has tried to remove what from our understanding of the world? Is Mother Earth getting back at us for it?

ecology, community, plants etc.

Native Science ch3-4

1. Once again, just in case we haven't nailed this down yet: what does Mitakuye oyasin mean, what does it personify to Indian people, and what is its relevance to native science?

2. How is Catholicism regarded by native Pueblo Indians?

3.  Why are children special in Indigenous cultures? How is their uniqueness nurtured? (Is this surprising, in light of the statement that "tribal man is hardly a personal 'self' in our modern sense of the word"?)

4. What does it mean to "find life" and be "at home in nature"?

5.  What's sacred to a child?

6. Native myths mirror what?

7. What kind of relation is involved in "coming to know"?

8. How is illness "environmental"?

9. What's permaculture?

10. What's Weatherford's hypothesis about Machu Picchu?

native science, whole earth

We begin Greg Cajete's Native Science today in NW. Chapter One, "Telling a Special Story," urges the replacement of our standard western scientific paradigm with the wisdom of native creation myths. "These myths are simultaneously evolutionary, ecological, spiritual, psychological, and creative."

Philosopher Loyal Rue thinks the old western paradigm still allows the telling of a pretty good story in its own right, and is perfectly compatible with multiple versions including many of those native stories. Without something like it, though, "everybody's story" lacks both a spine and a cosmic perspective.

Everybody's story needs many voices and many versions, but if it is to be everybody's story then those venturing to tell it must stand out there, at some distant remove, where the earth can be seen whole.

==
Native Science foreword, intro, 1-2

1. Gregory Cajete says reality is mathematical in what way? Why does he deny that nature is mathematical?

2. Native languages have no words for what? Native science exemplifies what instinct, and what other phenomena? It is most akin to which field of inquiry?

3. The essence of native spirituality is not religion, but what? What are the generative forces of the universe? What is "butterfly power"? Is it supernatural or extraordinary? Is animism?

4. What is "the basic experience of the world," and which French phenomenologist does Cajete mention in connection with it? How does it relate to "biophilia" and to scientific objectivity?

5. Why is metaphor important? What quality of experience does it engender? What do we lose without it?

6. Why are we here, according to the Hopi? Are indigenous creations myths compatible with evolution? What is spiritual ecology? Where is "Turtle Island" and how does it relate to "Gaia"?

7. What does the "mountaintop" symbolize?

8. If humans are Earth becoming conscious of itself, what part of the "superbeing" are we? What can we gain from a new eco-philosophy? What is its greatest challenge?

9. What is the human function of native cosmology? How do we "bring our reality in to being"?

10. What is the best translation for "education" in native traditions? How do its goals differ from those of western science? What is the alternative to "domination"?

whale & owl

Nature's Way ch.5-6

1. What can we learn from whales?

2. What is a Vision Quest, and what is most important in it? What transformation does it (like other native ceremonies) provoke?

3. Again: mitakuye oyasin means ___________.

4. What is a wotai? What does Eagle Man claim to know about it?

5. What errant attitude do "young white men" often adopt after participating in a Sun Dance ceremony?

6. "Will Creator invervene someday and save our world?" Does Eagle Man take this question seriously? Do you? Do you agree that "modern materialists" do not care about generations unborn?

7. What does Owl represent? When is he most active? Why is that significant? What is the source of his "truth"?

8. Do you agree that failure to honor Great Spirit necessarily results in selfishness?

9. "What you never see does not exist, according to the Sioux." (ch4, p.100) But, being "owl-like" enables us to "connect with what ordinary senses cannot perceive." (130) Do you find anything in these statements problematic?

10. What does Eagle Man mean when he says the Yuwipi ceremony can "bring ancestors of the past in to phenomenal, physical form"? Is he talking about resurrection, or just vividly imaginative memory? Are spirits internal or external to a person's "vision"?

11. Eagle Man says suburban High School seniors, in contrast to young native Sun Dancers, "show very little interest in organized religion." Why? In what way do "white people set themselves up as mini-gods"?

Lion among many

Nature's Way ch3-4

1. What human virtue does Lion symbolize? To what are male lions predisposed? Is nature, in this and other respects, a reliable moral teacher?

2. What are the "feminine principles"? Are they also human principles? How can young men be educated to value "acceptance" etc.?

3. What was distinctive of "Old Europe"? What did it (and the Celts and Druids) have in common with the indigenous societies of North America?

4. What do you think of Eagle Man's view of natural tragedies? Would you advocate his position to survivors who'd lost loved ones in a volcano, tornado, etc.?

5. "I have always doubted that a mere man could alter what Creator made." Do you agree about the impotence of humanity, considered individually and collectively? Is anthropogenic climate change contrary to your spiritual beliefs? What is the point of reflecting on environmental ethics if Creation is unalterable?

6. What happens to children raised in a society of gender inequality?

7. What do you think of Eagle Man's ghost dream? Does it matter if it was "just a dream"?

8. Do you share Eagle Man's "East Power" & "Sky Power" optimism? Has the Internet begun to enhance communication and knowledge? What does "Blue Man" symbolize?

9. What's the "Mount Rushmore of organized religion"?

10. "Maybe we did come from Wind Cave. But who knows?" Is this agnosticism? Is Eagle Man's attitude towards Darwin agnostic, or affirming?

11. Same opportunity again, STUDENTS: What else do you want to ask (& discuss) about these chapters?

Nature's Way

Nature's Way Intro-ch2

1. How (according to Eagle Man, Ed McGaa) does "Dominant Society" view the natural world? What corrections does he say "Nature-respecting societies" offer? What kind of democracy is likeliest to "save the planet"?

2. Is sacred nature mythic or superstitious? Ideological? Supernatural?

3. What does it mean to become a "hollow bone"?

4. What is Wakan  Tanka, in contrast with the "white man's God"? Is it possible to construe  it and "Beyond World" (or "Spirit World") as parts of a benign, designed nature? Are there natural limits on the human capacity to understand "obvious mysteries"?

5. If "no one knows who God is," isn't "Great Spirit" talk presumptuous? Why does there seem to be no indigenous version of agnosticism? How can knowledge arise as a "revelation from ceremony"?

6. Do you think animals (like "my good friend the turtle") possess a compelling "spirit or force" that relates us to them? Is the variable manifestation or creation of Spirit in nature different from the relatedness of all species through evolution, or simply an alternative way of expressing it? Is the kindness and "tough love" of Creator just a florid way of acknowledging nature's self-sustaining indifference to human well-being? Is death's compassion more than a comforting illusion?

7. "We certainly cannot spin a spider's web..." But can't we, with the emerging science of biomimicry? (See the Michael Pawlyn TED Talk)

8. "Both ancient and modern [healing] wisdom have their place." Do you agree? Do you prefer herbal to synthetic remedies for illness? What's unnatural about western medicine? Is all effective medicine "spiritual" or ecological? Is "healing balance" scientific? Do you regard indigenous healing wisdom as "alternative"?

9. STUDENTS (or interested others): What additional questions would you like to pose from ch2? Use the comments section to share your suggestions.