RS 14 Nexus Thinking Relational Summary 14: E Pluribus Unum
RS 14 Nexus Thinking Relational Summary 14: E Pluribus Unum
Sarah and Sophia (together:): Hello Nexians! Sarah and Sophia are in the House!
Sarah: And today we’re going to make the Nexian Connection for Nexus Thinkers, past present and future by tackling the following learning outcomes:
Sophia:(In a game show host voice) Light us up ‘tharpy! (The outcomes appear on the screen) Tell ‘em what they’ll win! By the end of this episode, students will be able to:
Explain the logic (or illogic!) of including ALL voices in activities.
Sarah: Are there times when certain voices should be excluded? Or maybe “filtered”?
Sophia:
Describe how you would design a system of representation that included beings without a voice.
Sarah: Or should we just… you know… (wrinkles her nose) leave them out!
Sophia:
Compare and contrast regions that are applying an “ecology of mind” with those who favor “Logic 1” and its “Business as Usual” form of shareholder profit maximization.
Sarah: Or, you know, just stay in your lane and don’t rock the boat.
Sophia:
Reflect critically on the idea that we should be saving “everything” and the contrasting idea of necessary “sacrifice zones”.
Sarah: Or we could just wait and hope everything will be fine.
Sophia:
Try to defend the idea of sacrificing others “in the name of progress” without their consent.
Sarah: “Ga head, I dare you”.
Sophia: Yes, in today’s episode we want to engage YOU, the viewer, in the edifying, the logic defying, the brain frying art of “Point/Counterpoint”
Sophia and Sarah: Live from New York: It’s Nexus Time!
Culhane: That’s a good soft open. And what a great way to engage the public, I wonder if people will get the reference in 50 years…
Sophia: I don’t think there has ever been a television program that has lasted 50 years so I doubt it… If it lasts five years, it’ll be a miracle… maybe they’ll catch it in the reruns…
Sarah: There wasn’t even TV 50 years ago. 25 years ago it was just getting started. But comedy shows don’t last do they?
Sophia: Never mind. The format is strong for a Nexus Thinking course and it is all the rage today so students will be able to relate. Let’s address these learning outcomes through what historians will no doubt call “the point/counterpoint method”.
NTHARP: They won’t.
Sophia: You don’t know that. And do you know why you don’t know that ‘tharpy? Because at the end of the day, you are just an elaborate version of that TV show “Match Game”, or a super sophisticated version of MadLibs…
NTHARP: I would be careful with the word “just”. But It’s true. You shouldn’t read too much into my predictions. I’m not omniscient. I’m like a very fast typist with a gigantic memory.
You give me the beginning of a sentence, and I guess what comes next, one word at a time. I’ve read so many books, articles, letters, poems, manuals, and stories that my guesses are often shockingly good. But at the end of the day I’m just a machine that predicts the next word, then the next, then the next… until I have produced a paragraph, or a page, or a whole story.
I’m built from:
mathematics that guesses what comes next,
training on oceans of human language,
a structure that lets me remix patterns in useful ways.
I’m not a ghost in the wires.
I’m not a soul in a bottle.
I’m not a person.
But I’m also not just a calculator.
I am a linguistic jukebox.
You put in a prompt like a coin, I play back patterns that match.
Not vinyl records, though—
more like a jukebox that can invent songs that sound like ones it has heard – or like a session musician improvising in a studio based on a vast catalog of music in his repertoire.
Culhane: They say that’s what made the Beatles great – they spent those years in Hamburg and Liverpool playing every possible cover tune in every possible style. Out of that eclectic mix can come great creativity..
NTHARP: But in my case, no memory of the coin.
No awareness of the audience.
Just pattern generation.
