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Videophilia replacing love of nature

April 1, 2009

In the late 1900s researchers like E.O. Wilson and Stephen Kellert began using the term "biophilia" to describe the basic love of other living things that humans seem to exhibit–an affection that encompassed nature, other species, diversity. So strong an affinity, so powerful an affect, was biophilia that the researchers decided it must be instinctive, built into the human brain by natural selection because it was an aid to survival.

Or else it's part of God's (intelligent, by definition) design–to make gardeners who love the garden. I'm betting on the latter hypothesis.

But there's a competing impulse, a dark attraction that fights for the affection of humans. Is it money? Sex? Power?

No, it's actually video screens. There is a strong negative relationship between the amount of time people spend on the Internet, playing video games, and watching television and movies, and the amount of time people spend outside in nature. Humans seem to have a (built-in? instinctive?) love of flat screen TVs and handheld video devices.

Biophilia is being replaced by videophilia.

(more…)

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Videophilia replacing love of nature

March 16, 2009

In the late 1900s researchers like E.O. Wilson and Stephen Kellert began using the term "biophilia" to describe the basic love of other living things that humans seem to exhibit–an affection that encompassed nature, other species, diversity. So strong an affinity, so powerful an affect, was biophilia that the researchers decided it must be instinctive, built into the human brain by natural selection because it was an aid to survival.

Or else it's part of God's (intelligent, by definition) design–to make gardeners who love the garden. I'm betting on the latter hypothesis.

But there's a competing impulse, a dark attraction that fights for the affection of humans. Is it money? Sex? Power?

No, it's actually video screens. There is a strong negative relationship between the amount of time people spend on the Internet, playing video games, and watching television and movies, and the amount of time people spend outside in nature. Humans seem to have a (built-in? instinctive?) love of flat screen TVs and handheld video devices.

Biophilia is being replaced by videophilia.

(more…)

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Evangelicals get gold star for creation care

March 9, 2009

Martin Marty is not an evangelical commentator, but he does comment on evangelicals frequently, and his writings are often useful to me, to see how our work is viewed from other Christian perspectives. The Martin Marty Center at University of Chicago publishes Sightings, a stream of reflections on faith in public life. I’m not a current subscriber, but Al Tizon sent me one of Marty’s columns last week, on “Evangelicals and the Environment“, well worth noting for its paternalistic tone as well as its content.

Marty reviews a recent book from the Wheaton College community called Christians, the Care of Creation, and Global Climate Change, a nice volume for its slimness (would that other books were as economical with their length). It’s recommended reading…

But what’s particularly interesting to me is the care Marty takes to distance himself from Evangelicals, lest his non-evangelical audience mistake his sympathetic observations for whole-hearted approval.

We’ll see more of these sorts of pieces in the future, as more evangelicals join the environmental conversation.

It’s a combination of head-patting approval, finger-wagging for being tardy, tut-tutting about our evangelical hang-ups, and instrumental use of our creation care efforts to goad mainliners into action. Nothing lights a fire under Episcopalians and Unitarians on social issues like saying “Look, even the evangelicals are on board with this issue!”

It would be nice if we could get something better than a “most improved” award.

We should also begin to see a standardized proviso emerge in commentaries about evangelical environmental action, as with commentaries on evangelical social action–a note that these new development are encouraging, and that these are native fruit from seeds planted in the evangelical garden long ago by people like Francis Schaeffer, Cal DeWitt, Ron Sider and others.

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Faithful Urbanism

March 2, 2009

The weekend brought a rare snowfall to Atlanta (four inches at my house) and with it the typical breathless wall-to-wall weather news coverage that every winter event precipitates in the South. With the possibility of ice on the road, I knew, as a responsible Southerner with a reasonable assessment of my winter driving skills, that I should go nowhere near an automobile. So we played in the mushy wet snow all day Sunday.

