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#Post#: 94--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 4: New England...
By: jterry2020 Date: January 10, 2019, 8:33 pm
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In response to Casey’s questioning of the time spent on the
various diseases, I agree that it was confusing. It definitely
gave the reader a feeling of the horrific effects of the
epidemics, but it also felt repetitive. It was especially
confusing because the end of the essay was attempting to figure
out the Native American population at the time and what impact
the diseases had on it, but ended up not coming to a clear
conclusion, leaving the reader without concrete knowledge of the
scale of the damage.
#Post#: 95--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 4: New England...
By: ccogswell Date: January 10, 2019, 8:58 pm
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[quote author=mayafb link=topic=5.msg86#msg86 date=1547170701]
[quote author=ccogswell link=topic=5.msg76#msg76
date=1547164003]
Well, that was extremely and unequivocally upsetting. I, too, am
left with questions. This reading is making me think more about
the human cost of “progress” - but what is progress? And how do
we measure it? Because if the landscape of an entire continent
is changed in a process that kills tens of thousands, is that
really progress at all? Kelly mentioned historical progress and
how it always seems to worsen the environment, but that's where
I disagree. I believe the progress currently being made is not
worsening the environment. It's not making it better, nor is it
working towards a solution/reversal for the damage humans have
been causing for centuries. But I think our current progress is
going in the right direction because it is, for the first time
in history, conscious of how we are destroying the environment
and working towards a way to be better. After all, 2019 isn't
the year of the vegan for no reason, y'all.
Additionally, I’m confused why Europeans in America did not face
a like threat of disease. Was it because syphilis and
tuberculosis existed in Europe, and they were not completely
unexposed to the germs? I know tuberculosis reached epidemic
proportions eventually, but does this have any connection to the
environment? Also, how did the bubonic plague get carried to
America in the 1600s? I wouldn’t expect anyone to be actively
carrying the disease, at least not outside of the 1350s. I think
the main issue here is my lack of understanding concerning the
transfer of disease and how that works, but still.
[/quote]
In response to the questions about progress, I just want to say
that I am also struggling with these. If progress is toward good
and away from bad. And if that connection is set up (which is
how I at least think of it), then the natural world is backward
in progression? That means that the human progress is aimed at a
greater good, and if I think like Kelly (which I am not sure
that I do), then the progress is also harming the earth. So all
of this leads me to believe that the supposed "virgin" land is
bad and the supposed land after "progress" is bad.
(Of course what the meaning of bad and all that should probably
be defined but I am using it more general... (sorry Sam Simpson,
you would so challenge me on that)
And some of us can't be vegan because they are borderline
anemic... honestly still mystified how you are healthy but
amazed.
8)
[/quote]
Wow, bold of you to assume that I'm healthy lol. But - there's
iron in soybeans, tofu, lentils, spinach, avocado, grain
products... so no need to worry about deficiencies.
#Post#: 96--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 4: New England...
By: Reed Date: January 10, 2019, 9:00 pm
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I was taken aback by the universal reliance on wood. The falls
of several prominent native American groups is tied to wood
depletion, as well as the descriptions of European reliance (and
covetousness, apparently) on wood in Canaan and the later parts
of Eden. I guess this resource was not something my history
classes ever spoke of much; nobody ever saw fit to sit me down
and explain that wood made the world go round before we started
using coal or crude. I was particularly struck by the line
“Narragansett Indians theorized that the English came to Rhode
Island because they had no firewood in England.” (86)
It makes sense: wood made their buildings, heated them, cooked
their food, and probably made a bunch of their tools and art as
well. But even though the environmental impact is probably just
as awful for wood and for crude or natural gas, I feel like a
lot of people nowadays reading a text like this would feel a lot
more horrified to witness the forests in their area stripped.
Cutting down trees has discernable aesthetic as well as
geographic impact (erosion, decreased soil quality from runoff,
sedimentation and silting).... And people know how long it takes
for trees to grow as living beings. Whereas, crude oil is far
more subtle. Electricity arrives at your house without really
having to think much about it, at the flip of a switch as
opposed to the chopping, processing, and building of a wood
fire. You know what it is, does, and looks like, but even though
it’s a finite resource, I feel like people are far more divorced
with the consequences of drilling and fracking, because at least
in my quarters, people aren’t practically dealing with the
consequences of global warming yet.
