Week.......Whatever Week it is Response

I lost track. Sue me.

Ideal vs. Practicality 

In both of the chapters that my group read it seemed that Dr. Wirzba has been dealing in ideal situations and not talking about any issues that could arise from the plans he puts forth. Of course most people who put forth ideas give the ideal, but perhaps with a little less irony. The irony comes after spending most of chapter one telling us how we have lost our way and how we should change and then saying that we are turning to professionals and others to tell us what to think, what to do, and how to live. What is he then?

 

Now on to More Serious Things

Let me be perfectly clear. This irony does not invalidate what Dr. Wirzba has to say, not at all. He has some good things to say and his base ideas are really good one.

On paper.

Wirzba suffers from the same thing that almost every writer who discusses philosophy or economic theory suffers from. Idealism. We love to deal with ideals and try and tell our side like its the best one and won't have any problems whatsoever. Wirzba has a less sever case of idealism than most as he acknowledges the issues with his ideology and the benefits of his 'opponents.' For instance, unlike some authors we have read that have written on agrarian ideology he admits that not all of our food (maybe even most of it) will still need to be store-bought but that growing some of our food will help us connect more with it. Which is completely true. The salsa we make with the peppers grown on our porch is tastes better to us because we grew it and we made it in our own home. However we cannot take care of our own cow for milk so we need to buy it. Wirzba appears to me to be more open to compromise than many of the others we have read. I think that if someone could show Wirzba that they are living a Sabbath lifestyle within the current system he would be interested in hearing how they compromised and pulled it off. 

Decline of Delight?

The beginning of chapter five is all about how our entertainment industry today is removing the delight from our everyday lives. I have to disagree with him because I'm not sure if we can say this is a new phenomenon its been going on since humans could talk. We've always told stories about fantastical worlds and have always imagined new things. Why? Its not because we don't believe that the Earth is ugly or can't delight in it but because sometimes we want something new and different. Lets look at it another way, you can't eat fried chicken for every meal and not get tired of it. That doesn't mean you all of a sudden hate fried chicken and it may even be your favorite meal you simply want something different every now and then. Its why people travel to different places, when you see the same thing every day you get kinda numb to its grandeur. That doesn't mean its not there and you don't think it's beautiful you just don't think about it all the time. One could argue, and Wirzba does, that we should always be thinking about how beautiful our surroundings are because it was created by God. However, that's not really very practical because we can't constantly be marveling at something and function in every day society. This is one of the symptoms of Wirzba's idealism. We physically CAN'T do some of the things he wants us to. 

Success...or Nah?

The rest of chapter five makes the case that our thirst for success is distancing ourselves from God and that it is one of the major factors causing the breakdown of our society. Our drive for success is driving our families apart and destroying our environment. Or is it? We didn't destroy our environment on purpose we did it because that was the only way we could go about it. Once we found out what we were doing it was corporations who lead the fight to heal the environment. Maybe not the same companies that were the ones responsible for the destruction in the first place but companies nonetheless. In fact environmentalism is big business and is projected to expand to nearly 4.5 trillion dollars by 2020, http://cleantechnica.com/2012/09/17/global-cleantech-market-expected-to-expand-to-e4-trillion-by-2020s-germany-to-capitalize/. This type of growth doesn't come without a thirst for success. So maybe it is destroying our environment, but it's also saving it. It seems to me that Dr. Wirzba is mistaking the means for the end. Its not the want for success that is destroying our environment, driving a wedge between our families, and generally leading to the disintegration of our society but rather why we want to succeed. Many people don't try to succeed to do a good job or to create something great but do get a lot of money. This is where we begin to see a lot of what Wirzba is describing. When people focus on nothing but getting more stuff they start to not care about people or anything else. When people focus on succeeding because they feel fulfilled when they create something great or do a good job we see people who care about the environment and other people. For instance Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, gives away the net worth of most companies to AIDs research every year. Why can he do this? Because he had the drive to succeed but didn't make getting money the only thing he cared about. He succeeded, made money, and cares about people. We don't need to tell people to stop trying to get to the "top of the pyramid" or that working hard to gain wealth is bad. We need to tell them that it shouldn't be what our entire life is all about and to not forget that many times our success hinges on cooperating with other people. That our relationships with other people is what gives us the ability to deal with the stress that comes from trying to be successful.