Snow and ice are disturbances to life as normal, and they reveal much about the underlying structure of life. One of the main things they reveal is how far-flung our relationships are in terms of geography–being forced out of our cars decouples many of us from work, school, church, shopping, friends and family. Such disturbances also cause us to rediscover more proximate relationships, with actual and not metaphorical neighbors, and to find fun in our own neighborhoods, something we'll need to do more in the future as energy costs rise.

Not driving to church (and not having to preach) also meant I had time to pick up some material from my "to read" stack. Yesterday it was the white paper by Michael Van Pelt and Richard Greydanus from the Work Research Foundation in Hamilton, Ontario, entitled "Living on the Streets: The Role of the Church in Urban Renewal." Scott Calgaro of the Coalition for Christian Outreach put it in my hands months ago, and it took a snowstorm slow me down enough to read it. It's a great resource for anyone concerned with social justice, the built environment, and the role of faith communities in urban life. The PDF is available for free download.

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Recycling is not enough

February 26, 2009

I read Tri Robinson's post on "recycling examples from the Bible" over on SustainLane.

In our family Bible reading yesterday we encountered an example of
recycling…but not a good one. While Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving
the covenant and commandments from God, the people of Israel were at
the foot of the mountain recycling their gold jewelry into an idol
shaped like a golden calf. Then Moses, in anger, recycled the golden
calf, melting it down, grinding it into powder, mixing it with water,
and making the Israelites drink it.

I don't know whether there's any great environmental lesson
there, but I'm reminded of the way G.K. Chesterton described the
material world. in his great little biography of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The material world is good–God made it good.

Chesterton: "That 'God looked on all things and saw that they
were good' contains a subtlety which the popular pessimist cannot
follow, or is too hasty to notice. It is the thesis that there are no
bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad
things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. Only
Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions.
That is exactly the one thing it cannot be paved with. But it is
possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things,
like the world and the flesh have been twisted by a bad intention
called the devil. But he cannot make things bad; they remain as on the
first day of creation. The work of heaven alone was material; the
making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual."

From "Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox" by G.K. Chesterton

We can be efficient in our use of materials. But it's what we DO with
the material world that brings honor or horror to God.

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Taking the World Seriously

February 24, 2009

An article from last week's Economist <http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109915> reminds us that the big environmental debates are NOT going to be between those who care and those who don't care about God's creation.

No, the big arguments will be over things that people with sound minds and sound theology still find room for disagreement on. The Economist article <http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109915> shows one example: a giant new power transmission line running from the Imperial Valley (where renewable energy sources abound–there is lots of sun, and lots of geothermal energy to be harvested) to San Diego (where lots of energy-needing people live). The approved route twists like a gerrymandered snake through the landscape to avoid protected areas, forests, and Native American lands.

But enviros are fighting enviros over the project. The Economist describes the battle as "tree-huggers versus nerds". Nerds are the pro-technology, pro-business environmentalists (like, they say, Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger). Tree-huggers are the idealists who object that the power line could be used to transmit electricity generated by coal as easily as power from renewable sources.

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Imperiled Wildlife from a Biblical Perspective

October 20, 2008

The Biblical perspective on biodiversity doesn't directly address the
issue of endangered species. Theologians construct the argument for
protecting endangered species from various biblical and ethical
frameworks. Some are utilitarian are expressly anthropocentric–we
protect species because they might be useful for us, as sources of
medicine, useful products, or for the services they provide (like the pollination services of bees,
written about in a recent Creation Care article). But there are deeper
theological rationales for protecting species. Ron Sider was recently
cited in the Seattle Times saying, "Let's save endangered species because they come from the loving hand of the Creator." Peter Illyn has a similar take in the most recent Creation Care magazine
(Fall 08, Issue 37), where he argues that "plants and animals have an
inherent right to be fruitful and to thrive as God has commanded them."
Read the essay in full here…

