Family: Ecology's mediator with Economy

"For He is not a man like me, that I can answer Him, that we can take each other to court. Nor is there a mediator between us, to lay his hand upon us both." Job 9

 

Economy v Ecology

 It often feels like humanity's Economy and nature's Ecology are irreconcilable forces with nothing to connect them much less mediate apparently alternative claims and ideas. Even our best and brightest become frustrated with paradigms that seem to be functioning according to different rules. In fact, even making rules at all seems futile, since they become so voluminous in scope that nobody can understand much less consent and submit to them with anything resembling timely, informed, voluntary acceptance. We spoke about the emerging crisis of consensus in our last blog posting The Devaluation of Law.

The mediating role of Family

However ... if you believe our universe is organic in the sense of everything being connected directly or indirectly to everything else, there MUST be a link [or perhaps many] between economy and ecology which we have just not fully discovered or appreciated ... yet.

One way to discover and/or highlight that link is by taking several different approaches to the problems and looking at them together ... to stretch one's perspective ... and to see what is present in all [even if only by implication] but missing in consideration [or emphasis] from one or more.

I have recently done this with three excellent books:

• An Inconvenient Apocalypse, Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen, 2022
• The Free Market Family, Maxine Eichner,  2020
• Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein, 2011

What I found has been thought provoking for me. I hope it may give you pause to think as well.

Family: Ecology's mediator with Economy

The Devaluation of Law

 

"By whatever process it has become legitimate for government to engage in practices that, if performed by individuals, would be clearly recognized as theft, fraud, trespass, and even worse. This is law turned inside out."

Opting Out: "The Devaluation of Law", Gerrit Wormhoudt, c.1975, published by  Jameson Books

Parallel Failures ... common cause?

In a fascinating and prescient [for us in 2022] address given as the Moorman Memorial Lecture at Culver-Stockton College c.1975, noted Kansas jurist Gerrit Wormhoudt compared the decline in purchasing power of the US$ with what he proposed was a decline in the "value of law" in America.

His clear suspicion is that both devaluations arise from a common source, although he only briefly touches on this at the end of his remarks with the invitation ... "Is this not a question worth pondering?"

And, of course, the resounding answer is YES ... it IS worth pondering.

In that spirit, I encourage you to secure a copy of Wormhoudt's book and reread the collection of his thoughts accumulated in essays and addresses over a distinguished career and a well-examined life.

As a preface and encouragement to engaging Wormhoudt directly in the book, I offer this brief summary of my take-aways from his thoughts in Chapter 9: The Devaluation of Law* (Or . . . A Sophisticated Kind of Ignorance?). The truth of things is usually much simpler than our handlers would have us undertand.

The Devaluation of Law

Definitions first

 

DEFINITION - from Latin definitionem (nominative definitio) "a bounding, a boundary; a limiting, prescribing; a definition, explanation," the last sense most often in Cicero, noun of action from past-participle stem of definire "to limit, determine, explain," from de "completely" (see de-) + finire "to bound, limit," from finis "boundary, end" (see finish (v.)). In logic, meaning "act of stating what something means" is from 1640s. Meaning "degree of distinctness of the details in a picture" is from 1889.

Enter your definitions of ECOLOGY, ECONOMY and EDUCATION as a COMMENT below to start a new thread of thought.

Share your thoughts on others' definitions as a REPLY to their COMMENT and keep their thread going.

But communicate in ANY WAY you can and somehow or other we'll get it into the blog for everyone to share !!

Unrelated statistics?

 

“Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust—

Ruin is formal—Devil's work
Consecutive and slow—
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping—is Crash's law.”
― Emily Dickinson

Crash's law ... the statistics

Most of us are accustomed to bad news and, as such, we anecdotally look past it as normal [which comes to us from nomos meaning customary] ... even necessary/unavoidable. Thus, when somebody suggests that we need to stop and reevaluate our fundamental assumptions for conducting life, we get impatient ... even hostile ... and demand to know "Why?" ... "What difference will it make?" ... "It's a waste of time."

In a recent Russell Moore interview, David Brooks was quite emphatic that something much worse is happening today than in many decades prior:

"There's a whole rash of statistics that are just terrible. And I'm kind of obsessing over "What's going on?", because alot of these things don't seem to have much to do with each other."

But, of course, IF the universe is organic, no thing is unrelated to any other thing ... they are only separated by propagation of cause and effect through proximate space and time ... which means "Slipping is Crash's law"  ... and ruin is formal albeit gradual [evolutionary?]. Indeed, if you listen to Brooks, he quickly comes to the conclusion that something "formal" is happening [or not happening in this case].

