Thursday, December 01, 2005

many times we've shared our thoughts

so i've kind of settled into metaphor for my life. one of them at least. it's certainly not a new one i guess - i have always enjoyed reading, and i was reading the tolkien books when i was in second and third grade (over and over and over again) - i think this kind of confused my teachers. but it shouldn't have. i don't think i really understood most of the story, most of what was going on in those books when i read them. but i knew them. i knew the stories, and i knew they were good - i could tell even before i knew what brilliance existed in tolkien's partially historical, partially fantastic stories.

i am convinced that there's something to this, to the idea that people can know stories before they understand them - i think of young children sitting around a campfire as an elder tells stories. the elder knew how to adapt the stories to a young audience, certainly, but they also knew that the young ones didn't need to understand all aspects of the story, that there could be other layers that became clear as they grew and experienced more. i guess this is all a digression, but i enjoy the thought. i'll return to talking about the metaphor, or in this case, the nickname, i've latched on to recently.

my current housemates call me a bibliophile. and it's not really something that i can argue with - it's more of something that i'm likely to embrace. since i've been living in this house, i've ordered about 5-7 books each week. so that's part of me. but i also know that this isn't likely to continue. i'm in the very middle of my graduate school experience - i'm trying to get so i know as much about as much as possible. i'm trying to finish writing my master's thesis, which requires getting a bunch of resources, books that i'd prefer to own than just getting them from the library (which might be stupid).

even more important, i'm trying to figure out what i should write my dissertation on (or at least what general area) - this means exploring what other people are doing, trying to figure out what's important, what's missing, and what's interesting to me. there are lots of environmental issues that i consider important. there are lots of things that are misssing. and there are lots of interesting topics and slants. so it starts to become a huge book-buying venture. the good thing is that i have hopes of creating a decent-sized personal library (and hopefully can work with my parents to design an interesting place, physical place for my books). so collecting books - sometimes it's expensive i guess, but is it a bad addiction? i hope not. i play poker, drink chai tea, write sometimes, play ultimate and soccer, play and listen to music, and like hiking. with the exception of soccer, i don't think i'm terribly addicted to any of those. but i guess i am addicted to buying, and reading books. and sharing them with other people. that's part of me. but i guess it doesn't describe enough of me. i'll have to come up with a few other metaphors that frame the way i live my life. it shouldn't be too difficult, but it should be interesting.

one idea i had yesterday in class is to start a website called ShouldIHuntOrNot.com (that would probably be it I guess). on it, i would describe my background (views on environmental ethics, animal ethics, food ethics, that sort of thing) along with a consideration i'm having about next year (whether i should hunt deer or not). describe what i think i know of the ecology and management of deer as populations, what i think i know about deer as individual entities, organisms that certainly can think and feel, can try to avoid pain and being eaten, that sort of thing. i can offer a few short perspectives on the topic - arguments for me hunting deer and for me not hunting deer. then i allow people to post their ideas, their arguments, their stories, their views on why i should or should not hunt deer. from there i just facilitate the discussion, working to organize and clarify their thoughts and reasons, asking for support of their arguments, that sort of thing.

here's how i would frame my own perspective:
i am a graduate student, interested in how people interact with, value, and treat non-human animals and the environment. this means i study the environmental humanities, but i also have a background in ecological science and agriculture. i have friends who are vegetarians and vegans, and i have friends whose favorite foods are all meat. i grew up in south dakota, raising animals and hunting, but also observing animals.

i have went hunting, and i've also taken a camera with me when my relatives go hunting (not to take pictures of them hunting really, but instead to use the camera as my excuse for looking for animals). i also enjoy waiting for animals to find me rather than me "hunting for" them. sometimes we just sort of stumble on each other, as is the case with most deer encounters, and the time when my brother and i crossed paths with three mountain lions. on that particular time, we just stopped and looked at each other, watched and waited, and then they ran off up the hill. it was really quite amazing - i've had a number of great experiences, but that's one that i appreciate a lot, most particularly because neither of us scared the other off, just watched and waited.