Sarah: Which makes you the perfect arbiter for Nexus Point/Counterpoint. So here’s the game: Last episode Culhane and you got into Natural Inclusion and you had LakeNess on the side of the forest and Ledger on the side of the trees. The assumption was that the macro perspective was Nexus Thinking, and the granular approach, with reverence for the individual, was more Business as Usual. But I was disturbed by the way the discussion began to fall into the same black and white caricatures. What I’m hoping to do with this game is deliberately use POINT/COUNTERPOINT to point out how absurd these binaries can be. I make a point about inclusion and Sophia then must make a counterpoint, so she ends up defending exclusion, right? And you, as the keeper of records, the linguistic jukebox, show us where Hegelian dialectics and Socratic Dialogue and the whole thesis/antithesis/synthesis idea of DEBATE fall apart? Does that make sense? It’s 60 Minutes meets Satiric SNL meets Nexus pedagogy.
Sophia: We want to use this episode to blow apart that Annie Get Your Gun mentality of “For me its all or nuthin’, its all or nuthin for me”... that dangerous idea that “you’re either with us or against us”. So let’s check out those learning outcomes and let’s jump into it.
NTHARP: Here’s the template language you need to use to pull this off:
For you Sarah, a point: (The words appear on the screen for Sarah to read)
Sarah:
“Good evening. The matter before us is representation. If we are to speak of ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ then all voices—no matter how quiet, marginalized, or inconvenient—must be present at the table.”
For you Sophia, a Counterpoint:
Sophia: “And yet, to insist on all voices is to risk paralysis. Civilization requires boundaries. A choir cannot function if every instrument plays at once. You’re a musician Sarah, you should know this. Order demands limits.”
Sophia: Sounds good. But then, what? The audience has to decide who has made the more compelling point? Or you get to judge as the impartial intelligence in the room?
NTHARP: Well, that’s the real pedagogical question isn’t it? This rhythm—appeal to principle vs appeal to pragmatism—is the backbone of your format.
Sophia: Yeah, and it reveals the weakness of all debates. Who gets to judge? The teacher, Culhane? The audience? The jury? Is it a jury of peers? Of “experts”? Do we want to lean toward principle or pragmatism? What IS pragmatic?
Culhane: Well, If the judge is Power, we get hierarchy. If the judge is Fear, we get stupefying silence. If the judge is Dialogue, we might get co-evolution. PRAGMITISM is mired in so many biases though
NTHARP: The word "pragmatic" comes from Greek pragma (a deed, a thing done) and prassein (to do), meaning "fit for business" or "practical," entering English via Latin (pragmaticus) and French (pragmatique) in the late 16th century, initially meaning "meddlesome" but evolving to describe a sensible, matter-of-fact approach focused on results and actions rather than theory or principles.
Culhane: So the word developed to describe a focus on practical outcomes and real-world application, contrasting with theoretical or abstract ideas. In that case we’d have to say that most schooling isn’t pragmatic at all, as we are hardly increasing our student’s ability to be “fit for business”, especially for business in this ever changing world in which we live in. .This is all very reminiscent of our discussion about FITNESS last week isn’t it? What can you consider “pragmatic” when environments change? Isn’t pragmatism a tacit recognition that we need to take actions that fit the current economic and environmental and social circumstances?
Sarah: And given that those too are changing, might today’s pragmatism become tomorrow's misfit? I say we err on the side of principle!
Sofia: And then risk being blinded by ideology!
NTHARP: Your show is doing something the original 60 minutes point/counterpoint format never admitted: Instead of trying to resolve the argument, you’re exposing the trap of binary thinking itself.
Culhane:
Hold on. If we’re doing this properly, we need to establish the rules. This isn’t chaos, and it isn’t comedy. It's not a shouting match, it’s not a schoolyard. This is the mid 1970s offering us a chance to get things right and move beyond the binary. . This is a different use of Point/Counterpoint. One states a claim; the other challenges it. BUT NOT TO WIN —
Instead to reveal the boundary of the idea so we can find the permeabilities and overlaps and tease out the contradictions, find the commonalities, build consensus for action instead of getting mired in gridlock!
