Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Dedication
To the people of Butte, Montana, in hopes that we might learn important lessons from our experience, and that those lessons might hasten our journey toward the Great Community.
Lessons from Butte, Montana: A Model for the World?
This dissertation is concerned with the actual experience of a hard-used high-mountain copper mining community called Butte, Montana. It is thus inextricably embedded in the particular while holding out hope that generally useful lessons might be learned from the particular experiences of this place, my home, Butte, Montana.
On the surface, and I suppose at some root level, this project in applied moral philosophy might seem merely a provincial concern for my home place. But a survey of contemporary historical, political, scientific, and ethical literature might lead you to a different conclusion.
In Harper's Magazine, Ed Dobb wrote, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places American came from." And it is. That is why the people in Butte often refer to the town as Butte, America. Butte's story, it seems is too big to be contained by the state line.
Butte, Montana is an indexical sign: a sign that is evidence of something else, like smoke is a sign of fire; a sign born of a causal connection to that which is signified; a sign that is in fact a product of that which is signified. If Butte is a sign, "one of the places America came from," what is its meaning? What truths does Butte as a sign reveal about the systems that created it?
Environmental historian Mark Fiege also believes that we can learn lessons by studying what he calls "hard-used places" because, like scars, they are evidence of our "deeply entangled and problematic relationships with the natural world."
The opening chapter of Pullitzer Prize-winning historian Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, focuses on contemporary Montana, including Butte, as what he calls a model for the world. "Montana is a perfect subject...". Like the historical subjects he discusses in the book, societies that emerged, flourished, and collapsed out of existence, contemporary Montana is precariously situated, dependent upon distant markets, and exists in a marginally productive landscape relative to other parts of the world. Moreover, "Montana suffers from the same environmental problems..." Plus, mining.
What may have begun as a provincial concern for my home is now much more, according to Diamond. The decisions made here, in Montana, are worthy of our attention because, like the Anasazi, the Easter Islanders, and the Maya, our condition is precarious and uncertain. And, our ability to recognize and cope with our environmental problems softly determines the nature of the world we pass on to future generations.
Hard-used places like Butte are like scars, reminders of past actions and the sometimes painful consequences of those actions. The only alternative we have to learning lessons from these places is to ignore them, to let inertia move us instead of our values, interests, and beliefs, and to close our eyes to what is in front of us and pretend it does not exist. But it does exist, and so, if we believe in learning and growth--education and the pursuit of wisdom--we must look to the scars of the hard-used places and signify them, make them meaningful, and learn lessons from them.
At the dawn of the 20th century, young Mary Maclane wandered the gullies of Butte, Montana, which was then an open-air mining and mineral processing factory. She wrote, "Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly an outlook as one could wish to see. It is so ugly indeed that is near the perfection of ugliness. And anything perfect, or nearly so, is not to be despised. I have reached some astonishing subtleties of conception as I have walked for miles over the sand and barrenness among the little hills and gulches.”
My intentions in this research, like those of Fiege, Diamond, and Maclane, are to learn lessons from this hard-used place and hard-used people.
On the surface, and I suppose at some root level, this project in applied moral philosophy might seem merely a provincial concern for my home place. But a survey of contemporary historical, political, scientific, and ethical literature might lead you to a different conclusion.
In Harper's Magazine, Ed Dobb wrote, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places American came from." And it is. That is why the people in Butte often refer to the town as Butte, America. Butte's story, it seems is too big to be contained by the state line.
Butte, Montana is an indexical sign: a sign that is evidence of something else, like smoke is a sign of fire; a sign born of a causal connection to that which is signified; a sign that is in fact a product of that which is signified. If Butte is a sign, "one of the places America came from," what is its meaning? What truths does Butte as a sign reveal about the systems that created it?
Environmental historian Mark Fiege also believes that we can learn lessons by studying what he calls "hard-used places" because, like scars, they are evidence of our "deeply entangled and problematic relationships with the natural world."
