Our Mothers- EDIT

Though today in most household there is a patriarchal system in place with a man on top, there is typically a woman right below him on the totem pole. Over the past 50 years women have gained respect by proving themselves; in the workforce as professionals and in the home as mothers. In 2008 Hillary Clinton ran in the democratic presidential primary and came quite close to winning. At the same time Sarah Palin ran as the Vice Presidential Candidate for the republican party. 


The Care2 article "House Budget Would Decimate Women's Health Care in Cities and Rural Areas" Jodi Jacobson discusses the resolution that passed in the House of Representatives last week that takes away all funding to Planned Parenthood and the Governors of Vermont and Connecticut and the Mayor of New York City's reaction. Jacobson states that more than 90% of Planned Parenthood's services are preventative measures ie; breast and cervical exams and STD testing, yet a vote has passed for funding to cease, for political reasons. Women in society today can run for president or vice president and have gained so much respect, yet still basic rights are taken away from them. 


Overtime, the master narrative of the world has changed. In "Radical Ecology" Carolyn Merchant states that previous cultures had an

"image of the earth as a living organism and nurturing mother [which] served as a cultural constraint restricting the actions of human beings"(43). 

With the rise of capitalism after the renaissance there was also a rise in commercial and industrial development, which lead to the destruction of the "nurturing mother". The earths metaphor was changing. She was previously viewed similar to a human, now he was seen as a profit, in the form of coal and gold. Today nature is seen as a machine: "matter is made up of atoms, colors occur by the reflection of light waves of differing lengths, bodies obey the law of inertia, and the sun is the center of our solar system". 


Just as the treatment of "mother earth" changes over time in "Radical Ecology", so changes the way humans treat our human mothers today in politics and government. This brings us back to Val Plumwood's dualism from "Feminism and the Mastery of Nature" , of masculine/feminine with the government; the decision making body being the reasonable, masculine one looking down on the the emotional, feminine one. 

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We Rape Mother Nature

Throughout history, the cultures by which we live by has constructed our language and our perspective of how we view nature as we change the naming of one object into another. According to Rape of the Wild written by Collard, the process of naming a subject is “nothing less than an existential statement about the people who invent it. It is important to keep in mind the connection between social organizations and language” (5).

With this in mind, ultimately you could re-name a desk, calling it a “cat” for example. Although re-naming a subject is not instantaneous, throughout time the new name for that subject can be trans-valuated in that culture to define that the term “cat” has indeed replaced the previous term of the “desk”. Within the past 6,000 years there has been several languages of which different cultures spoke of. At any rate, the combination of these languages evolved into a base language called Sanskrit which contains root words from Greek and Latin.

Some terms brought from society has symbolized our views and the way we live. As Merilin Stone noted in Rape of the Wild, “the words ‘light’ and ‘dark’ first acquired the connotations of good and evil in Sanskrit, reflecting the emergent cast system and the Aryans’ contempt for the darker-skinned peoples who inhabited India before their arrival” (16). As we see a person walking down the street dressed in all black, society may denote hat the person to being bad or evil. On the other hand, a women wearing a white dress can symbolize her virginity or purity. Is this how slavery started? Does a black male represent or dehumanize that person?

Now lets look at how “nature” has evolved over time and how sometimes we refer to Earth as “mother nature”. In the beginning, nature didn’t exist as term although we called it “wilderness”. The term wilderness (seeing Earth as untouched by humans) has evolved into “nature” by which each culture lives by. In addition, some people now refer to nature as “mother nature”. As we speak of the earth as mother nature, this provides the act of conserving and protecting our planet. Viewing earth a living organism provides materials in which we believe is a necessity as we control and destruct Earth.

In 2010 there was a oil spill of 200 million gallons for 86 days by the company of British Petroleum (BP) in the gulf coast. After extensive cleaning and filtration, BP and the federal government now question where all the excess oil has gone, as we no longer can actually see the destruction from a bird’s eye view. An article from ABC News written by Jeffery Kofman on July 26, 2010 reviews this happening and questions the remaining amount of oil in the gulf. According to Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University; “[It’s] mother nature doing her job” (1).

In chapter 2 of Radical Ecology written by Merchant, with the organic world view “one does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold, or mutilate her body” (43). With this being said, why would humans destruct and drill for oil? In the reading of Radical Ecology written by Merchant, the Rise of Capitalism in the 16th century occurred especially when the Europeans discovered the Americas. Throughout time we have gained the necessity for gasoline where we feel forced to drill into mother earth for consumption, not thinking of the consequences. In the 17th centuries, a new world view of Experimental science emerged where society saw Earth as being dead, inert, and insensitive to human action. Currently, most Western schools teach of the Mechanistic Worldview as they teach the concept that us humans control and dominate nature. In the essence that we are now dominating nature in addition to our technological advances, it is impossible for us to trans-valuate our society into what it once was from the beginning. In reference to Rape of the Wild by Collard, I agree that through technological advances and the greed to obtain wealth has brought our society basically to rape mother nature of all her resources.

Link to ABC News Article:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mother-nature-breaks-slick/story?id=11254252

Link to readings:
Collard:
https://ecampus.unt.edu/webct/urw/lc5122011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

Merchant:
https://ecampus.unt.edu/webct/urw/lc5122011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

charles darwin is wrong!

Survival of the fittest, we have all heard of it, it is a quote that is way over used in everyway. Sure it proves that humans have been here from more than a few thousand years, but has been taken out of context and has been use to justified travesty’s that have occurred though out history. In essence there are certain individuals who have control of this master narrative, and the status quote hasn’t changed for a couple thousand years. Many would say that Aristotle was a genius that contributed to many forms of society that we know today, but not all of his ideas were gems. “The male is nature superior, and the female is inferior… the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.” (Aristotle, Plumwood pg.46) So obviously Aristotle was a bit of racist and chauvinistic, believing that naturally men are and will always be a the top of the food chain, creating a natural order. Unfortunately with the spread of Christianity some of these ideal were carried on and expanded further categorizing human beings. “All those who are less rational and are closer to the sphere of nature, are especially closer to animality. As in women, slave, other races and cultures is in barbarians” (Val Plumwood pg.47) As a result in Christianity there is a tendency to make white men the master of all, right under God. This has led to unjust laws and horrific events that have plagued history. Even today some of these Intersectionality is still prevalent. CNN redid the doll study that first was demonstrated in the 40s to see if racism still exists in America, surprisingly the results were the same. Most all children, who included white and black, favored the dolls that were of lighter skin complexion claiming that it was the good kid, while darker doll was the bad child and a troublemaker. It is easily to say that we live in equal society were everyone has the same rights, but the fact of the matter it’s the way we treat people behind closed doors and subconsciously in the media is being projected on to future generations. So Charles Darwin is wrong survival isn’t up to the fittest, the one with the most power wins, every time.

Charles Darwin is wrong

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzAFqwqXqxE

cnn report

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/kids.on.race/

I thought this was funny

http://www.youtube.com/user/chrisjohnpat#p/u/8/MnutUJidfw8