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December 15th, 2008 — David Scheel, Environment
by David Sheel
Some years ago, while travelling in the Amazon, I found myself involved in the rescue of a three-toed sloth which had endangered itself by accidentally wandering into the territory of a carnivorous ocelot. While we were busy trapping and trussing up the unfortunate animal, my local guide asked me if I had ever eaten sloth. Of course I had not, and asked him what it tasted like.
“Oh, just like monkey.” Which left me none the wiser.
November 16th, 2008 — David Scheel, Environment
by David Scheel
At the recent 20-20 talkfest – for that is all it was – a government arts spokesperson stated that Australia’s goal should be to “double its cultural output by the year 2020”. If ever there was an artistic mantra delivered by a bean counter, this has to be it. What does “doubling our cultural output” mean, except an affirmation that quantity is more important than quality? Pushed to absurdist limits, we can only assume that if there was a great Australian opera composer, called Merv Wagner, each of his Ring Cycle operas would have to last eight hours, instead of four. Or that T.E. Lawrence would write a personal testimony entitled “Fourteen Pillars of Wisdom”. Or yet that we would double the number of visual and performing artists, and somehow achieve this in a climate of savage cutbacks in arts budgets, thus leaving even more of our creative talents working full time on incomes below the official poverty line.
September 4th, 2008 — David Scheel, Philosophy
By David Scheel
“And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?”
Khalil Gibran
In his Discours de la Mèthode, the 17th century philosopher/mathematician, Renè Descartes, commented that because animals are unable to formulate words, they therefore cannot formulate any but the simplest of thoughts and emotions, thus rendering them intellectually, even spiritually, inferior to humankind. Now, 370 years on, Descartes still has a lot to answer for, since this attitude to non-humans has imprinted itself on our collective psyche.
The problem is that Descartes confused language with communication, and even communication is not what sets us apart from our fellow travellers on planet Earth. It is conceptualisation, the ability to think in the abstract, which is the foundation stone of our uniqueness.
September 1st, 2008 — David Scheel, Environment
By David Scheel
Continuing his focus on how the West imposes its will on other cultures and the environment – having last month discussed how we manipulate language to assert an image of intellectual, even spiritual dominance – David now explores globalisation in the modern, ‘moneytheistic’ society.
For many of us, including (I am sure) the majority of readers of this magazine, globalisation is a dirty word. But why should something which is viewed as a purely commercial undertaking have any lasting impact on the environment?
August 30th, 2008 — David Scheel, Environment
Image by nyki_m via Flickr By David Scheel
I have a confession to make: when I first heard about carbon credits, and even before I fully understood what they were, I was intuitively opposed to them. “That’s not very scientific” I hear you cry. No, it is not, but it just so happens that when carbon credits were first touted as a solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the then US President, George Herbert Walker Bush, publicly declared himself an avid believer in the scheme.
Now, President Bush, and for that matter his son, the incumbent, are both oil men, who have made fortunes in one of the world’s most energy inefficient countries. Therefore, frankly, I was suspicious, and subsequent research has shown that my suspicions were well founded.