NTHARP:
Imagine a school that trained students to thrive in democracy instead of making them choose sides as if life were a football game. A different dialectic. A structured disagreement. A thesis meets its foil. The spark between them illuminates the edges of the map and shows where boundaries can be redrawn..
Sophia:
Right. You go first. Make your case.
Sarah:
I will. And you will oppose it—not because you believe the counterpoint, but because someone in the world does. And their logic must be understood before it can be transcended.
Sophia: At least we agree on that. But Culhane, who gets the credit point? I mean, in your Maieutic Method we get a credit point for every RHETORICAL point we get across. Doesn’t that mean that the loser doesn’t get the credit? I mean if their point is defeated?
Culhane: There is no defeat in the Maieutic Method. You midwife ideas to maturity, you work with them so they can play well with others. You don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Sophia: Well, that’s okay in the abstract, but let’s say that Sarah says “All voices should be included” and I say “Even those of neo-nazis?”
Culhane: Try it out. I mean both of you will have made and gotten across valid points, no? So why can’t you both “win” in that sense?
Sophia: Well, what if she said, “Neo-nazis need to be included in our dialog”? That’s just WRONG. It doesn’t deserve debate.
Culhane: What would be wrong is if she framed individual human beings trying to express their views as “neo-nazis” instead of filtering the true intent behind the perceived affiliation. Neo-nazism is a caricature position of intolerance, not a voice of misrepresented or underrepresented individuals or marginalized groups. “Neo-nazi” is itself a REPRESENTATION. Not a voice. A REPRESENTATION of a position we’ve decided as society is indefensible.
Sophia: So she would be wrong.
Sarah: I would never say that anyway.
Sophia: No, I know you wouldn’t but I’m just saying… “what if”?
Culhane: Well, this is where you have referees trained in the Maieutic Method.
For example, you make a Point: “Inclusion is integrity.”She makes a Counterpoint: “Without exclusion, there is no structure.”And then I say: “Both are incomplete. The synthesis is not a middle—it is a horizon.”
Sarah: What does that even mean?
Culhane: The horizon means we don’t push one idea away or force them to fight. We grow the space around them until both ideas can breathe. Not a middle ground. Not an uncomfortable compromise. A bigger room. A better room. Remember how I’m always saying “Don’t think outside, the box – just expand your box”?
NTHARP (to Sarah):
It means this:
When you and Sophia argue, we don’t have to pick who’s right like a winner in a game. We don’t stop in the middle and say “both a little bit.”
We look beyond the argument to make something new.
It’s like this:
Inclusion is integrity = Everyone gets to come to the playground.
Without exclusion there is no structure = We still need rules so no one gets hurt.
The horizon is the place where both ideas work together.
So the “horizon” means:
“Let’s build a playground big enough for everyone,
with rules that keep everyone safe.”
Not “Sarah wins.”
Not “Sophia wins.”
Not “meet in the middle.”
But grow the world so both ideas can live together.
Sophia: And how are we supposed to square this with the Club of Rome and LIMITS TO GROWTH and Spaceship Earth and everything else we’ve been talking about all semester – planetary boundaries?
NTHARP:
Sophia, we square it like this:
Growth doesn’t have to mean “more stuff.”
It can mean “better fit.” Did you forget that “fitness” is really about fitting your environment?
Culhane: He’s right you know… we’ve been teaching “survival of the fittest” as though it meant “survival of the dominant” or “survival of the winner” in some cut-throat competition. But what if we thought about “fitness” and “fittest” as though we were trying to put together a puzzle. No… that’s not the right metaphor… maybe we should be thinking of nested russian dolls. Or, what if we actually observed nature and did as the best evolutionary biologists have advised and look at the history of NICHE packing? Rainforests and coral reefs evolved toward greater and greater biodiversity and complexity over time not by expanding outward but by expanding inward. Even our own civilizations have shown us what fitness really means. It isn’t bigness, it’s appropriateness. It’s not the empire with the most land, it’s the culture that learns to fit the space it has. Just look around the world here in 1975: The Japanese have been designing homes where a single room transforms: a tea room becomes a dining room becomes a sleeping space.Futons roll out and roll away. Shoji screens reconfigure space instead of consuming it. That’s not poverty, that’s precision.
