...Discussion Questions Week 1, BIO 321 - Building an Eco-economy Timothy McCauley, 10/21/2013 1) What is the main cause for the fall of past civilizations? As archeologists take time to study civilizations from the past, one factor stands clear, resource exploitation was their downfall. Studies of, Easter Island, Petra and the Anasazi Indians near Chico Canyon, the ancient people that once populated these locations took from Mother earth everything she had to offer without regard to the future. Taking from the land, this way seems to be the major reason for the downfall of civilizations past. 2) How stable do you think our current economy and civilization is? Our world is slowly grinding to a halt. Governments are falling on shaky ground financially as the economy is destroying the support systems needed to survive. We continue to take from the limited amount of natural resources without regard to the future. There appears to be less cropland available to meet the growing demands of a hungry and ever-increasing population. Pastures are being over-grazed creating more and more desert. The fossil fuel diet of the world is consuming oil faster than any other time in history. Fish are being harvested from the oceans beyond the ability of nature to replenish them. Finally, it has been noted that clean water is at an all time low. 3) How feasible is it to change from “business as usual” to a more sustainable eco-economy? How long will this process take? Everyone...
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...Rome was one of the greatest civilizations the world will ever see. They gained their power from conquering other civilizations and empires. At one point, Rome had the entire Mediterranean under their control. It had one of the greatest armies, logical architecture, and beautiful art. So why did the great empire fall? Despite being a great civilization, Rome still had it’s fair share of problems to deal with in their own way. First of all, disease and disasters would be a problem for any of the great civilizations in the Mediterranean. The measles, a rash and blight of the Roman Empire, spread throughout most empires concerning even the greats like Rome. Not to mention Rome was home to some traumatizing natural disasters including the earthquake...
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...In the world of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, everyone is happy, society is stable and peaceful, and the world seems like a utopia. Every person enjoys life and faces no problems or deals with hardships. In reality, the civilization is stable, but only because everyone chooses not to deal with their problems and escapes multiple displeasures through different means. Happiness is prioritized over everything else and everyone chooses to remain happy instead of facing truth or other conflicts. The civilization in Brave New World thus, is more dystopian than utopian. The major detrimental effects of this society are its use of escapism as an everyday application, and how that it deteriorates the psychology of each person. The detrimental effects of this society apply to the real world....
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...per year is 21.3 billion tonnes and our environment can only displace half of that amount, which leads to the pollution of our atmosphere. If the human race continues on its use of heavy fossil fuels the global warming crisis will only become worse along with our living conditions. The process which is used in science is called the scientific method. The scientific method starts with making a hypothesis or a theory, then through testing and researching come to a conclusion about the research they have done. Along with testing and researching the experiment must be able to be reproduced to show that it is a reliable source to base the scientist’ conclusion on. Through the scientific method we are able to find answers and solutions to the problems, questions, and the effect we have on the human life. After reading an article on the Business Insider website I was able to find out that according to the EPA, “A human life...
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...Humanity Knowingly Crashing the Planets Natural Resources Progress is defined as a forward or onward movement towards a goal or destination. The film “Surviving Progress” explains the progress humanity as a whole has made and the progress we continue to make. Filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks show how much progress humans are making and how we have become into a progress trap with too much progress eventually leading to disaster and dead ends. No matter what humanity is always making progress in our civilization, economy, technology, and more; only problem, we’re making progress non-stop creating an eventual crash and destruction of Earth’s natural resources. Ronald White argues that humanity is in what he calls a “progress trap” which he explains “I came up with the term progress trap to define human behaviors that sort of seem to be good things, seem to be, to provide benefits in the short-term, but which ultimately lead to disaster, because they’re unsustainable.” Humanity as a whole has reached what is considered a “progress trap” many times already and is in the process of falling into deeper “progress traps” than ever with technology and our economics. In the past, as an example given by Ronald White, Hunting turned into a dead end when our ancestors were hunting to make their living. They went from killing one mammoth at a time and struggling to do so, to killing a whole heard of mammoths by running them over a cliff. This pushed them into a “progress trap”....
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...Every wonder why Americans have the Constitution? Or why different countries have different laws? It’s for keeping everyone in line. No one wants to live in a country or area where everyone is free to do what they want, there needs to be some kind of governing that helps keep everyone from getting out of control. Different ways to handle that have been used back in ancient times. Take Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece for example, they both had ways, including the types of governing and their military force. The Greeks and Egyptians both had problems with keeping their civilization in line, and their solutions to their problem were both similar and different. One solution the Greek had for keeping their civilization in line included having a...
