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#Post#: 146--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: ccogswell Date: January 16, 2019, 8:14 pm
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First, I just want to say that “it had its sheep moment” (pg.
109) is an incredible phrase that I will be incorporating into
my everyday speech.
Now that that’s out of the way, I want to explore Shi Shi’s
question(s) about progress!! I think human progress does differ
from environmental progress. This hasn’t been the case for a lot
of what we’ve been reading, but I think the terms are deeply
related although they different goals, which seems new. I think
environmental progress is about growth and change taking its
natural course - natural by Kelly’s definition from last week,
which was things occurring without human consciousness. The
environment will be altered by the organisms within it, based on
their evolutionary needs. Human progress seems to vary by
culture, but I think it has more to do with control over the
environment (and ownership is one way to demonstrate this!). The
ability to control - and even alter - the environment is a
demonstration of wealth and power, and also provides time and
space for further human developments not pertaining to survival
and evolution to be pursued. I think “harmony” is subjective.
Humans will always use the environment, and the environment will
always dictate the extent of human power. So, as far as overlap,
I don’t think their goals will align. But, I think harmony is
found when humans can use the environment in a way that does not
deplete it and threaten its survival, and thus the environment
will (probably) not be altered to an extreme that threatens
human survival in return. This prompts the question of: will the
environment ever not be a threat to human life? If that were to
occur, would it be unnatural?
#Post#: 147--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: kellyf Date: January 16, 2019, 8:16 pm
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[quote author=Shi Shi link=topic=8.msg143#msg143
date=1547688170]
Aha! I think that Tommy's questions connect well with one the
previous reading's forum discussion (I forget which one
specifically though). I remember Kelly and Christine both
writing responses relating to the idea of "progress", and it
seemed that both of them grappled with what exactly "progress"
was. I would like to revisit this complicated idea of progress:
How do environmental progress and human progress differ? Where
do they overlap? Do they overlap? Will they ever overlap?
[/quote]
Amazing questions! From what we have read, human progress (not
good or bad, but just the continuing march into the future) is
inextricably linked to environmental progress. In the second
reading, the link is very clear as "early New England farms
"marked an admirable ecological adaptation of the English mixed
husbandry system to a new environment," which shows how humans
progressed using the environment, which then changed and
progressed. (113) In clearer terms: human progress used the
environment as a jumping off point, then the environment
progressed in response. And if the environment progressed, then
human progress much match that. (While my explanation makes it
seem like both progressions are happening sequentially, they
aren't. Both progressions are happening at the same time.)
Though I am curious if others think differently, specifically in
regards to How do environmental progress and human progress
differ? And if you answer that - I would also ask, Is human
progress possible without reaction from the environment?
#Post#: 148--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: Reed Date: January 16, 2019, 8:17 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
As soon as native Americans and white people began to really
engage with big market trading in the mid to early 1800s, their
land practices changed and became more about commercial
extraction, to the detriment of their respective local
ecologies.
Isenberg focuses on the introduction of horses to native
communities on the plains as the catalyst for economic change,
but a closer look at the reading indicates to me that the horses
only moved the native Americans into nomadism and primary
dependence on bison (51). They didn't climb onto horses to get
rich, they did it because "the horse regularized food
procurement in the unpredictable environment"(58). It was only
in the 1850s, about 3/4 of a century after the introduction of
the horse, that the beaver pelt traders arrived on the scene, at
which point the native Americans were already established bison
specialists (that traded bison stuff for things they needed like
corn). After diseases killed off most of the other,
non-bison-specialist native groups, the nomads became super
powerful, and with the changing economy, they needed to
commercialize. Result: bison were hunted almost to extinction in
the 19th century, with less than 100 in the wild by the 1880s.
Similar in the husbandry reading, except that Donahue doesn't
argue that cows made the colonists into commercial farmers. For
decades, New England yeomen had a pretty diversified,
sustainable subsistence farming gig based on cows and dung that
all changed in the early 1800s, post-revolution, when they all
wanted to become commercial farmers. That worked for fifty
years, and then, with the hayfields stripped of nutrients, the
farmers had to turn to purchasing grain from the midwest to feed
their cows.
Thesis, open to argument: it is the economic structure of a
community that determines how sustainably it treats its natural
resources (sustainable meaning stable and with minimal long-term
damage).
Our economic system today looks like the end of Donahue's
reading, but exponentially more-- it's globalized now.
Commercial farms out west, lots of them are huge, lots of people
run monocultures and rely on chemical fertilizers to grow their
crops. One wonders if it's really more sustainable than New
England's foray into commercial farming in the mid 1850s.
#Post#: 149--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: kellyf Date: January 16, 2019, 8:27 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=ccogswell link=topic=8.msg146#msg146
date=1547691274]
I think human progress does differ from environmental progress.
This hasn’t been the case for a lot of what we’ve been reading,
but I think the terms are deeply related although they different
goals, which seems new. I think environmental progress is about
growth and change taking its natural course - natural by Kelly’s
definition from last week, which was things occurring without
human consciousness. The environment will be altered by the
organisms within it, based on their evolutionary needs. Human
progress seems to vary by culture, but I think it has more to do
with control over the environment (and ownership is one way to
demonstrate this!). The ability to control - and even alter -
the environment is a demonstration of wealth and power, and also
provides time and space for further human developments not
pertaining to survival and evolution to be pursued. I think
“harmony” is subjective. Humans will always use the environment,
and the environment will always dictate the extent of human
power. So, as far as overlap, I don’t think their goals will
align. But, I think harmony is found when humans can use the
environment in a way that does not deplete it and threaten its
survival, and thus the environment will (probably) not be
altered to an extreme that threatens human survival in return.
This prompts the question of: will the environment ever not be a
threat to human life? If that were to occur, would it be
unnatural?
[/quote]
I love disagreeing with Christine! (Christine, please look at my
post cause I want your thoughts) I want to push on some of your
ideas. I see you describing human progress as 'control over the
environment' so wouldn't that also have to do with environmental
progress? If I can make a man-made forest, that is progressing
humans (as I can control the environment) but why wouldn't that
be environmental progress? I see you describing environmental
progress as 'taking its natural course' but what about
environments that are not natural? (a.k.a. the last question I
posed) Could you also clarify what the goals of progress are?
Both environmental and human? But now I am going to ponder your
question, as I think the environment will always be a threat to
human life. No matter how much control we think we have, there
is no way to truly control every aspect. And if somehow there
was, it would be through human invention which (by the way I
defined natural, and you defined natural) would be unnatural as
it is directly from human consciousness. You are the best
Christine.
#Post#: 150--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: liamf Date: January 16, 2019, 8:40 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=kellyf link=topic=8.msg147#msg147 date=1547691405]
[quote author=Shi Shi link=topic=8.msg143#msg143
date=1547688170]
Aha! I think that Tommy's questions connect well with one the
previous reading's forum discussion (I forget which one
specifically though). I remember Kelly and Christine both
writing responses relating to the idea of "progress", and it
seemed that both of them grappled with what exactly "progress"
was. I would like to revisit this complicated idea of progress:
How do environmental progress and human progress differ? Where
do they overlap? Do they overlap? Will they ever overlap?
[/quote]
Amazing questions! From what we have read, human progress (not
good or bad, but just the continuing march into the future) is
inextricably linked to environmental progress. In the second
reading, the link is very clear as "early New England farms
"marked an admirable ecological adaptation of the English mixed
husbandry system to a new environment," which shows how humans
progressed using the environment, which then changed and
progressed. (113) In clearer terms: human progress used the
environment as a jumping off point, then the environment
progressed in response. And if the environment progressed, then
human progress much match that. (While my explanation makes it
seem like both progressions are happening sequentially, they
aren't. Both progressions are happening at the same time.)
Though I am curious if others think differently, specifically in
regards to How do environmental progress and human progress
differ? And if you answer that - I would also ask, Is human
progress possible without reaction from the environment?
[/quote]
How do environmental progress and human progress differ? I think
the most key distinction is that environmental progress does not
require human progress, where as it could be argued that human
progress relies on the environment around them. If it weren't
for the environment, humans would have never progressed in the
first place. At the same time though, while reading “Indians and
Bisons on the Great Plains”, one thing that really stood out to
me was the fact that the Native Americans didn’t use Horses
until the Europeans introduced them to them. Could it be argued
that the horses (part of our environment) would not have
progressed if it weren't for humans? Regardless, I was shocked
when I heard that the Comanches only got their first horses in
the the first decade of the 18th century. I thought this was
really interesting, as I had always thought of Native Americans
as being really reliant on Horses, and that they had used them
long before the Europeans got there. The fact that Europeans
were the ones who provided horses to the Native Americans made
me think about why I viewed Native American history as always
tying closely with the use of horses. This made me think about
how most of of the way history was documented relied on the
Europeans being there to document it. I think that the reason
why I’ve seen Native Americans on horses throughout most of
history is because there wasn't any European documentation of
what Native American life was like before the Europeans arrived,
which I think might be important to think about when viewing
Native American history. Do you think it's important to consider
the group of people who wrote of history while looking at the
history itself?
#Post#: 151--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: mayafb Date: January 16, 2019, 8:56 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
What I want to focus on in this post is the difference in
farming. The Europeans seem to have been much more rooted to one
individual place and spending years to make it work. The Native
Americans of the region used the nutrients that were provided in
the natural cycle for one year and then abandoned that field. As
with most things in this class, I am drawn to the idea of cycles
and lines of time. The Europeans adopted a smaller circle of
time while the Native Americans had a larger circle of time. To
make sense of this, it seems like the Europeans were looking at
land regeneration on a yearly basis, while the Native people
were looking at it as a much much longer process. By cycling the
land plots, they were allowing the natural processes of growth
and decay revitalize the soil whether they were conscious of
that or not. This second option takes much longer. Both are
annually prepping fields and working to create and cultivate
life, just in different ways.
The first reading focused more on the shift from settled to
nomadic life after contact with horses and Europeans. To me,
this made a lot of sense, but I am wondering a lot about the
power aspect that Isenberg touches on at the very end. What
counts as power? Now it seems like power is based on money and
status dictated by culture, but what did it mean back then? Was
power a form of control?
8)
#Post#: 152--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: jterry2020 Date: January 16, 2019, 8:58 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
It seems as if the bulk of the discussion is relation to human
progress and environmental progress. In terms of whether nature
and humans can ever live together in harmony, I would say no
because humans have the capacity to innovate and create new
technology. This technology is usually related to the ability
for humans to control nature. This technology also always has
environmental impacts. Therefore, as humans still have the
ability to create new technology, harmony is impossible (of
course, this entire discussion hinges on one’s definition of
harmony…). When it comes to nature’s progress versus that of
humanity, I had a hard time defining “environmental progress”.
What is environmental progress? The evolution of animals and
plants? I wouldn’t say the environment reacting to human
activity is environmental progress.
Responding to Kelly’s question: Is human progress possible
without reaction from the environment?, I would say no. I think
any human activity (progress or not) causes a reaction from the
environment, and therefore progress is impossible without
reaction from the environment. Maybe it is important to consider
that humans were once part of nature and the environment. When
did we become separate? What level of progress separates us?
What other beings have progressed?
#Post#: 153--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: mayafb Date: January 16, 2019, 8:59 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=renee link=topic=8.msg138#msg138 date=1547683007]
It seems incredible to me that the Europeans were able to turn
unpredictable and infertile soil into lands thriving with
cattle, horses, orchards, and many more crops. The soil was “too
wet for the plow in some places, too stony in others, and sandy
and dry where it was plowable. The topsoil was thin, sour, and,
unless manured, easily exhausted of available nutrients” (110).
Previously, the Native American farmers had only worked each
field for one year before moving because of the unfertilized
soil. New England had never supported grazing animals before so
the Europeans, who wished to raise cattle, were up for a
challenge. They needed to grow enough grass in the region to
feed the cows year-round. The earliest established towns in New
England were settled close to wet places where there was an
abundance of grass. The location of the first towns in New
England were largely influenced by the natural landscape. As we
briefly discussed today, the existing environment creates clear
boundaries between people. If most of New England was covered in
grass then the earliest towns would be much larger and more
numerous than the few mentioned in the reading such as
Watertown, Concord, Dedham, and Sudbury.
From the description in the reading, I would think that the New
England landscape would seem too hard to improve for the
Europeans. Even the Native Americans were unable to improve the
soil.
If the Europeans could clearly see that the soil in New England
would be hard to work with and improve, why were they so keen on
settling and farming here? Was their determination based on a
desire to prove their “superiority” to the Native Americans who
couldn’t work the land for an extended period of time?
[/quote]
I totally did not make that connection to the in-class
discussion today and that kind of just blew my mind. In response
to that further, how did the Europeans who were so dependent on
the natural boundaries cut up the land into these straight
borders? Doesn't that seem kind of counterproductive?