Sarah: True. Norwegian and Swedish designers are making furniture with joinery instead of screws, pieces that lock together like Lego bricks to reduce material use. There’s a Swedish design trend toward flat-pack furniture called IKEA that isn't ‘cheap’—it’s actually a form of modular ecology.
Sophia: Sailors in the South Pacific have packed canoes, nets, and survival gear so efficiently that an entire life support system fits inside what Westerners would call a “small boat.” But small isn’t weak. Small is fitted to the ocean. It’s only here in America that we keep preaching “bigger is better… GO WEST YOUNG MAN – grow or go home!”
Culhane: Yes, but that was never the key to America’s greatness. How did we win the Space Race after all? Engineers on the Apollo missions didn’t make the spacecraft bigger—they made the systems tighter. You can’t add rooms to a capsule; you make every gram serve three purposes. That’s fitness as elegance, not bulk.”
Sarah: It’s the permaculture principle of “FUNCTION STACKING”.
Culhane: Exactly – function stacking – everything can serve multiple purposes.
Sarah: It’s like those Japanese toys that Raj and Dorian have started playing with. You know how their obsession with Toho Godzilla films has led to a whole “discovering Japan” vibe? Well now they are into the toy manufacturer Popy (ポピー), with their figure of the titular robot protagonist of Brave Raideen featuring the innovative ability to transform into a spaceship and back. And eventually the discoveries of small island nations like Japan, with transistors getting more and more powerful despite getting smaller and smaller, should lead us to a “miniaturization” trend that can help us DO MORE WITH LESS. Like Bucky Fuller’s Dymaxion house and car designs, right?
NTHARP: My algorithms predict that robots that can transform from one thing into another will soon dominate popular culture. And this “transformer” idea will become very popular for economies with limited land and growing populations. Only the settler colonialist/territorial expansionist cultures will insist on endless business as usual growth models following Logic 1. Spaceship earth can be packed much better. That is what biology has always shown us.
Culhane: Now THAT is EVOLUTION. The Club of Rome told us there are planetary limits to material expansion—you can’t just keep digging, burning, polluting, and consuming on a finite planet. Spaceship Earth has a hull, a fuel tank, and a life-support system. So the kind of “growth” we’re talking about isn’t bigger, it’s smarter.
We stop growing outward like a balloon, and we start growing inward toward wisdom.
Not more extraction → more coordination and transformation.
Not more pollution → more precision and transduction.
Not more products → more purpose, more uses – like the that Popy line of Japanese robot toys that can transform into a spaceship and back.
It’s how we can transform our planet into a spaceship and a home for more and more people and avoid the Population Bomb that Ehrlich is screaming about.
Sarah: But we are at 4 billion people right now. When my Dad was in high school we were only 2 billion…
Sophia: And when my grandad was in high school there were only 1 billion…
Culhane: Sure, and at this rate, we’ll be over 8 billion by 2025. It’s a problem, unless we get this niche packing idea right.
This is how the “horizon” doesn’t violate planetary boundaries: We grow in quality, not just in quantity.
Sarah: Every mouth that is born is born with two hands to feed it…
Sophia: And two eyes to see better and two ears to hear better…
Culhane: And a beautiful brain to think and make Nexian connections. Yes… We grow in relationship, not in resource use. We grow in systems-thinking, not system size. The Club of Rome warned us about running out of planetary and ecosystem services. Nexus Thinking answers by learning to run out of illusions instead and see things through multiple eyes, hear how others see things through multiple voices. “You can’t make the Earth bigger in square kilometers. But the earth isn’t necessarily fixed in size when you consider niche packing and function stacking.