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...decent/moral behavior. • What we believe to be immoral behavior in fact can be grounded in an ethical code. – 9/11 for example. Al-Qaeda’s code of ethics identify their action as morally justified and mandated • Terms • Moral nihilism – View that there are no morally right or wrong viewpoints, that the whole moral issue is a cultural game. – Neither your nor my opinion matter because there is no moral right or wrong. – Difficult to uphold because it’s extreme. • Terms • Moral skepticism – We can’t know if there are moral truths or not. – Problem, how do you make moral judgments • Moral subjectivism – Moral views are to each individual and we can’t know the inner states from one person to another. – Problem, this approach has no problem solving capability. • • Soft Universalism • Belief that deep down, despite cultural differences, there exist basic moral principles that can be agreed on. • Allows for problem solving capability between cultures and ideas. • Hard Universalism • AKA…Moral absolutism • Holds that there is one absolute and universal moral code • Most often supported by ethical theories. • Descriptive and Normative Ethics • Important terms for any ethical theory • Descriptive ethics – An ethical theory that merely describes what is seen as fact. – Describes what is actually done or thought • In the US it generally isn’t considered immoral to eat meat. • Normative Ethics – Makes moral judgments, evaluations or justifications...
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...countries. This data has been accepted as fact but in actuality these assumptions contain more fiction that validity. Arens has addressed this issue by scrutinizing these documents and providing secondary information that sheds light on the initial discoveries. Anthropophagy has been an ongoing topic for thousands of years. Cannibals are viewed as exotic, barbaric people whom lack the civilization to realize their customs are inane and fundamentally wrong. Due to this fact, foreign communities have been labeled cannibals to justify ethnocentric views and actions: “This avenue of inquiry has led to the conclusion that our culture, like many others, finds comfort in the idea of the barbarian just beyond the gates.”(p.184) Anthropologists, for this reason, have substantiated accusations of cannibalism or anthropophagy without concrete evidence supporting these statements. “…and almost every anthropologist considers it a sacred duty to report that the people studied and lived among were in the past or just recently eaters of their own kind.”(p.8-9) This agenda is detrimental in finding the actual characteristic of a people because the researchers’ views become clouded by the cannibalistic fascination. Anthropologist began to formulate ficticous accounts of anthropophagy by...
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...diverse—from either an ideological or practical perspective. From the early stage of Chinese history, absolute unanimity was rarely found in the issue regarding governing the economy and commerce. In fact, disagreements or ambivalent views prevail. For example, Discourse on Salt and Iron from Han dynasty reveals, officers believe government interventions in industry like salt and iron are beneficial to the welfare of the entire country and “are intended to circulate accumulated wealth and to regulate consumption according to the urgency of need” (Ebrey, Chinese Civilization 63). As each side lists either the benefit or the shortcomings, it is clear that the learnt men and the minister hold completely different perspectives with learnt men oppose effective government regulation whereas the officer supports. As the record of this debate contains twenty-four chapters and the first chapter included in Chinese Civilization contains four pages (Ebrey 60), it is reasonably to infer that not only there is disagreement, but also that level of dissention was intense. On the other side, in the Discourse on Salt and Iron (Ebrey 60-63) reveals the opposition to governmental monopolies in salt and iron and almost all government intervention. Scholars or “the learned men” believes that “These matters [economy and commerce] should not...
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...The Death of A Prominent Language: Sumerian Cuneiform In many instances, Sumerian text has been influential to the ways of writing we have today. Sumerians were the first ancient civilization to start archiving the rules of writing that we use in present day. The lexicon of Sumerian language has yet to be fully deciphered; this is due to a lack of information. We have been studying Sumerian language since before the outbreak of WWI. Input from many different cultures in the attempt to decide if this language is truly the oldest recorded language in history, has led to our current level of knowledge on Sumerian language. Germany started full-scale investigations, while the French were the first to discover actual writing from this ancient culture. This paper is meant to elaborate upon the knowledge of Sumeria and its peoples writing styles. Ancient Sumerian language is thought to be the oldest written language in history. This may or may not be the case (Huffington Post, 2009). Findings in the area of determining the age of some written languages are uncertain. But for the most part, Sumerian is a definite running mate for the title of oldest written language. Sumerian was first started to be put into writing around 3200 BCE (Academia.edu, 2007). The main reason for the start of this was for agricultural purposes. Clay counters were used to keep track of how many plants were sealed into a container. Those counters were hard to keep track of, therefore, Sumerians came...
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...Clash of Civilizations In 1993 Samuel Huntington wrote an article titled “Is there a clash of civilizations”. The thesis was very much born in the context of the end of the cold war. The idea of “clash of civilizations” suggests that twenty-first century global order will be characterized by growing tension and conflict between rival cultures or civilizations, as opposed to the political, ideological or economic conflict of old. Huntington furthermore argued that the world was split into 9 different civilizational orders, and the West would clash with all of them, but in particular it would clash with the Islamic world, Japan and Russia. The realists have given little attention to the issue of identity or cultural politics. They focus on the behavior of states. However the liberals have recognized this thesis to some extent. Huntington’s view that the West would clash with the Islamic world was vindicated after the September 11th terrorist attacks, neoconservatives looking for a response distanced themselves from Huntington’s rhetoric. Neoconservative George W Bush was keen to emphasize that not all Muslims were to blame for 9/11, and indeed it was just a tiny minority of extremists holding the Islamic world back. Whereas Huntington had argued that the Islamic world was hostile to western ideas of liberal democracy, George W Bush ignored this insight and fought two wars to try and bring democracy to the Middle East, ignoring Huntington’s claim that there would be a backlash...
