Dale is a good scientist because he envisions and examines relationships and
takes them to their logical extreme. This is positive. But after you do
that, you have to retrace your steps. Your system has to incorporate
everything else that has to fit in (that already was there), unless your
current addition explicitly displaced it, logically. Dale needs a little work
on coherency, but wading in as he does is a good start. However, when you
analyze a life process, you want to do it in a way that avoids killing it.
Otherwise, you get there after it's already gone. That's the difference
between Sex and Rape: One's invasive, the other's complementary, and
therefore creative. (By that definition, we're describing reproduction more
than recreation. And I'm not zeroing in on his position, nor do I presume to
see or need to see it all. This is sanet).
Wilson, Dale wrote:
> Mary,
>
> ...All of these "contradictions" make perfect sense to the Amish
> -- who are not strictly anti-technology as we would like to think -- who
> examine each technology from a community perspective and make a
> community decision about whether or not to accept and use that
> technology.
>
> So they have a pragmatic view rather than a Natural-Law, absolutist
> perspective. I think that is healthy.
>
> ...> The key point is that they decide on the basis of social and community
> > criteria what technology they want to accept. This is easier(?) for
> > them than the larger society because they are a homogenous society
> > with a central belief system.
> >
> The Amish have an authority structure that is able to make decisions and
> enforce them in the community.
>
> > Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on one's views) for the rest
> > of us, we in the larger society have to constantly examine the
> > criteria we are going to use for saying something is "organic" or
> > "good" on the basis of competing belief systems.
> >
> ..
> > While scientific rationality and market logic underly most of our
> > decisions and tend to be the dominant belief systems in most parts of
> > U.S. society, they are not the only ones as one can see in the posts
> > on grafting. Thus, scientific criteria have to be juggled with moral
> > and social criteria and unfortunately we are none too clear on the
> > latter.
Scientific rationality relates to the established knowlege base. (more on that
later).
> Douglas can go to the Legislature and try to get a law passed
> to restrict grafting. Suppose I were growing a big crop of thistles
> along with my grafted trees. Letting these go to seed violates the
> noxious weed law in most states. People formulate and pass
> environmental laws. The County has power and authority to enforce
> regulations like this.
I agree that I "could" do that, and perhaps this was just an example of
something else, but I find the logic a bit too discrete & incoherent, too
distant to my purpose and thesis. My objection to grafting (itself based on
a personal discovery, after I noticed a reaction and bothered to look into it
- a year and a half later), is precisely it's invasive nature; an invasion
without justification, in terms of the nature (evolutionary nature) of the
tree. My purpose has been two fold: 1).- To point out an area that should
have but never did receive a thorough investigation (the practice is founded
on a number of insuficiently examined assumptions) for the purpose of
stimulating a discussion; and 2).- Hopefully foment the development of good
seedling strains. In short, I wanted to promote an unfairly neglected if
somewhat inconvenient (for current agribusiness) alternative. An alternative
that is inherently good, rather than good as an medium for exchange. And that
goodness transcends both current scientific rationality and business logic.
Few or none have been able to refute this from the basis of personal
experience - of living off one or the other directly. (On the other hand, Sal
likes some of his grafted stock and banks the proceeds of their sales, but
really gets off on his seedlings - they're special).
A law restricting the propagation of grafted treees would not be consistent
with my thesis, due to it's arbitrarily invasive nature. (Arbitrary, because
the current body of knowledge does not support this). As stated, my objective
was to widen the scope of the present body of knowlege. Once that's
accomplished, it may follow to legislate on the basis of the results. That
may be morally correct, just as people are no longer free to smoke in many
public places. However, the important thing is illuminate these dark places.
Someone Amish is free to leave the community, while someone Chinese is perhaps
free to go to jail.
The point being, the action taken depends on what preceded it. We can
catagorically condemn the existence of ignorance - but we may want to remain
ignorant regarding the effects of making recombinant human beings from scratch
(as distinct from correcting a defective and perhaps life threatening gene).
Birth is better than abortion, but the latter may be better than incarcerating
a single woman without economic resources for not wanting to forever sustain
the results of a moments indiscretion. Adoption too would be factored in.
The point being is that legislation is a delicate an easily abused power (OFPA
is a good example). Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson that said "The Government that
governs best, governs least. That means you put your walls up, only in
critical places - walls keep you out of some places and lead you to others.
And walls are costly to build.
> ...
> "The Halifax EcoCity Project is a proposal to build a piece of
> EcoCity on a 2.4 hectare site in the central business district of
> Adelaide, South Australia. The project will be a mixed-use ecological
> development with 350-400 houses, on-site green businesses and extensive
> community facilities....Materials will be non-toxic, allergy neutral,
> with as little embodied energy possible and drawn from ecologically
> sustainable sources. On site food production will be encouraged.... Cars
> are excluded....'barefoot architecture program' ensuring diverse and
> individual design within a strong basic framework."
>
> This is very appealing in many ways, but it sounds like an expansive
> version of the neighborhood association common in suburban U.S. that
> dictates what color you can paint your house, etc. That kind of thing
> has always rubbed me the wrong way. I guess they will import
> like-minded people. In the long run, this will require a great deal of
> social control to maintain. It sounds like a green version of Calvin's
> Geneva.
Those living there may well wind up hating and even killing each other. There
are a lot of factors that unite people besides these details, although they
may be important ones and they certainly have the right to try it. And they
can leave.
> IMO the green movement needs to become integrated in the
> actually-existing communities that deal with the mundane problems of
> ordinary life. Activists need to galvanize local sentiment toward
> eco-friendly behavior in local political involvement, as messy as that
> is. Local politics is the basis of decision-making in a pluralistic
> society. As long as Greens take a top down approach, working from
> academia, trying to influence mainly National policy, with media events,
> and exogenous activists, they will be perceived as part of the clueless
> cultural elite by local people.
>
> Dale
I guess I do agree with both Dale and Mary. In passing.
--Douglas M. Hinds Centro para el Desarrollo Comunitario y Rural A.C. (CeDeCoR) (Center for Community and Rural Development) - (non profit) Cd. Guzman, Jalisco 49000 MEXICO e-mail: cedecor@ipnet.com.mx, dmhinds@acnet.net, dhinds@ucol.mx
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