Settling the Estate

There has been a lot of change over the decades, and the past decade more than most.  Change, however, is not the same thing as progress.

If you're sympathetic to the plight of homosexuals in the United States, you've seen progress.  If you subscribe to a Judeo-Christian worldview there has been regress.  The idea of progress, the only way to distinguish it from just ordinary change depends upon a preconceived notion about where we are, or at least ought to be, going.

Then we have the problem of determining the data set you are measuring.

If you are a Christian, Yazidi, or just not radical enough of a Sunni Muslim in Syria, Iraq, or Lebanon, you would say the world is in a state of regress, regardless of how much progress American homosexuals have experienced.

Progress is a Judeo-Christian idea.  Made necessary by progressive revelation, a god who both keeps on writing and disagreeing with himself is the well spring of innovation.  Eventually it was decided this god had a plan and was moving his people toward that plan.
First the Jews, then a splinter group of Jews called Christians.

If we want to set aside a religious worldview and still talk about how to constructively approach the problems we face we'd be wise to apply the observation by economist Thomas Sowell, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

TANSTAAFL, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."  If you want to achieve change, there will be a cost, usually our ideology.  When we start talking soberly about costs and benefits we are taking a step away from unspoken pre-conceived notions of progress toward an ideal based on more romantic vision than reality.

Reducing global undernourishment is a goal, I hope, we can agree on.  Turning the world into a patchwork of small organic farmers is a romantic vision.  Returning marginal land to a wild state is a goal.   Humanity evolving into a peaceful vegans is a utopian dream.

That secular society has retained the mental habits of thinking in terms of progress but it gets in the way.  Christendom is dead.  Diversity of opinion is deeply rooted in our culture and the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter each have different visions of progress.  It is much more fruitful to talk in terms of individual changes we want to make in society.

Progress is not the only theistic idea to be retained in our secular present.  The idea of the apocalypse continues to make the rounds in one form or another.  One decade we're headed to an ice age, in the next, global warming will cause the oceans to boil, peak oil, Y2K, the population bomb, and on and on.

Yes, climate change is happening.  Yes some of that change is a result of human activity.  The idea that change will result in the apocalypse, however is a faith based jump and I have sat through too many arguments about the rapture to be easily sold; Al Gore's poetic attempt to pull at my heartstrings notwithstanding.

Getting a little greener each year.

God is dead, but we've yet to settle his estate.

Injecting theistic habits of mind into strictly secular debates serves only to make rationale discussion more difficult than it needs to be.

How does this figure into a blog about hunting, fishing, the natural world, farming, and food more generally?  These issues serve as well springs of pseudo-religious thinking.

 The anti-GMO crowd's continues to influence crowds as they attempt to universalize their faith-based food taboo.  Change from GMO could mean yields go up.  Combined with the decreasing rate of population growth this means fewer acres would be required to meet human needs.  Marginal acres could be returned to forest or prairie.  This would be good for carbon reduction, wildlife, rain forests, and the malnourished.  Instead we argue about food taboos and a romantic vision of what farming "should be" instead of what is, we listen to our fears rather than facts.

Because we assume technological progress is the enemy of nature we ignore evidence that land-based plant life is thriving.  The earth is greener now than it was when the first astronauts looked down upon the blue pearl.  This has happen because we have applied high tech to farming not in spite of it.

This is change that should be cause for rejoicing but it is a heresy in certain circles of foodies and environmentalists who put ideology before results.  The ghost of a moralizing god lingers in their arguments.  Their vision of the promised land obscures data that suggests positive change could be found in a direction other than their "one true set" of beliefs.

Global warming apocalyptic thinking leads to shrill calls to subsidize solar or wind power at its current immature state instead of allowing the technology to continue to develop until it is viable on its own. Biofuel nonsense continues to support the idea of ethanol additives to gasoline, tying up 25% of our corn acreage.  Acreage that could be used for soy, wood products, or returned to a natural state.

Apocalyptic thinking also leads the global warming debate to focus on mitigation instead of adaptation.  If we're not all going to die in some Cormac McCarthy deathscape, we'd better get to work adapting our coasts for higher tides.  But having become convinced that what we face is not change but the apocalypse, we're tied up in arguments about whether Canadian oil will enter world markets through the United States or it own Pacific Coast.

The ghost of the holy continues to haunt us but the first step towards exorcising that ghost is to recognize it when it disrupts rational debate.  By watching our language, we manage our thoughts.  We're living in the Anthropocene.  It is time we started acting like it.

Diana's Day

The days are still warm but I can't help but notice they are getting shorter and I am starting to get an itch for hunting season.  

There must be something deep in the genome about this time of year.  Long before the DNR or even the concept of conservation fall was a time to remember the hunt and its goddess: Diana.

I live in a diverse household.  I am an atheist.  My wife follows an Anabaptist style of Christianity.  The dogs are into Zen and the cat is a straight up Nihilst.

None of us are pagans in any meaningful sense of the word.

I, however, like the vast majority of other human beings can appreciate a good rhythm to the seasons of the year and think it is meaningful, or at least enjoyable, to commemorate them.  So despite the furrowed brow of my wife, the dogs and I do a little something to mark the approach of the absolute best time of the year.

For the sake of household harmony there are no sacrifices or candles lit before idols and only the canines are allowed to dance naked before consuming some roadkill deer hoof that has been parked in the freezer.  

We clean out the hunting gear, oil up any firearms that need it, repack the plastic tote which carries all the tracking and hunting supplies I might need for the dogs.  I will set out my deer hunting clothes so the scent can naturalize before the September opener.

I have often thought of going vegetarian for the month between Diana's Day and the opening of the deer bow season.  I recall some old timers telling me once how this was their tradition believing that carnivorous humans and herbivorous humans smell differently to approaching deer.  Color me skeptical, either way, you smell like a human.  Still, the discipline would be welcome and it would add to the suspense of the approaching opener.

Still, I wish I were enough of a romantic to be able to wax lyrical about Diana, chaste and fair but really, I just want to go huntin'.

Longing to be Compleat

Hello.  My name is Phillip.  I have been asked by my friend Daniel to relate to you, dear reader, some details concerning my favored hobby.  I am an angler.  Using hook and line, I attempt to pull fish from their waters.  I invest many hours of my life, much sweat from my brow, and many dollars from my wallet in this pursuit. Sometimes fruitlessly.

I am participating in this blog to attempt to do something I have not yet been able to do.  Something that may not be, strictly speaking, accomplishable. I want to explain to you why I am an angler. I want to tell you not only how to fish, but why it is a valuable and pleasant exercise, what it can teach you about the world around you, and what it can help a you learn about yourself.

I would like to express what it feels like to be an angler.  Something that I don't think has been done for a very long time.

Since Izaak Walton wrote The Compleat Angler in 1653, there have been very few books on the topic of fishing to have any bearing on literature, or culture.  It is a bit of stretch to suggest that The Compleat Angler has even done this, but it does stick out as a bit of an oddity in the history of publishing.  It is a dialogue about a simple hobby, written by an otherwise unaccomplished author, aimed at a niche audience.  The book is half philosophical musing, half pre-scientific biological observations about fish and their habits.  And yet it is still in print, and has been in print almost continuously since it's first edition.

How did a weird book on an undramatic past time by a second rate writer stay in the collective consciousness?

Most writing on fishing focusses on how to accomplish the task: how to tie knots, how to bait hooks, how to find fish.  Perhaps the writer also waxes poetic on the beauty of this fish, or the scenery, or the artistry required to catch a certain fish.  Or, the writer commits the sin of cliche and exaggerates the drama of the hookset, the fight, the landing of the fish.  Soon, the writer is just another guy bragging about The Big One.

Walton does instruct the reader how to fish, and certainly waxes poetic, and brags on behalf of some of his closest friends.  I guess he sets the mood for all future fisherman in that way.  He also does something more important and more subtle.  Walton fills up most of his reflection on what makes the angler good.

It is important to Walton that angling does not simply pass the time, or put food on the table, or give him a story to relate to his friends.  Angling should also change the person who practices to for the better.  It should help the person cultivate some sort of internal virtues.

I share this sentiment with Walton.  I think that angling has helped me cultivate a variety of virtues, or at least identify the ones in which I am lacking.  And when I think of the best fisherman I know, I also think of some of the finest people I know.  Those possessing the virtues I most admire.

Sadly, Walton's work is long out of date.  Walton's Compleat Angler is a portrait of a man who has not existed for hundreds of years.  A man who has never faced a supermarket, or an interstate highway, or a freezer, or a video game, or nylon fishing line, or a mechanical fishing reel.  His fishing methods are baroque.  Most of the species he sought are not to be found outside of England.  His literary references, while charming and often lovely, are obscure and opaque to most modern readers.  The Compleat Angler is less and less accessible, and I fear that the virtues he celebrates will become less and less celebrated.