The opening chapter of Pullitzer Prize-winning historian Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, focuses on contemporary Montana, including Butte, as what he calls a model for the world. "Montana is a perfect subject...". Like the historical subjects he discusses in the book, societies that emerged, flourished, and collapsed out of existence, contemporary Montana is precariously situated, dependent upon distant markets, and exists in a marginally productive landscape relative to other parts of the world. Moreover, "Montana suffers from the same environmental problems..." Plus, mining.
What may have begun as a provincial concern for my home is now much more, according to Diamond. The decisions made here, in Montana, are worthy of our attention because, like the Anasazi, the Easter Islanders, and the Maya, our condition is precarious and uncertain. And, our ability to recognize and cope with our environmental problems softly determines the nature of the world we pass on to future generations.
Hard-used places like Butte are like scars, reminders of past actions and the sometimes painful consequences of those actions. The only alternative we have to learning lessons from these places is to ignore them, to let inertia move us instead of our values, interests, and beliefs, and to close our eyes to what is in front of us and pretend it does not exist. But it does exist, and so, if we believe in learning and growth--education and the pursuit of wisdom--we must look to the scars of the hard-used places and signify them, make them meaningful, and learn lessons from them.
At the dawn of the 20th century, young Mary Maclane wandered the gullies of Butte, Montana, which was then an open-air mining and mineral processing factory. She wrote, "Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly an outlook as one could wish to see. It is so ugly indeed that is near the perfection of ugliness. And anything perfect, or nearly so, is not to be despised. I have reached some astonishing subtleties of conception as I have walked for miles over the sand and barrenness among the little hills and gulches.”
My intentions in this research, like those of Fiege, Diamond, and Maclane, are to learn lessons from this hard-used place and hard-used people.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Pragmatic Approach
Processual and complex cosmos
Embodied, live creatures
Scientific attitude:Truth-seeking through inquiry into experience
Humanism: concerned with the quality of lived human experience
Historical
Materialist
Amelioristic
Problem-solving
Embodied, live creatures
Scientific attitude:Truth-seeking through inquiry into experience
Humanism: concerned with the quality of lived human experience
Historical
Materialist
Amelioristic
Problem-solving
Dewey's Voice and My Dissertation
This dissertation is a work of practical moral philosophy in the spirit of John Dewey. For some time, I've struggled with place of Dewey in my own work. His words and ideas constantly tumble around in my head, and I find that my work is always tethered to and thus is an extension of his.
Why Dewey? Because I am astounded by the breadth and depth of his life's work, and the influence he exercised in the U.S.A until his death in 1952. Philosophy, Psychology, Education, Science, Culture, Politics, Religion, Ethics, and Art. Dewey not only attended to these topics, he generally elucidated and enlightened by virtue of his careful and subtle mind and his pragmatic methods.
Because as a student of communication studies and environmental studies and ethics and democracy and science and politics, Dewey's work was there to be found, and what he had to say in each sphere seems as relevant today as when it was written. In short, in Dewey I see forgotten wisdom, and we are living in a period of precariousness and uncertainty. We now need sage advice, and I think Dewey's work is relevant and useful still.
So, rather than dance around the issue, or fabricate convoluted explanations of why I constantly refer to these seemingly esoteric and forgotten words of Dewey, I choose instead to simply describe this work as profoundly Deweyan. Moreover, I intend to make participation in Deweyan scholarship one of the contributions of this project.
Why Dewey? Because I am astounded by the breadth and depth of his life's work, and the influence he exercised in the U.S.A until his death in 1952. Philosophy, Psychology, Education, Science, Culture, Politics, Religion, Ethics, and Art. Dewey not only attended to these topics, he generally elucidated and enlightened by virtue of his careful and subtle mind and his pragmatic methods.
Because as a student of communication studies and environmental studies and ethics and democracy and science and politics, Dewey's work was there to be found, and what he had to say in each sphere seems as relevant today as when it was written. In short, in Dewey I see forgotten wisdom, and we are living in a period of precariousness and uncertainty. We now need sage advice, and I think Dewey's work is relevant and useful still.
So, rather than dance around the issue, or fabricate convoluted explanations of why I constantly refer to these seemingly esoteric and forgotten words of Dewey, I choose instead to simply describe this work as profoundly Deweyan. Moreover, I intend to make participation in Deweyan scholarship one of the contributions of this project.
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