Rate my response, please

Metaphysics and Epistemology
1

The quote:

“We are aware of no separation between caring for the land and caring for our fellow human beings, and the exploitation of the earth and the exploitation of human beings are part of the same sickness: a lack of connections among one another. Racism, sexism, pollution, drug abuse, causing the extinction of species, and war are all results of that disconnectedness.” from “Faith and Practice”, NEYM, 1985

My response:

A romantic concept, but overly simple and irrational - fatally flawed at best, and hateful of human life at worst.

The food one eats, the clothes one wears, the homes one lives in - all of these are “exploited” from the land. What should a people do to stop the exploitation, return to a hunter-gatherer society state? Even the hunter-gatherers exploit the land. All living things save the simplest plants live at the cost of other living things. Should we seek then to annihilate all that lives save for algae?

Exploitation of people shows an irrational lack of respect for their equality to ourselves. Exploitation of the land (in, of course, a non self-destructive manner) is all life’s basis of survival.

2

Not bad at all, imho. I’m not sure I would characterize their position as romantic, more degenerate than anything.

Other issues with their position.

“We are aware of…”

Awareness is not the arbiter of right and wrong or ethical action. You speak of the desire for “connection” and yet assert that your group is the moral authority for all living beings and inanimate objects on the sole basis of what it’s members see and understand. Your position is an exemplar of militant “us vs. them” ideology. It is permanently disconnected from the rest of your own species and your only method of attaining the highest value you proclaim is to remove “them” from your awareness. Inevitably it will end in the permanent “disconnecting” of dissenters, meaning producers and innocents, from their own property and lives. People who hate human life always have, and always will, make themselves the moral authority and make someone else the problem to be solved. You will produce a final cure for the “sickness” you see in humanity eventually, some who hold your views already have. The only difference is that the human ash won’t be allowed to drift away from the furnaces on the wind, and the bones of your victims will not be buried. The ash you’ll use as fertilizer to “care for the land”; the bones flung into the sea to seed a coral reef to house our sea brothers.

Then you will turn on each other as you starve out of respect for your equal earth and animal friends. Until someone again makes a tool and humans once again “exploit” the earth for our needs.

But then, I tend to wax poetic. Thanks for the opportunity to do so, Greebo. Good luck with the debate. :wub: