Professor Peterson from Colby gave an intriguing talk on the relationship between German philosophy and the environmental change that we have observed over the last several decades. Most environmentally driven talks that we have held at Colby have all addressed important aspect about specific environments and their larger role within the global ecosystem. However, Professor Peterson decided to change the form of speech and talk more directly on the issue between German philosophy and environmental change.
During the talk, Professor Peterson alluded to some of the great philosophers such as Emmanuel Kant. Peterson focused on the idea surrounding priori, the feeling held before one experiences something, to better understand the dynamic relationship between the anthropogenic effects on the environment. He postulates that the idea of priori is why our human nature has gone against us in terms of making real environmental progress. The analysis that Peterson discussed was both in-depth and intriguing because of the angle he took to approach the topic of change. Peterson went on to talk about analyses done on the brain and how this correlates to his stance on the topic. This was especially interesting because of the compelling evidence that he presented. The idea that humans will not necessarily act under risk is something that I support. This is always obviously seen through how most people treat the environment that they live in. Humans will essentially wait until the last minute to change – we are naturally averse to change.
There remains a plethora of examples that can be used as a case study for this assertion. The whole idea of the Tragedy of the Commons would attest to this position. The fact that we have organizations, people and even nations that will commit to releasing hazardous waste without regulation is a perfect example of this. Instead of incurring the cost to properly dispose of waste, companies and people will side step the process and dispose waste for free in unregulated areas. This in-turn will negatively effect our community and environment, which we all have to pay for. This issue is not only engrained in the idea of greed but it is also institutionalized in many places. The global conscious movement has only been around for several decades and has only made real change within the last few decades. The idea of changing old habits disturbs many people and businesses that do not understand the risk that is being placed on our planet.
If you applied this idea to the overarching idea of climate change, it can easily be seen. We now, due to technical advancements, have been able to understand our brain and the way it operates at a much deeper level. Taking this fact, we can see the people are actually against the idea of change and would rather maintain with the status quo. The only real way to get out of this mindset is to push against our natural inclinations and realize that we have an issue that is putting us and frankly humanity at risk. Further, the issue presented needs to be scaled to entire populations who believe and understand this. One person is able to make a change but together, we can accomplish much more and much faster. I believe that this talk was very productive and gave a lot of insight on the issue of change. I would like to hear more talks like this and highly recommend including this in the lecture circuit in the future.