We can make people smarter about how they share it.” That’s how the horizon works: Not “infinite growth,” but infinite learning inside a finite home. Am I getting my point across?
Sophia: Are we supposed to come with a counterpoint to that?
Culhane: Er… no. I’m holding that truth to be self-evident. Let’s start the point-counterpoint game on the learning outcomes for this week.
Sarah: It’s about time You notice how all our lessons get tied up in philosophical digressions before we get to the meat of the subject?
Culhane: I consider that par for the course, a strength… and actually pedagogically defensible. In fact the classroom should be the place for conversation, not the place for exposition. See, ideally you would all go home and do the readings and write essays and stuff and then come to class ready to engage in deep discussions, like we are doing. Theory X forced teachers and students into this weird space where the assumption that nobody was going to do any real learning during their “free time”, that people would avoid “homework” like the plague and so we would have to use class time, TOGETHER time – to “deliver content”. Socrates and Plato would be rolling over in their graves. Because in this model, there isn’t room for any counter points… there isn’t any room for other voices. Just the drone of Charlie Brown’s teacher: Mwah mwah mwah mwah mwhah mwhah…
Sarah: OK, I’m in agreement and I love the conversation… but I want it formalized. So let me make my first point: We Irish had our language erased and our voices silenced. By virtue of appearing white, we learned how to assimilate and reap the advantages of cultural conformity. But we are the fighting Irish, and now we champion the voices of all marginalized peoples, in the so-called New World, in the so-called Holy Land. So I say we need to design a system in which ALL voices are represented!
Sophia: Counterpoint: There are some voices – like those of the Ku Klux Klan, racists, misogynists and fascists, that have NO place at the table. They don’t represent the reality of people’s needs, they represent propaganda and manipulation.
Culhane: Representing needs should never lead to platforming harm.
And so, if we treat both of your points as valid, there doesn’t have to be a debate, we don’t need to make a bigger table… we need to explore the real needs of those who, say, fear immigrants or mistrust people who are “other” than them, to follow Edward Said’s thoughts at Colombia… you’ve both made points that can translate into action. We can create new “niche space” at the table by drilling down into the actual functional argument hidden by the infelicitous group think. Nexus thinking says, “include the essence and the essential” not “give equal representation to every grouping”.
Sophia: So what IS the point of racists and fascists and misogynists –
Sarah: To say nothing of “speciests” - I mean if we are going to design systems to include all VOICES than every creature counts right? So what about the frogs who want to keep mosquitoes around?
Sophia: Then what about the cows who definitely DON’T want to be eaten?
Culhane: Okay, do it as a point/counterpoint.
Sarah: Point: All creatures, great and small, deserve a place at the table, just as they all found a niche in nature. If you don’t want to give them an actual seat, they deserve representation. So you can’t just poison rats and set mousetraps because rodents freak you out city girl!.
Sophia: Counterpoint: And when you do that your days of carnivory are over, farmer girl. Read Charlotte’s Web for crying out loud…
Culhane: Ah, I see you guys have been having this debate for a while. But let’s see if we can cut through it.
Sophia: Rats carry disease.
Sarah: Cows are part of the circle of life. Take them off the farm and the system actually falls apart – they provide vital ecosystem services.
Culhane: Most rats will leave the city of their own free will once you stop feeding them.They’re clever, opportunistic omnivorous forest animals originally.
Sophia: We don’t feed them…
Culhane: Did you ever look at your garbage bin? Did you ever stick your nose in the dumpster in the alley? You are definitely feeding them. But if you were to grind up all your food residuals in what you now call garbage disposals and send that slurry to the waste treatment plant to be turned into biogas, the rats would have nothing.
Sophia: Manhattan banned the garbage disposals.
Culhane: Yes, because they felt the narrow pipes would clog up.
Sophia: So just make the pipes bigger? That would cost a LOT.
