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Why You Should Go Abroad
Today in my Environmental Ethics course, we were discussing "The Idea of
Environment" and learning about the Environment as a concept and a *kind*
of concept.
It is a common perspective that "Environment", in typical discussions of
environmental ethics, is the word describing the planet Earth, the
atmosphere, the land, the water, the life on it, etc. Today we talked
about this fellow Cooper who said that considering the Environment as such
an immense and complex thing, let alone to consider ways to interact with
it, preserve it, restore it, etc., was an impossible and unneccessary
task.
Instead, he suggested we think about the Environment as a "field of
significance"...
...The word "environment" itself means "that which surrounds". When we
talk about ecology, we're using a word derived from the Greek word "oikos"
which means "home"...so we're talking about our ecos, our home.
Environment, then, can be seen as a *relational* concept, something that
is defined by its relation to the person or entity defining it.
Cooper, then, said that one is at *home* in one's environment. This may
not necessarily be a positive experience; one can certainly despise one's
environment as undoubtedly many humans in poor and developing countries
do. But, nonetheless, it is our home and it is a conceptualization that
*means* something to us; our environment is something that has
significance to us and that is emotionally charged.
An associated observation is that people tend to think about their field
of significance, their "environment", in very local terms. We all have
the places and the people and the surroundings and the background that
mean something to us, that are significant to us. This may, ironically,
be particularly true and defined for people who travel a lot; they
experience many different environments but the one that is Their
Environment is the one that has significance to them; where their home and
their family are.
Thusly, it seems it would be quite difficult to think about nuturing,
preserving, and restoring The Environment as environmentalists and
ethicists typically address it, when one's own conception of environment
exists on a very local level. It is harder to think about the tragedy of
the loss of rainforests when one is a businessperson submersed in business
life and living in a suburban home, because one's field of significance
exists primarily on that local level, and any significance granted to the
loss of rainforests must be imposed artificially rather than through
experiencing that loss within one's field of significance.
UNLESS you had travelled to the rainforests, lived in the villiage next to
the bare land, communicated with the people who call that area Their
Environment, and developed your own, perhaps (but not neccessarily)
smaller, field of significance for that land.
I'm not suggesting that we all head off for a year in the rainforests. I
am suggesting that there is much to be said for the experience of living
in a *new* environment (as defined objectively) where one can develop a
new and different field of significance for that environment. It seems
that if we all had developed a field of significance away from the one we
exist in primarily, or at least *recognize* the idea that someone else
somewhere else defines The Environment completely differently, we could
get closer to adopting a global ethic that genuinely held the interests of
planet earth and all its vastness in the highest priority.
While it may be difficult to think about saving the whole big wide world,
it is perhaps a little easier to think about saving The Environment when
our understanding of that concept involves a field of significance
expanded beyond its current, local boundaries.
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