The Ecology of Hope

Lecture: October 31, 2001

Brian Price & Rita Pougiales - Reading History


Introduction: Brian is the dean of first year programs; he is a historian, and he’s from Ireland… He designed this program.

First Brian had us sway around, like it was the muppet show, then we all wrote down something that we believed to be true and what books we based those beliefs on.

    Heidi wrote about deforestation and cited Reflections in Bulloughs Pond and Changes in the Land.

    Carolyn wrote about the U.S. being a patriarchy.

If you look in the introduction to Bulloughs Pond, you will see that Muir talks and has focused mainly on New England. As reading the book and the notes in the end, you will see that she only cites books- no television, no internet, no "personal experience." In order to support theories, we must rely and be confident on books- historians see books as the most serious and important source of information.

Evergreen is a bubble- it becomes easier to talk with people because most other people share your beliefs- many of us share the same basis of beliefs- there becomes the idea of Evergreen being "enlightened" and the rest of the world being unknowledgeable. There is, however, little use "preaching to the saved"- in order to survive and to make your case out in the "real world", your ideas must be grounded with strong ideas and strong arguments to back them up.

Gilberths- Frank Gilbreths and friend (name?) took video images of workers at the turn of the century and looked for the most efficient movements in creating product. Then, the company would change the wage from per hour to per piece of product. The workers would then have to shift to the Gilberth method of moving. In return, the facotry would be reshaped in a way that it was a bit less tiring for the workers. This increased production. The Gilberths argued that there were only 16 movements at the most that human beings (workers) used. Brian did his dissertation on the Gilberths- he had to read 100 shelf-feet of primary source documents and many other documents- all to write about two people. He believes that in order to understand humans now, we have to understand history. And because there are so many different aspects of the world and of people, things like bumper stickers and slogans can never really be true.

Rita - what it means to really discover and learn about an idea. Certain type of research or type of thinking that is historical- it is a different way of thinking than most of american society. What experiences have everyone had that makes you want to think historically?

"History repeats itself" that is the basis of our historical thought. How do we learn history- family, teachers, community, ancestory. Through our education system, it is very easy to become disenchanted with history- it often has a boring stigma, and we as a generation have very little understanding and knowledge of history.

How do we view history and how do we look at it? Sometimes we say that we would rather learn about today than learn about the shameful things that have happened in the past. There is little desire to revisit our mistakes.

Two schools of thought on learning:

Cognitive/anthropological- theory that we are built with thought and language- it is automatically set up in our brains from birth.

Developmental/ noam chomsky- something is not necessarily built in- we are not static- we being with experience, through that we know, through that we learn language, and from that comes thought- it goes into a cycle. Brody talks about it- he talks about the way Inuit children are raised- there is something intuitive in the children- and the way the are raised- how they are held, talk with, etc.- forms the basis for their life and who they are.


Homer Barnett- Reified- there are somethings we know, it is our basis, and sometimes there is something that is too far down, to imbedded in us to understand. The something that is too far down is what would be called reified. Something that seems so right to us, that has been so ingrained in our heads, such as the idea of equality, is very hard, if not almost impossible, to break from and think about other ideas without it. What would happen if we shifted our goals of equality to a goal or responsibility.
 

Brian: Reading Reflections on Bulloughs Pond, the death rates of the Native Americans once Europeans came was severe. How do a people survive when there are only two people left?

Question (James) Aren’t we just going downhill? If we look at history, aren’t we moving towards a crash?

Rita: that’s not good enough- I’m not ready to accept that.
 

Brian: How do our current conceptions invade the past? Muir attempts to explain American exceptionalism? Muir also talks about how native peoples changed and used the land. Fire being used to create deer parks so there is more to be eaten- increasing the production of deer while decreasing the animals that were there prior to humans birth. Muir argues that if we are going to say that Native Americans’ use of the land was minimal, we are wrong. In southern New England, they created deforestation and changed the land to the needs of their own. We cannot create a Native American exceptionalism - she argues that all humans have a certain set-up of the world. There is no evidence that the Native Americans would not be at the same point as we are now. The Yankees- they are the exceptions. Wealth and the interest in improving one’s economic condition is what makes Yankees exceptional. Keeping the standard of living up. Muir argues about Yankees with a contemporary mindset. She sticks with that logic in regard to native people; where she sticks with that logic with native peoples, she misses it with Yankees. That brings an ecological current mindset into historical thinking. She does a very good job with natural ideas but misses on ecological ideas. Her use of an exceptional idea about the Yankees does not match up when she uses that with ecology and economics. Yankees wanted to go to the new world to find a place full of resources and money. They do not go there to find a garden of eden; rather the new colonies fit into their mindset as a part of economic relationships. The colonies offer resources, etc. If you think in terms of ecological footprint analysis (you take one person and determine how much land and resources it takes for one to survive) you can get an estimate of human consumption. The average American consumes 310 times goods than an Ethiopian. Muir does a very good job describing the impact of Yankees on New England, but does not look at how they affected other places through out the world. The native peoples ecological footprint is only based in New England. The Yankees impact is cut up into little pieces throughout the world. The increase in the standard of living of Yankees is a function of the decrease of the standard of living of other peoples.

What happnes when the range of ideas that historians bring into history come from an ahistorical sensiblity? Through that- you can understand why history is an argument- not a list of people and places- about how to interpret those people and places. It’s not just dead stories about dead ancestors.

Thank you Brian!