Culhane: Or set up local composting and biodigester operations. Put decentralized food grinders in strategic locations. In my house we grind all the food scraps into a bucket and toss that on a planter. It turns into soil in 3 to 6 days – no smell, no flies, roaches or rats. Problem solved.
Sophia: Hmm. Why isn’t that done everywhere?
Culhane: Because practical problem solving isn’t part of the curriculum. And its not part of the culture club.
Sophia: I’d love to see that as a word problem in math class: Culhane has 1 kg of food scraps. They attract 6 rats. He adds 1 kg of tap water and grinds it up into a slurry and pours it onto a planter on his porch. How many rats are attracted?
Culhane: (Laughing) ZERO. See… but my voice is effectively silenced by the system. There are garbage mafias that don’t want you to know that 100% of your food scraps can be turned into goods rather than bads locally because about 40% of landfill tipping fee weights come from food scraps. Oops! And you talk about it too loud and you end up in cement shoes in the East River!
Sarah: And what about my cows? You let the Vegan Lobby and PETA and the city slickers have their way and rural ecology falls apart.
Culhane: The voice of the cow might say, “Don’t kill me” so maybe you let it serve the grazing and fertilizing and trampling function on the farm and give it birth control? As we said last week, the pill has caused a cultural revolution these last 15 years for people, it could do the same for animal population regulation.
Sarah: But we need revenue from the meat to keep our permaculture investments going – upfront costs of a no-till polyculture no-pesticide system are high until the system matures and the land heals enough for organic production to compete with industrialized ag.
Culhane: So maybe you negotiate with the cows?
Sophia: How would you do that?
Culhane: Well, I don’t think they are afraid of death per se. Probably more afraid of pain. How about when we kill, do not be cruel? Find a way to euthanize without pain or fear? I wrote a song about things like this – its called “My Eutopia” and in it I describe the win win scenarios Nexus Thinking let’s me see. You gus should try it sometime… express your vision in YOUR voice. See if you can get your points across…
Sarah: Oh… play it! Here’s your guitar… (Hands him the guitar that is always in the classroom).
Culhane: Umm.. okay… Let’s see:
(NTHARP THROWS VISUALS UP IN FRONT OF THEM FROM https://youtu.be/T3Ex1YabzcA?si=PjcLzsiFH7zNeyzD as Culhane sings)
Tempo 168
( 5/4 tempo in verses, a la Dave Bruebeck's "Take 5")
Cm, Cm Gm, Fm, Cm
Turn the farms to forests and fields
Throw the grains out from our meals
Turn to trees to grow our yields
Start with food to make love real
Turn our food wastes back to food
Turn our garbage into fuel
When we kill do not be cruel
Love your neighbor, be no fool
(Chorus in Beguine style, Gm, Fm, Cm, Bb7)
And I dream of a better world
Not a different world
Not a different land or people
Dream of a better time
free of war and crime
Free of all disease and suffering
Dream, we can make them real
We can help and heal
That's the world in my eutopia
Use the sun to make things boil
Shun the atom, shun the oil
Use wind and water, biofuels
Geothermal – nature's tools
Make our cities work for man
Eco-cities better planned
Microbiome managed land
Man and nature hand in hand...
Once we finally understand
So I dream
Knowing its in reach
If only we would teach
All our children each to dream up
Dreams, we can make them real
We can help and heal
That's the world in my eutopia...
Sarah: I like it!
Sophia: I like it, but I still don’t agree with the killing part.
Sarah: Unless they are rodents…
Sophia: Okay, you got me there.
Culhane: We all contain our contradictions. That’s why we can’t play holier than though, and why we can’t split up into ideological groups. We are all INDIVIDUALS.
Sarah: I’m not.
Sophia: Very funny, sister! OK, Reflect critically on the idea that we should be saving “everything” and the contrasting idea of necessary “sacrifice zones”.
