No Turning Back:
Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking
by Wallace Kaufman
(New York: Basic Books, 1994)
For many years now I have been unable to read Sierra comfortably. The magazine of the Sierra Club has become untrustworthy, often exaggerating environmental hazards or advocating actions which are counterproductive. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups do not stand on the side of the angels or promote righteousness, no matter how much they so pretend. Environmental organizations are political advocacy groups, subject to the same myopia as other lobbies. They will bend the truth as much in the name of what they consider right as defenders of commerce, religion, industry, or what have you in the political arena.
This in a nutshell is the thesis of Wallace Kaufman's book. Environmentalist groups are not the same as the sciences of ecology. They are advocates of courses of action, and apt to vilify business and industry as villains in defiance of the truth. Kaufman thinks environmental groups have in some respects made nature a substitute for god, and made their beliefs into a religion with principles. Ideas of nature as religion harken back to Rousseau, Thoreau, and to Wordsworth and other nineteenth century romantic poets. In the name of preserving the "balance" of nature, environmentalists may fantasize about pristine, untouched, healthy environments of the past which never existed. To reestablish such wildness environmental organizations have been known to advocate hands off policies, which in specific instances have led to out of control forest fires, increased air pollution, or children taken by mountain lions. To make a point an environmental advocate may demonize business and industry, or to idealize the thoughts, religions, and activities of primitive people, especially native Americans, as models for a new age. They may allow their prescriptions for society to edge into a socialism where private property and its use are evil. Ranchers, hunters, miners, lumbermen, and other users of natural resource may be seen as scoundrels. Kaufman provides instances to illustrate his thesis.
There never was a pristine, unchanged natural environment, nor is it balanced. Nature is change, and species become extinct. Even if there was, and we wanted to return to some prior age, it is not possible. The present population of the United States or the world could not be fed by primitive means of hunting, gathering, or farming. Moreover, few people really have any intention of living in the wilderness, unless on an occasional hike with all the equipment and preserved food provided by modern industry catering to the outdoors crowd. It is modern industry and science that make an intelligent management and exploitation of the environment possible. It is not in wildness, but through science and technology that preservation of a world to our liking is made possible.
Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies
edited by Mark C. Carnes, Ted Mico,
John Miller-Monzon, and David Rubel
(New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1995)
A Society of American Historians Book
For someone who has always been interested in quackeries and pseudo-science in the social sciences this is a fascinating book. The editors examine the historical accuracy of some sixty films produced over the past eighty years. Each movie is discussed by an expert on the period and evaluated for its historical meaning and teaching. Well known historians have contributed, among them Antonia Fraser (Anne of the Thousand Days), Dee Brown (Fort Apache), David L. Lewis (Khartoum), and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (The Front Page). Although I read it front to back, it is a book for browsing, a reference book.
Each of these movies is set in a real place and time, but only some intend to depict specific events, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Alamo, All the President's Men for instance. Others may be based on biographies or other narratives which are themselves flawed. Many are based on historical fiction, among which Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind are perhaps the most famous. Some refer to no specific historical events, but merely convey the idea of a historical period, The Front Page and The Grapes of Wrath fall into this category. The task of the writers is made both interesting and difficult by the need to consider the sources of their movie.
Because the films are fiction and do not intend to convey accurate history, the writers are surprisingly gentle. They find much to praise in evaluating the narrative and ideas. Few movies are panned outright as worthless. The authors in particular accept the need of the film to tell a coherent story, which necessitates selecting and telescoping events. As one comments it is not "useful to quibble about inaccuracies, simplifications, invented characters, imagined dialogue, anachronisms and various other improbabilities." (p. 278) The important thing is that the constructed image is true to the historical perspective. Thus Dr. Strangelove truly depicts our nuclear fears and concerns at the time, although the film's characters are mere caricatures of their subjects. The Long Walk Home about the Montgomery bus boycott depicts a believable interaction between a white patrician woman and her black maid, although there is no evidence that any real white woman did learn to become involved in this way.
Most of the movies, however, are unacceptable to the historian because they point a lesson, teach a moral, or make a point. In the real world few persons are either wholly good or wholly bad, few sides completely in the right or the wrong. In contrast the movies are almost without exception morality plays or parables with an almost Manichaean vision of good and evil. For the good to win, always, the complexities of character and the ambiguities of events are misinterpreted. More than anything the movies support the popular attitudes and prejudices of their time. Whether they extol the Ku Klux Klan, support racism, praise the good housewife, or hype the independent woman, ennoble war, or decry it, the movies always bend facts to the service of popular morality. The true complexity of events and the moral ambiguity of human character require a book. Yet, for most Americans the movies are likely the only historical truth they know.
The Myth of Scientific Literacy
by Morris H. Shamos
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995) xx + 263 pp.
A short book note:
The author is a professor of physics, who also has had experience as school teacher and in industry. He does not believe we can teach this ill defined thing called "scientific literacy". A person can either study science with all the difficult and demanding work in math, logic, and lab procedure this requires, or else he can learn about the outcomes and results of technology. Without the first, especially the math, no students will understand the factual and rational methods of scientific thought. Shamos is blunt, makes us uncomfortable, and leaves a bitter taste of ashes.
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