then i'd describe my current situation, where the number of deer in my home state has become disproportionately large (which is of course kind of silly thing to talk about because i'm sure that the number of people in the world has grown exceedingly large, which doesn't seem to convince us that we need to cull humans). but there are a lot of deer, and when there get to be too many, they can get chronic wasting disease, something that i don't think is all that nice for anyone involved - which kind of puts a different spin on letting them live their lives nicely). generally, i think that humans getting their food from wildly grazing and free deer is one of the most environmentally sound ways of getting food (less energy per calorie of food than domesticated livestock certainly, even free-range cattle, and eating deer that have foraged may even be more energy efficient than many plants that are grown in conventional agriculture - this sort of deals with the environmental concern of "eating lower on the food chain". so i consider it quite the dilemma. i'm not an absolutist in any sense of the word (i've eaten as a vegetarian and as a vegan before, but i'm mostly just a scavenger now, or a minimalist, both i guess). and i'm interested to see what arguments people would make about this topic, what stories people would tell, what values people would embody, what conversations i could enable. would this be a place for real discussion, for people with diverse perspectives to express their views? and would it work? i'm certainly someone more in favor of personal conversations about this sort of thing, but that is overlimiting in ways that the internet isn't. and i'm guessing that hunters, conservationists, animal rightsists, and others could benefit from being in conversation with each other, if only for a little while.

so why am i talking about this here. i'm talking about it because i'm curious whether this would be an interesting project to do, whether any other people would be interested in this sort of project, whether i should pursue it. any time someone has a crazy idea, i think it's important to get some simple feedback on whether the idea makes any sense at all, and then also to get some more specific feedback if it does make sense, that would relate back to practicalities - what to do, how to do it.

right now, since i just had the idea, i'm looking more for the first kind of feedback, telling me whether this is at all interesting or possible, and i'm less interested in getting practical feedback about how to do it - i'll save that for later. this is the kind of idea that i get tons of every day, and rarely pursue them. and i'm unsure whether i should start doing them or not. i have ideas for making clothing stuff, for houses, for schools and classes, for books and music videos, and for making energy storage systems (speaking of which, there is a really awesome new solar-powered charging gadget for mobile phones and ipods - i'm quite interested in this sort of thing). so i should probably start posting them here, and even if i don't do them, maybe someone else will. i need to relinquish the "i want to be famous" and the "i want to get rich" viewpoints and realize that only through sharing crazy ideas can i hope that a few of them might someday happen.

so that's where i'm at tonight - this song is amazing, and i'm pretty sure that i've not talked about it here before. my brother even made a shirt that said "i see a darkness" which i think is quite awesome. i personally like other songs by will oldham, but i think that this song is good enough that if he had no other songs, his life would be quite incredible based just on writing and singing this one song. i hope you find and listen to this song (you can listen to the johnny cash version also, but i like will oldham's version very much, and he's the original writer), and i hope that you love it, and i hope that you have a good night and a very wonderful december, as we've reached that time of year again.


i see a darkness by will oldham (bonnie prince billy)

well, you're my friend
and can you see
many times we've been out drinking
many times we've shared our thoughts
but did you ever, ever notice, the kind of thoughts i got
well you know i have a love, a love for everyone i know
and you know i have a drive, to live i won't let go
but can you see its opposition comes rising up sometimes
that its dreadful end position comes blacking in my mind

and then i see a darkness
and then i see a darkness
and then i see a darkness
and then i see a darkness
did you know how much i love you
there's a hope that somehow you
can save me from this darkness

well i hope that someday buddy
we have peace in our lives
together or apart
alone or with our wives
and we can stop our whoring
and pull the smiles inside
and light it up forever
and never go to sleep
my best unbeaten brother
this isn't all i see

i'll know i see a darkness
i'll know i see a darkness
i'll know i see a darkness
i'll know i see a darkness
did you know how much i love you
is there hope that somehow you
can save me from this darkness

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i think its a good idea, but i don't think that many people would understand it. and if some hardcore hunters happened to come along that website, they would get pissed off and start trashing the site. or some dumb kids will come along and think its really funny, and make up a bunch of random bull shit and litter the site with it. i think that i would visit it if you made it though. i burnt my tongue with coffee.

5:02 PM  

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