#Post#: 154--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: ccogswell Date: January 16, 2019, 9:14 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=kellyf link=topic=8.msg149#msg149 date=1547692044]
[quote author=ccogswell link=topic=8.msg146#msg146
date=1547691274]
I think human progress does differ from environmental progress.
This hasn’t been the case for a lot of what we’ve been reading,
but I think the terms are deeply related although they different
goals, which seems new. I think environmental progress is about
growth and change taking its natural course - natural by Kelly’s
definition from last week, which was things occurring without
human consciousness. The environment will be altered by the
organisms within it, based on their evolutionary needs. Human
progress seems to vary by culture, but I think it has more to do
with control over the environment (and ownership is one way to
demonstrate this!). The ability to control - and even alter -
the environment is a demonstration of wealth and power, and also
provides time and space for further human developments not
pertaining to survival and evolution to be pursued. I think
“harmony” is subjective. Humans will always use the environment,
and the environment will always dictate the extent of human
power. So, as far as overlap, I don’t think their goals will
align. But, I think harmony is found when humans can use the
environment in a way that does not deplete it and threaten its
survival, and thus the environment will (probably) not be
altered to an extreme that threatens human survival in return.
This prompts the question of: will the environment ever not be a
threat to human life? If that were to occur, would it be
unnatural?
[/quote]
I love disagreeing with Christine! (Christine, please look at my
post cause I want your thoughts) I want to push on some of your
ideas. I see you describing human progress as 'control over the
environment' so wouldn't that also have to do with environmental
progress? If I can make a man-made forest, that is progressing
humans (as I can control the environment) but why wouldn't that
be environmental progress? I see you describing environmental
progress as 'taking its natural course' but what about
environments that are not natural? (a.k.a. the last question I
posed) Could you also clarify what the goals of progress are?
Both environmental and human? But now I am going to ponder your
question, as I think the environment will always be a threat to
human life. No matter how much control we think we have, there
is no way to truly control every aspect. And if somehow there
was, it would be through human invention which (by the way I
defined natural, and you defined natural) would be unnatural as
it is directly from human consciousness. You are the best
Christine.
[/quote]
And I love disagreeing back! Concerning your first post, I don't
think human progress can occur without an environmental
reaction. Also, you made a good point about both progressions
taking place simultaneously. Now, I completely agree that human
and environmental progress are very, very connected. Yes, human
progress involves the environment, and vice versa to some
extent. But I don't think that the ultimate goal of
environmental progress involves humans, outside of it
potentially being prevented by them. Even if they are man-made,
trees just want to grow and evolve wherever and however they
can. Just to be clear: Human progress is about control.
Environmental progress is about survival and evolution. But
also!! Whether or not humans are removed from these hypothetical
situations is important too. I said something in my post about
the environment responding to the organisms living in it, and
these organisms could be human or otherwise. The point here is
that even if humans were not present in the environment, it
would still have to same goal. However, in reality, humans do
very much exist, so perhaps you might sort of maybe have a point
here and I maybe might partially agree just a little bit. You
are mostly okay, Kelly.
#Post#: 155--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: Tommy Is The Person Who I Am Date: January 16, 2019, 9:24 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=mayafb link=topic=8.msg151#msg151 date=1547693799]
What I want to focus on in this post is the difference in
farming. The Europeans seem to have been much more rooted to one
individual place and spending years to make it work. The Native
Americans of the region used the nutrients that were provided in
the natural cycle for one year and then abandoned that field. As
with most things in this class, I am drawn to the idea of cycles
and lines of time. The Europeans adopted a smaller circle of
time while the Native Americans had a larger circle of time. To
make sense of this, it seems like the Europeans were looking at
land regeneration on a yearly basis, while the Native people
were looking at it as a much much longer process. By cycling the
land plots, they were allowing the natural processes of growth
and decay revitalize the soil whether they were conscious of
that or not. This second option takes much longer. Both are
annually prepping fields and working to create and cultivate
life, just in different ways.
[/quote]
I see a connection between this and how Europeans used maps and
straight-line borders to describe their land. While Europeans
would have had to be physically present at the land they used,
it seems like there was still a level of detachment between land
as a commodity and land as a living entity. The Europeans worked
to reshape the land, rather than live according to its natural
state as the Native Americans did. Rather than Europeans
adopting a "smaller circle of time," perhaps they did not see a
circle at all, but rather a linear progression towards more
wealth and power.
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