Tibetan Village Project David Suzuki Foundation Canadian Wildlife Federation CWF Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Community Development Sierra Club Victoria Group

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Manufactured Landscapes

I'm a mid-career instructional designer/educational media developer living in Victoria, BC, Canada. I was born in Bismarck, North Dakota, and raised in Boulder, Colorado. I've been living in Victoria since 2003, when disillusioned with American wars and politics, I decided to move with my family to Canada.

My undergraduate degree was in Chinese Language and Literature. I've been very interested in East Asian philosophy, language and culture. I've spent several years learning and living in Taiwan, China, and Tibet.

My most recent trip to China and Tibet is documented in my blog, overthere: Our travels to the other side, summarized in word and photon.

I've also been very interested in Chinese and Tibetan language. Working with a friend, Jampal Gyaltsen, I created some free online beginning Tibetan language learning drills, accessible via my current projects web page.

My undergraduate minor was in Computer Science, and I've worked in computer-related endeavors for most of my professional life. I combined this background with a Masters degree in Educational Technology in 1989 to launch my instructional design and educational media career. Details of this career can be seen in my online resume. (My services are further described on my professional website.)

One outgrowth of my interest in computers and education is a project I'm working on at present, to teach Java to elementary school kids. I've felt that kids can learn programming at much younger ages than they're taught in most schools, so I'm attempting to teach some 10-yr old girls. The lessons, still in development, are freely available on my CodeKids website.

My wish is to find a way to make good use of my skills and experience to benefit our Earth's sky, waters, lands, flora, fauna, and humans. I've worked on one substantial environmental education project so far, Watersheds: Connecting Weather to the Environment (a free registration is required to view this online course). I'm currently working on a second title, focusing on the links between weather, health, and climate change.

But I aspire to do much much more, if such opportunities might arise. Toward that end, I'm currently working toward a certificate in Canadian Environmental Practice through the Canadian Centre for Environmental Education. I've completed courses on Sustainability and Environmental Ethics so far. It was the course on sustainability that exposed me to the wonderful work and writings of Paul Hawken. What a great service he has done and is doing for all of us and all the Earth!

If you know of any opportunities for someone like me to help create online rich media environmental education materials or websites, please let me know.

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Personal Ethics

I attended a wonderful online course on Environmental Ethics from Tim Quick at Royal Roads University. Tim is a really excellent teacher, if you ever have the chance to learn from him. As part of the course, Tim asked the students to attempt to articulate our personal environmental ethics. Here, below, I share some of what I wrote. Your comments are welcome.

I spent some time over the past week attempting to pull together threads of what may form the beginnings of a personal environmental ethics, which draws heavily from Buddhist philosophy. My main discomfort with many of the ethical systems we have explored in this class is that I find them backward. All the focus on value typologies, moral considerability and monism-pluralism strikes me as somehow missing the point, because there is an assumed outward focus. Whether animals, plants, ecosystems, or teleological centres, the objects of the ethics are assumed to be external to us, and we are left sifting through the mirror-maze of outward phenomena.

I would rather have the ethics point the other way, turning its gaze inward. Such a shift of perspective seems to immediately simplify, if not obviate the questions of whom to consider and where to place value. By my way of thinking, the object of consideration should be one's actions, which can be judged by examining the motivations behind them. If an act is motivated by a confused view and/or disturbed emotions, it is necessarily non-virtuous. If an act flows from pure view, virtue will automatically accrue.

What is a confused view? It is any view that assumes composite phenomena (phenomena produced by causes and conditions) to be permanent, independent, unitary, self-sustaining, and truly existent. What are disturbed emotions? These are the many varieties of emotional energy derived from solidifying other, such as attachment to other as a source of happiness and aversion to other as a source of suffering.

By my way of thinking, every action could be morally considerable, and every phenomenon could be recognized as inherently pure. These two perspectives sum up what is referred to as a Two Truths approach. Such an approach operates at two levels simultaneously, the Absolute and the Relative levels. On the Absolute level, it is possible to develop an ever-deepening recognition that since they are inherently empty, all phenomena are expressions of pure, perfect energy. On the Relative level, it is possible to develop an ever-finer grained recognition of the myriad causes, conditions, effects, and impacts of every action. But, in practical terms, since ethics are useful when they are related to everyday life, the Relative level of truth is more applicable to the ethical framework I am attempting to outline. Two basic Buddhist principles that seems directly relevant to ethics come from the Buddha's teachings on the Four Seals:

1. All composite phenomena are impermanent
2. All that is tainted (by dualistic confusion) brings suffering

Thus, if an action is motivated by confusion, which does not recognize the composite and impermanent nature of all phenomena, the result will be suffering.

All of the above is highly abstract. Let me now try to frame these ideas within an operational approach to environmental ethics. Let's consider two examples, dumping motor oil and fishing.

Dumping Motor Oil

In my youth, I emptied motor oil from my pick-up truck by driving to a vacant lot and opening the drain. One could consider the negative consequences of this act from two perspectives. Externally, a chain of detrimental results flows with the oil, as it poisons the soil, kills countless soil fauna and flora, and eventually damages nearby aquatic ecosystems. Internally, such an act, motivated by a combination of ignorance, laziness, and stinginess, results in re-enforced propensities toward those negative emotions. In other words, the negative karma is infused into the dumper's mindstream, and will come to fruition, sooner or later, in the form of suffering derived from ignorance, laziness, and stinginess.

Fishing

Fishing could be examined by looking at the impacts on the fish, their food webs, and their aquatic ecosystems. This is the external examination, but we could also perform an internal examination. A fisher may be motivated by desire (to eat fish or to experience excitement) or aggression (inflicting injury and killing). In either case, the objectification of the fish is borne of confusion and the karmic result will be experienced as suffering. Such actions will strengthen the propensity to view external phenomena as sources of pleasure or as objects of aggression. In addition, the illusory veil of ignorance, like Thoreau's fog or the River Styx, will lead us to forget that the suffering of one being is inseparably linked to the suffering of all beings. This thickening fog will also bear fruit one day as the suffering of ignorance. Because of interdependence, every action affects all beings on some subtle level. And if a small action is multiplied a million-fold, the effects are huge. Witness, for example, contemporary effects such as fishery collapses and climate change.

Justification

The ethics I have been outlining is an essentially monistic system because it reduces all ethical spheres into one principle: Given that all phenomena are interdependent, all actions are worthy subjects of consideration through an examination that considers both the motivations behind the act as well as the range of interdependent effects, both internal and external, that would result from the act. This basic principle can be justified in various ways, both on the basis of self-interest and on the basis of common interest. In this sense, there may be a plurality of applications or just means for activating this principle. From the perspective of self-interest, we may choose to avoid non-virtuous acts in order to prevent or limit the extent of our self-inflicted future suffering. From the perspective of common interest, we may choose to avoid individual acts of non-virtue in order to promote the well-being and common good of all.