While my intractable environmental philosophy needs some time to set, I’ll start with my social and economic ideology which is much more concrete. I grew up in an extremely liberal town called Oak Park which is the first suburb west of Chicago, Illinois. Oak Park is connected to the CTA’s green line and blue line train granting us “Chicago” status when asked about where we’re from. Know for Ernest Hemmingway and Frank Lloyd Wright, Oak Park has an excellent public school system and I went to one of the most racially diverse high schools in Illinois in terms of ratio of White and Black. Oak Park was named “Gay Town USA” a few years back and the high school, Oak Park and River Forest HS frequently headlined as “Smoke Park and Reefer Forest.”
My parents are progressive and the years of brainwashing me with the progressive radio likes of newly Senator Al Franken and Thom Hartmann has pushed me pretty far left. My mom grew up on a large farm in central Illinois two hours from our place in the city. They farm Monsanto’s poison and raise naturally raised grass-fed beef. Spread throughout the farm is hundreds of acres of natural Illinois prairie and forests the government pays us to keep intact. Almost satirically, they also pay us to grow the excess killer corn and soybeans. Growing up I was a weekend farm boy and a school week city kid. My grandparents on the farm always tended a healthful garden, pickled everything, and were self-subsistent three seasons out of the year. They surely influenced my passion for organics, cooking, gardening, and raising animals.
These intimate experiences with the natural environment, living in a diverse urban community, and my penchant for natural food have significantly shaped my liberal social and economic ideology. I believe in a strong democracy with a government by, for, and of the people without the intrusion of business and special interests. I believe in a strong government intervention and regulations in the economy, specifically dealing with multi-national corporations. I believe in the middle class, high taxes on the rich, a social safety net, a vibrant public works, and the protection of the commons. I’ve been quite satisfied with the government services provided for me in my life like my public education and public transit.
Here’s where I jump on the Libertarian tracks. I don’t like the government telling me what to eat or do in my bedroom, pasteurizing my milk, or subsidizing commodity crops. I don’t agree with the government privatizing the public works or hanging out in the middle east. But I have faith in a true, uncorrupt democracy of the people and not the corporation. I think people identifying with Libertarian positions are often critiquing the results of facism. I feel that libertarians open their mouths after the roads have been laid and social safety nets have been woven into our culture, and then in self-serving fashion they spout t their singular anti-social diatribes. I won’t even waste my breath on republicans.
My thoughts and practice with environmental philosophy clash. My thoughts identify with the holist perspective in its most elementary definition that wholes are greater than the sum of their parts and there is an interdependent unity of humans and non-humans. I believe our planet and its many ecosystems to be greater than the individual life they sustain. Although I find this to be agreeable, it is far too simplified and there are critiques of holism and deep ecology to note. There is no scientific evidence to give mountains, streams, and grass intrinsic value so one has to be a little out there for this philosophy. I’ve spent plenty of time in the natural wilderness to reflect on my relationship with nature crafting my belief that I’m a part of nature. Because as a human I have intrinsic value and nature is a part of me, nature also has intrinsic value. Another hole in the holist philosophy worth addressing is whether or not holders of intrinsic value posses equal amounts of it. Just because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts does not mean that there isn’t a hierarchical structure of the parts. Sentience trumps rocks and trees, and of all the sentient creatures on earth man is king. As king of all sentient life on the planet we have a responsibility to preserve the biodiversity of the planet.
As I mentioned above that the philosophy I believe in is not necessarily the one I practice. At school surrounded by 40,000 thousand other humans it becomes difficult not to think in anthropocentric ideology. While with society I seem to borrow their conservationist principles. I use red plastic cups and paper towels frequently. I don’t have the same compassion for non-humans and the environment while at school. When I’m with nature I operate in the holistic philosophy. It will be fascinating to keep track of this ideology in the future.
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