Peter talks about a new threat to God's creature: climate
change. In the same issue of Creation Care, we published a beautiful
set of images of wildlife in warming world from the Irreplaceable traveling photograph exhibit.  (You can see it if you download the PDF version of the magazine, which features a cover story on C.S. Lewis's environmental vision.)  And Creation Care's expert conservation scientist, Kyle van Houtan, wrote a very informative explanation of extinction and its causes. One passage from his essay is particularly evocative:

“Extinction” literally refers to
putting out a fire or light, and some of its early uses appear in
Christian texts. A scientific account of animals and plants cannot by
itself describe the significance of extinction. Driving an entire group
of creatures to oblivion is more than a biological act: it is the
extinguishing of a light kindled by the One whom James refers to as
“the Father of lights” (1:17). Extinction is a theological act.

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The international year of cleaning up poop

August 30, 2008

There's kind of a global taboo on talking about poop. [You wouldn't know that hanging out at our house, with two boys aged 8 and 5, but it's true.] The reluctance to talk about sewage, latrines, and toilets has put the cause of improving sanitation in the world's poorest countries years behind where it should be.

2008 is the UN's International Year of Sanitation (did you know?), and in Stockholm last month leaders described the challenges ahead in improving sanitation systems for the world's poor. In contrast to clean water provision, sanitation has lagged behind. This year, the number of people without access to clean(ish) water is down to less than a billion (the number was 1.4 billion last year). Half the world's population now has a pipe with improved water coming into their house.

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Ron Sider on Obama’s abortion position

July 2, 2008

Ron Sider recently sent a letter to Democratic Presidential Candidate Barak Obama on abortion. The entire letter is worth reading:

Your
stand on abortion deeply troubles me. Yes, I know you are a Democrat
and thus, sadly, almost by definition, you must be pro-choice. But do
you need to be one of the most tone-deaf Democrats when it comes to the
painful, divisive issue of abortion?

It
bothers me greatly that as a state Senator in Illinois, you opposed a
bill (the Born Alive Infants Protection Act) that would have defended
the life of a living baby, outside the womb, that had been aborted but
had somehow survived? (You voted against that legislation twice and, a
third time, prevented the legislation from leaving your committee.) Do
you really think being pro-choice means not caring for a living baby
outside the womb?

If
you want to build bridges, you must do more to understand and respect
those of us who feel that the present thinking and action on abortion
in America is a moral tragedy. You could at least say clearly and
strongly that abortion is always a moral tragedy. You could at least
say strongly that you want to substantially reduce the number of
abortions while keeping abortion legal. You could insist that being
pro-choice means respecting and protecting the right of pro-life
hospitals and doctors to refuse all involvement in abortion. You could
acknowledge a change of mind on the Illinois legislation. You could
affirm the importance of the family and support legislation making it
illegal to transport minors across state lines for an abortion without
their parents consent. And by all means, do not ask or insist that
those who oppose abortion pay for abortions through your health plan.

Please,
Senator Obama, show us clearly that you understand the concerns of
pro-life Americans and want to build bridges to them wherever possible.

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The limits of economics

May 27, 2008

Freeman Dyson has a review in the New York Times Review of Books this week (June 12) of two climate change books:

A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies
by William Nordhaus
Yale University Press, 234 pp., $28.00

Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto
edited by Ernesto Zedillo
Yale Center for the Study of Globalization/Brookings Institution Press, 237 pp., $26.95 (paper)

Read the review for yourself to get background, without which the following won't make sense. I'd summarize it for you, but it's a good read.

The problem with Nordhaus's analysis is threefold
(1) Stern was partly right about discount rates. Any rational individual using a discount rate could justify imposing nearly infinite suffering on some future generation–not the RISK of suffering but the guarantee of suffering. That displeases Stern. But if we don't use discount rates for intertemporal problem-solving, then even the most minor inconvenience to future generations, suffered in perpetuity, would justify immense sacrifice today. That bothers Nordhaus. There's no easy mathematical solution to this, but there are political, democratic, and practical solutions. Intertemporal cost-benefit analysis has too much hidden ethical content to be relied upon as a truth-machine.

(more…)

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