Overcoming unbelief

The columnist's unambiguous conclusion is that something "formal" must happen to avoid ruin ... but the poet's unwavering claim is that the converse is also true ... that ruin is "formal". The appropriate question, then, seems to be

"What form both saves from ruin and ruins those who are not saved?"

The answer we have proposed is that the logos preserves things from ruin [ie. sustains them] ... but that it also ruins those whose nomos departs from it ... ecology v economy. Grasping this seems to be a hard thing for the intellect ... even when the feelings sense it is an accurate description of what is happening.

Essential dialogue

In our recent May 2022 meeting of the still rudimentary 3e's working group, at which 7 persons were present, it was obvious that, as important as a distinction between ecology and economy might be, it is no easy accomplishment but rather one which takes time in grammar and dialogue to initiate [assuming the mind is even open to a paradigm change].  But until this distinction is grasped, seen as meaningful and capable of articulation by a critical mass in the working group, there is little prospect of it becoming a new paradigm that can guide us in understanding and addressing the "cRash" of unrelated statistics David Brooks seems to be concerned about.

Assignments ... and next meeting

Here are a few assignments:

• [Re]read the 3e's Trope ... and the first few sections of the essay entitled 3e's for Sustainable Community [linked in upper right of the 3e's Blog] ... to find some keywords to combine to establish some common thoughts which may help illuminate the challenges before us as a working group.
  
• Those who attended the last meeting should try to briefly articulate what they heard and the challenge ahead of us as a group of individuals coming from various POVs as they see it ... and email their summary to Bob Love to record on the blog page Meetings & Minutes which will serve as a help for those who were absent and as a history of our thought formation process.
  
• Everyone can review the various 3e's blog entries [using a laptop to get the full view] before the next meeting which will probably occur in June.

thanks,
Bob

3e's ... Ecology, Economy and Education

Q is for question and for quest

Whether out of idle curiosity or existential pain, it becomes "important enough" in almost every life and generation to ask questions like "if, when, where and how". Some even ask "why".  And depending on the motivation for the questions and the potential in the answers, a few take up [or continue] a quest to "make a difference". Those quests often take one of two paths [sometimes attempting both simultaneously] which appear to lead in different directions. Will James summarized the options as follows:

• the “TENDER-MINDED - Rationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical” ... represented by the statement, “DO what’s right … then LET the chips fall where they will.” ... focus on the journey ... ethical.
• the “TOUGH-MINDED - Empiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Skeptical” ... represented by the statement, “DO whatever it takes … to GET the results you want.” ... focus on the destination ... practical.
  

In the last century, two world wars and advances in tech-knowledge-y not only extended long-standing questions and quests but spawned new ones and raised them all to levels of global importance. The resulting thoughts and actions ... from persons such as JM Keynes, Simone Weil and AN Whitehead to FA Hayek, Karl Popper and RM Weaver ... became our heritage in this century. It is now our turn to make sense of what they were trying to tell us ... and then to make our own contributions to the dialogue.

 

Welcome

In that spirit, a group in Wichita KS has formed

• to discuss the 3e's ... ecology, economy and education 
• to question if/how understanding them better can lead us
• to think and act in ways that morally choose from and sustainably affirm the value combinations they offer
• to improve our lives locally and globally ... with the rest of humanity and with nature in the broadest sense ... across time.

We hope to form a diverse and continuous working group needed for perspective ... which uses the 3e's to establish a "trope" that familiarly and flexibly describes and details the challenges and choices we face across the wide range of specific but related factual settings which inevitably make up any community.

 

From the depth of that working group and with a common approach, we hope to select various panels to act as representatives who can interface with others in the community ... through various venues ... to assist with examining and explaining these persistent questions and quests in specific contexts.

 

We welcome those who are interested in joining us to check out our MEETINGS AND MINUTES page above. We also welcome your interest through Comments in this BLOG ...

https://3esfsc.blogspot.com/

 

The 3e's trope

For an introduction to one potential approach, please read and consider the 3e's trope which attempts to represent the challenging issues we face as being like the familiar issues of building and occupying a household full of things.

"A man's character emerges in the building and ordering of his house." - RM Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, Chapter VII - The Last Metaphysical Right

The first order of business for the working group [even as it is being formed] will be evaluating this trope ... together ... for future use as a shared "method". We need/welcome your input for this important formative task.

... more to come soon