All of this to voice my concerns about how globalism might make
the inevitable population pressure stretch to the absolute limit
on earth, and delay all of our deaths. The environment seems so
much more easily regulated when people live in small worlds and
feel the consequences of taking too much out of the environment.
#Post#: 97--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 4: New England...
By: JTodd Date: January 10, 2019, 9:06 pm
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Reading Krech was not a happy experience. If I were to sum up
the experience in emoji form it would certainly be this emoji:
???
To quote one of my peers who put it better than an emoji, [quote
author=kellyf link=topic=5.msg75#msg75 date=1547160867]
Reading through these essays, especially Eden, brought more
questions than answers...Is it always worse?
[/quote]
Let us not be too down in the dumps about this! Let's turn that
??? into more of an 8).
I would like to relate this down in the dumps feeling back to
what Cronon talked about in his introduction to "Using
Environmental History." Cronon described his college students as
having a similar not-so-good feeling about the environment at
the end of the course, "...I was taken aback to discover that,
despite my students' enthusiasm for the course, the vast
majority seemed profoundly depressed by what they had
learned..." (Cronon 2). Cronon also stated, "Whether or not my
students' sense of despair was justified, I do not believe it is
a very useful emotion, either personally or politically."
So let us not despair. Let us only rejoice at the chance to
learn how we can better this world by knowing our mistakes of
the past.
#Post#: 98--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 4: New England...
By: JTodd Date: January 10, 2019, 9:19 pm
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[quote author=Casey A link=topic=5.msg88#msg88 date=1547172134]
Okay, so I have made it through a good chunk of the reading and
I think now would be a good time to post. The Eden section
seems very repetitive talking about how beautiful everything is
for the first few pages before becoming many pages talking only
about illness. This makes me wonder, what is the author’s
purpose in this. I feel like we the audience may not understand
the true exstensity of the wrath of the illness that plagued
Native Americans, so the author wants to elaborate as much as
possible as to help us understand more of how bad it actually
was. Also the contrast between beauty and illness might be made
to highlight how we think of this time period without fully
knowing all of the spiders that hide under the rug. And I also
found an inconsistency that I have a question on. It is said
that there was a plan to give smallpox infected blankets to the
Native Americans, but then on page 86, the author writes “No one
involved—not Indians, not white people—wished to see smallpox
spread. Someone please explain to me this contradiction."
[/quote]
To respond to part of your comment, I believe the author was
trying to answer the question of "How could there be an
untouched paradise when, before Europeans, there was a massive
alteration of the landscape by native peoples?" (paraphrased).
This question I believe is illustrated by that sharp contrast
you commented on between the paradise and bleak passages on
illness.
#Post#: 99--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 4: New England...
By: Tommy Is The Person Who I Am Date: January 10, 2019, 10:56 p
m
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An unexpected takeaway from his reading was the concept of
politicized population estimates. I had not previously
considered the idea that historians might be pressured to
over-estimate numbers when it comes to events in the vein of
genocide. As the author puts it, “would not denying the highest
numbers leave one complicit with the murderers?” (84). It is
interesting that this is a development from the 1960s, and that
prior to that there was more of an emphasis on underestimating
Indian populations while linking a small population to a
less-developed society.
I previously had the sense that environmental historians must
have a hard time getting sufficient information about many
necessary topics. Eden gives a specific example of the
contemporary data that historians have access to, and outlines
the difficulties they have faced in interpreting that data. I
was a bit surprised by how vague some of the descriptions of
diseases are in the table on page 87 (e.g. “Disorder,”
“Sickness”), though I suppose this is reasonable given that much
of this data came from people such as fur traders. It is
interesting that this has led people to make drastically
different conclusions about the peak Native American population,
ranging from half a million to eighteen million people, based on
their interpretation of incomplete data. This leads me to wonder
to what degree other information within the field of
environmental history (and in other studies) has been based on
vague data and (possibly politicized) bias.
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