I cannot claim to be compleat.  I do not possess all of Piscator's virtues.  I have not mastered my craft. But I would like to.  Please, join me in the Anthropocene, and help me discover what it might be to be a Complete Angler in this new time, this new place.

Piscator: Sir, I hope you will not judge my earnestness to be impatience: and for my simplicity, if by that you mean a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were, as most Anglers are, quiet men, and followers of peace; men that were so simply wise, as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die; if you mean such simple men as lived in those times when there were fewer lawyers; when men might have had a lordship safely conveyed to them in a piece of parchment no bigger than your hand, though several sheets will not do it safely in this wiser age; I say, Sir, if you take us Anglers to be such simple men as I have spoke of, then myself and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood: But if by simplicity you meant to express a general defect in those that profess and practice the excellent Art of Angling, I hope in time to disabuse you, and make the contrary appear so evidently, that if you will but have patience to hear me, I shall remove all the anticipations that discourse, or time, or prejudice, have possessed you with against that laudable and ancient Art; for I know it is worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.

I will teach you how to fish.  I will teach you how to find fish.  I will occasionally wax poetic.  I will explore the virtues of angling.  All the while, I am sure I will remain incomplete.

My Bad Idea for the Weekend:

Nathaneal Johnson over at grist offers this essay on the morality of eating meat.  What I appreciate most is the introduction of the language of the virtues.  The idea has the effect of viewing how we eat meat less as a stain on the soul and more as a measure of excellence.  Johnson describes the position of author Paul Thompson's From Field to Fork.

Thompson’s solution is to treat vegetarianism the way religious traditions treat virtues. Christians strive to love their neighbors, but they don’t say that people who fail to reach Jesus-level self-sacrifice are immoral. Buddhists strive for detachment, but they don’t flagellate themselves when they fail to achieve it.

Thompson suggests that we should strive to do better by animals, but that doesn’t mean we should condemn ourselves for eating meat. There are lots of cases like this, he told me. “Some people are going to take these issues up in a way that other people would find really difficult,” Thompson said. “For instance, we all respect Mother Theresa for taking on amazing burdens, but we don’t say that you are evil for not doing it.” 

Living in the Anthropocene, of course I downloaded the new book to my tablet and look forward to digesting it this weekend.

Thompson promises to offer a good critique of my own position (coming in the first half of next week) which focuses primarily upon animal welfare.

Right. It’s hard to limit the “a life worth living is better than no life at all” argument to farm animals. Using the same argument we might raise children for the purpose of producing organs: As long as they were well cared for, ignorant of their fate, and painlessly slaughtered, you could say they had a life worth living. The clone gets a (short) life, a dying girl get a new heart, everyone wins! It’s rationally consistent, but certainly doesn’t feel right to me.

The essay, it does give voice to the animal welfare camp, and its concerns.  Temple Grandin does a such a good job discussing what animals want in housing and care that the essayist publish his entire interview with her.  In addition to discussing how some things have improved in the last decade she offers a very practical questions which should give the most fundamentalist of vegans pause,

Q. Getting back to egg-layers — I look at this with my human values and say I’d like the hens to be exposed to sunlight, and grass …A. Well, then it’s much more expensive. And we’ve got 25 percent of people in this country working minimum wage jobs and they gotta buy the cheapest eggs they can lay their hands on. I think eggs are a necessity — beef you could say is a luxury, but not eggs.

That space where philosophy and pragmatics grind against one another.  These are the good old days and I can't help but think that it is possible to live well, even in the technological wonderland of the Anthropocene.

Introductions

My name is Daniel and I am writing with my friend Phil.  We are members of the Anthropocene and, if you are reading this, so are you.  We are from middle America.  Our wages put us somewhere near "the 50%" of the richest and most advanced civilization in the history of the solar system.  

Philosophically, cosmically, geologically, these facts are pretty irrelevant.  Personally, however, it means that we are freed from the need to act reflexively in order to survive and able to attempt to live reflectively and strive for the varieties of excellence we value.

We share an enjoyment of the outdoors and believe that eating well includes a concern for the welfare and sustainability of the animals and ecosystems which exist around us.  We articulate our concerns differently and our conclusions are not identical.  Our hobbies, passions, and stomping grounds take different turns but they share a rhythm.

This blog is an attempt to give voice to that beat.  It is a discipline for ourselves and, we hope, valuable, or at least entertaining, to others.