Daily Archives: October 1, 2017

Trump’s Hypocrisy Problem: Private Planes, Private Emails, And Public Humiliation

Puerto Rico fights major humanitarian crisis after Hurricane Irma

Global Water Crisis and How To Fix It with Brian Richter

Surveying toxic waste sites flooded by Harvey

Florida company running nuclear power plant called to explain water contamination

Undeniable Major Problem Happening Now! Contaminated Water is Now A Major Problem After Hurricane Ev

Noam Chomsky (Oct 02, 2017) – American Socrates The Life and Mind of Noam Chomsky

Bus-Sized Asteroid’s Closest Approach About 54,100 Miles Away

The Oxford School of Climate Change – Oxford Climate Society

http://www.oxfordclimatesociety.com/the-oxford-school-of-climate-change.html

Drawing the Wrong Conclusions – An Anthropologist Looks at History: Cultural Mistakes Since 1492 – The “Frontier” Metaphor & the Myth of Endless Growth | EV & N – 256 – CCTV

http://ecoethics.net/2014-ENVRE120/20171001-EV&N-256-Link.html
https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/507133
https://www.cctvcambridge.org/user/3723/history
YouTube Version

We have misunderstood the meaning of the Columbus “discovery” of the new world. He – and Ferdinand Magellan who came after him — proved the world was round, but 1492 unleashed flat-earth “frontierism” and the powerful myth of endless economic growth at the core of our modern industrial culture. The fact is that there are no “frontiers” in any ultimate sense in the global ecosystem because it is spherical.

Frontiers are based on a the metaphor of linear movement outward upon infinite space along which people or things are thought to move, expand and conquer.   For much of American history (and that of other “white settler societies” like South Africa, Canada, Australia, etc) , the concept of linear expansion toward an ever receding horizon on a flat earth surface seemed to function as a plausible metaphor collective experience — for a while.

Nevertheless,the limits of this kind of flat-earthism should have become apparent immediately to anyone who took the discoveries of Columbus and Magellan seriously.  The attempt to link a linear metaphor to something like expansion around the globe or off the spherical earth into space is a sadly misplaced metaphor.  Yet while the notion of expanding “frontiers” makes no sense off a sphere like earth, the persistent grip of linear flat-earth frontierism is so powerful as a metaphor that politicians in America simply cannot avoid repeating and amplifying the metaphor:

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Politicians are simply resonating with and seeking to capitalize upon a metaphorical structure that is deeply ingrained in Western civilization.  Moreover, they are not alone in this. Even the most sophisticated minds have embraced the nonsensical notion of “frontiers of space.”

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