Tag: climate change

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A Priori, Climate Change and Technology

The last lecture we attended from Colby’s Keith Peterson was very interesting and enlightening in relation to our previous discussions. I hadn’t thought in philosophical terms for a while but I thought many of the things Professor Peterson brought into discussion were directly related to our presence of the past theme. Philosophy in general is a very strong example of this concept and theme because many of the most prominent philosophical thinkers proposed some of the most perplexing philosophical questions hundreds of years ago. Philosophy is also a prime example of the presence of the past theme because it incorporates every aspect of our existence and therefor can be applied to nearly every issue we deal with in our contemporary age.

 

Professor Peterson really honed in on Kantian philosophy and the concept of a priori, which refers to things prior to experience that we use to categorize and understand the world around us. This concept related directly back to previous lectures from this series and the recurring theme of climate change. Again it was discussed that humans are not fully capable of understanding or battling this idea of the climate crisis. Many people cannot even believe the problem despite evidence being right in front of them and this is because the scope of the problem is so massive that we feel little direction about how to deal with it. We have nothing throughout our previous experiences that tell us how to deal with such a gigantic issue and our experiences throughout history have made us feel comfortable that a solution will present itself eventually. This is not the case with such a tremendous and important issue like global climate change and we need to change our mindset and lifestyles in order to combat it.

 

Professor Peterson also discussed prejudice, which is another extremely relevant topic in our contemporary age as emotions are running high and racism still remains in the fore of many cultures. Professor Peterson stated that prejudice is a pre-judgment that is lacking validity because it is often justified from things that happened in the past or things that never even occurred in the first place. It mostly stems from discussions about people that differ from us, which leads to people forming invalid opinions.

 

I think the importance of a priori is clear but I think it is interesting to consider what it means for us in our modern contemporary age where people are spending more time than ever before looking at a screen. How relevant is past knowledge when a majority of it is available at all hours a day at the tip of our fingertips, and how can we measure the importance of each past experience or encounter when there are countless encounters possible through the internet and new technology on scales never before seen? I think when considering this idea in combination with our modern world, it becomes clear that a priori should be impacting people to combat big issues like climate change simply through repeated exposure online. When I was younger I feel like many people still could calmly brush off worries about climate change, but now I feel more and more people recognize the significance of the issue and I think this is a small step but obviously there is still a lot of work to be done.

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Science and The Humanities: A Recipe for Success

On March 11th, Wai Chee Dimock, a english professor at Yale University, added to our series through a lecture titled, “William Blake and Elizabeth Bishop in the Anthropocene.” The speaker selected literary works by these two poets and really elaborated on how science and the humanities must merge in order to facilitate public understanding of highly relevant environmental  issues. My first impression of the lecture was how it was somewhat similar to a previous talk by Georgetown Professor Nathan K. Hensley regarding “Action After Nature: Climate Crisis & the Force of Literature.” Professor Hensley’s lecture highlighted the importance of the relationship between thought and action, and how it is influenced by past events. I found it fascinating how Professor Dimock drew parallels between the works of Bishop and Blake just how Professor Hensley connected Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to a transitionary period. Having made this connection early on, I paired my previously formulated opinions about this field with Professor Dimock’s knowledge to further understand the parallels between science and the written word.

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Our Society is in Wonderland

Going into this lecture given just the name, I thought this presentation was going to be different from what it actually was. I imagined a typical climate change talk, discussing the impacts of climate change, what it’s doing to our society, and the measures we can take to lesson the disastrous impacts/push it off for longer. I was surprised, however, to find that it was nothing like I expected.

Nathan K. Hensley’s Action After Nature: Climate Crisis & the Force of Literature, was an interesting approach to climate change, pairing the study of climate change with literature. To be honest, I thought the pairing was a little bit of a reach, and actually confused be quite a bit. Maybe I am just not educated enough on climate change or literature or am just having trouble grasping the idea of combining the two, but I left the lecture feeling quite confused. Reflecting now, however, I am starting to better understand what he was trying to say. His use of Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor at first seemed like a big reach, but now I understand that Alice was living in world that she was unfamiliar with—just like we are currently living in a world that is new and changing.

The comparison of literature to climate change made sense in the fact that literature is formed within the context of contemporary issues. When talking about Alice and Wonderland, it was interesting to think about it in a different way, since the last time I read/listened to the book was when I was a child. He talked about how Alice tried to apply the same rules from her own world to this new world she entered, which was a mistake. This comparison made a lot of sense to me. In contemporary times, we act as though nothing has changed and all rules remain the same, even though they clearly don’t. The world is an ever-changing place and new ways of being come and go—we can’t just live the same way our grandparents lived anymore, we must change our way of doing things. Alice realized her way of being no longer worked in this new world and had to change in order to fit in and understand the new world. Climate change is changing our world—stronger storms, increased temperatures, rising sea levels—are all becoming more prominent. As a society we need to understand that this is the new world we lived in, not the past world, and go from there. Hensley refers to Hurricane Harvey here, and how Harvey was a storm that would occur very infrequently, maybe even every 1000 years. However, storms like Harvey are happening more and more often, and our society has to adjust to this new climate that is creating these disastrous storms.

This lecture, although it confused me a bit, was a very relevant and an important discussion for this lecture series. This related greatly to the “Presence of the Past” because he talked about the current world we live in by understanding the past, through literature.

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To Cure Climate Change, We Must Rebuild Our Thought Process

On February 25th, Nathan K. Hensley, a professor from Georgetown University, gave an insightful talk titled “Action After Nature: Climate Crisis & the Force of Literature.” He began his talk highlighting the importance of the relationship between thought and action, and how it is influenced by past events. He was forward in giving his opinion on how everything we are now, is an expression what has been. From this, he drew the comparison to our physical body, the air we breathe, and the words we speak. I found it particularly interesting how he went into how we speak the past – as we speak the “language of the dead.” We are able to tell from moments into his lecture how Dr. Hensley has a passion for what he was talking about. He employed humor and powerful language into his talk which left a lasting impression. I also enjoyed how he illustrated non-obvious parallels from points of his past to the topic of his lecture. It was not until into about ten minutes into his talk that the class room got a full understanding of the purpose of the talk, which was to prove the powerful force which literature plays in our collapsing ecological world.

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From Transition, To Action, To End

Dr. Hensley’s lecture was a fascinating addition to our growing understanding of the presence of the past, as it brought up the relevant and ever-increasing modern issue of climate change and environmental decay, and matched it with two-hundred-year-old literature. That pairing initially seemed to be a little bit of a reach to me, but the lecture quickly proved how unfounded that concern really was. As we near the apparent end of this industrial-focused period, it really does make a lot of sense to go back and look at the beginning of it. And, as Dr. Hensley suggested, where better to look for the common views and social or cultural environment surrounding the literal environment than in the literature of the time? Dr. Hensley’s lecture on his work reminded the audience, including myself, that literature is never written in a vacuum, and is formed within the context of contemporary issues. Continue reading “From Transition, To Action, To End”