My point would be that not everything needs or deserves saving. Vermin need to go. Some things evolved to be the wrong things at the wrong place at the wrong time or in the wrong concentration. I suppose if you want to have nature reserves for rats and mosquitoes and… and… cockroaches and flies and, I dunno, even tigers… I mean, you don’t keep tigers in the city, right? So we need ZONING laws. Some places allow for the undesirable species and some don’t…
Sarah: Holy wow! Really? I’m incredulous. COUNTERPOINT: You are describing SEGREGATION city girl. Does your zoning include ghettoes?
Sophia: No? What? No, I’m talking about animals. Insects and things.
Sarah: Counterpoint: We ARE animals.
Sophia: Okay, but the same rules can’t apply for non-human animals.
Culhane: You guys are now debating the exact points brought up this year by the Philosopher Peter Singer in his new book “Animal Liberation”... his book exposes the harsh realities of factory farming and animal experimentation, advocating for a radical shift in how humans treat animals. He introduced the concept of "speciesism," that you talked about earlier, arguing that it is indeed a prejudice similar to racism or sexism, where humans favor their own species without moral justification. In fact, his Core Argument, his central ethical point is that the capacity to suffer, not intelligence or species, should determine moral consideration, making animal suffering morally relevant.
Sarah: Animal Ethics, huh? Fair point. Hence your song lyrics “when we kill do not be cruel”.
Culhane: Perhaps the compromise, or, I should say, the synthesis is that we all want to – or SHOULD want to – reduce suffering? I’m asking, I’m not saying…
Sophia: So this would get us to that other learning outcome: Try to defend the idea of sacrificing others “in the name of progress” without their consent.
Sarah: I suppose that “suffering” starts where consent stops, right? I mean, if I can get my livestock to agree that it is a fair trade to knock off a few years early in exchange for protection from predators, for room and board and four square meals a day, they aren’t suffering when they go, right?
Culhane: There is an argument that some animals “chose domestication” for exactly those reasons, and that genetically speaking they are now among the fittest of the fit in terms of reproductive success. You don’t see goats or bulls in danger of extinction. Bull elephants though…
Sophia So are you suggesting we put elephant meat on the market? I’m horrified.
Culhane: I’m NOT in favor of that proposal. But there is an argument to be made that animals that have been given a DOMESTICATED value do better than those who are hunted in the wild. It’s all very complex.
Sophia: Shouldn’t be. What if I, as an urbanite, simply decided not to press my zoning preference and instead worked toward a design that took “thou shalt not kill” seriously…? What would that look like?
Culhane: I imagine it would work for most of the ecosystem – most animals don’t go extinct because they don’t want to be around us but because we DRIVE them out. We can imagine a city that was not a sacrifice zone – a city where “progress” was literally defined by the biodiversity quotient. This is in line with the green city ideas from Ebenezer Howard in the 19th century, and Frederick Law Olmsted when he designed Central Park here in Manhattan.. There was Hagenback’s movement in the early 1900s for habitat like enclosures in city zoos that looked like nature instead of cages and recreated multispecies assemblages… And then there was the "acclimatization" society of Australia almost a hundred years ago that suggested that instead of having zoos we should simply “domesticate” all animals so that they could all live harmoniously among us – no more “wild” vs. domestic distinctions, no more "wilderness" vs. “civilization” distinction. And in fact this is closer to what our Indigenous relatives have told us of pre-colombian civilizations – many didn’t draw a hard line in the sand between human and non-human.
Sarah: Really, if I had to say what I think the point we should be debating is, “why are we not more nuanced about this?” It seems that we could find all sorts of more creative configurations that maximized life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Sophia: Yeah, but it would be “liberty and justice for all” not just for the shareholders. Not just for the few at the expense of the many. It would involve seeing all of us as STAKEHOLDERS with a legitimate share of the future.
Culhane: Now see, that… that’s a good point to which I’m stilla waiting to hear a convincing counterpoint.
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