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...Matt Cannis Western Civilization Essay question #1 October 13th, 2012 The main key to the civilization of Egypt was the Nile River. The Nile over flowed once a year leaving deposits of minerals and fertile black soil, which made it the richest agricultural region in the Mediterranean world(17). The whole civilization ran up and down the Nile, no more than fourteen miles away in either direction. Egyptian history was divided into three periods called kingdoms(Old, Middle, New and two intermediate periods). Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, lower in the north and upper in the south, since the Nile flows from south to north. Two of the major cities were actually developed in Lower Egypt, Nekhen and Abydos(18). The two communities were pretty developed for their time. Pharaohs(which means “great household”) were appointed to rule over Egypt(19).They formed their own political organization, religion, industry, and new ideas. We know the least about the history of the Old Kingdom. Historians relied on texts from the deceased. They came to discover that the Egyptians were very keen on the aspect of death. We do however find out a lot about the Pharaohs. They were considered the link between the land, people, and their gods(21). Taxes, trade, and labor were all administered by the Pharaoh as well. Even though the Pharaoh was in so much power, they needed help. So they appointed “governors” called nomarchs, which usually was from their family. Since Egypt was so huge, communication...
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...are thousands of known myths and stories and thousands of legends but only some have been proven to have some truth behind the myth. Legends can date back thousands of years and in lots of cultures are passed down through generations orally. Sum legends are so popular that they are known all over the world and a person could give sum information on the legend just from hearing about it. An example of this would be the Legend of Atlantis! Known all over the world Atlantis is one of the most popular legends of all time. Its story dates back to around 420 BC maybe even before then. It was first told about by a philosopher by the name of Plato in his Critias and Timaeus dialogues, the first recorded references to Atlantis. (Atlantis – Lost Civilization) Plato claimed that Atlantis was a huge island in the Atlantic Ocean the size of North Africa. (Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, by Ignatius Donnelly, [1882]) He told of the people and that they were unusually educated and technologically advanced far greater than other cultures at the time. (Summary of the legend) According to Plato the result of a massive flood possibly bought on by a Earthquake or submarine volcanic explosion caused the great city to sink below the sea.(Summary of the legend) Now for thousands of years people have been debating whether Plato’s “lost city” was fact or fiction. Many Scientist such as Professor Charles H. Hapgood, of Keene State College at the University of New Hampshire believe that there could have...
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...“If we do not take action to solve this crisis, it could indeed threaten the future of human civilization. That sounds shrill. It sounds hard to accept. I believe it's deadly accurate. But again, we can solve it.” These words were spoken from Al Gore; the crisis he speaks of is global warming. Global warming is defined as the overall increase in Earth’s average temperature due to greenhouse gas emissions. This climate change has been a growing problem for many years. Al Gore properly states that the consequences can be fatal to our civilization, but he, also, states that we can help pacify the damages. Scientists have suggested many solutions. Reduce your carbon footprint, which is the amount of carbon dioxide gas that you emit into our atmosphere. This can be done by minor fixes like using cold water to wash your clothes. A different, more complex, approach to reducing our carbon footprint proposes a range of technical fixes, one being placing millions of mirrors into orbit around Earth in order to reflect some of the Sun’s energy. Both fixes would reduce our energy usage, which would, in turn, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, thoughts on the actual efficiency of these fixes differ when looked at from an economist’s point of view and from an environmentalist’s. Economically, minor fixes are very efficient. It is very affordable and can easily be installed with no major labor. However, the major technical fixes would not be looked at with so much...
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...Christopher Columbus: The Original American Hero? Was Columbus a hero or a villain? Maybe it’s neither. Columbus was brave and daring, and did things that were important to world history. But he wasn’t heroic in the sense of displaying great moral qualities. Courage, while generally a good character trait, isn’t necessarily heroic or even highly honorable and praiseworthy unless it’s deployed in certain kinds of actions or causes. But he also wasn’t especially villainous in the sense of displaying particular evil qualities. His arrival in the Americas caused a great deal of death to American Indians, chiefly from disease. And it caused the subjugation and literal or virtual enslavement of the Indians. But this didn’t stem from Columbus’s being an unusually evil person. It stemmed from the brutality of the time, coupled with the contact between one culture that was much more powerful than another (and that carried many communicable diseases to which members of the other culture lacked resistance). I’m inclined to say that we shouldn’t celebrate Columbus Day, precisely because such national celebrations should be focused on honoring people who did things that were both especially important and especially honorable (such as veterans, President Washington, or Martin Luther King, Jr.) and not just on people who did things that were especially important. This might conceivably include not-necessarily-good people who did things that were unambiguously good. But European expansion...
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