Talks and Workshops

LECTURES, CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, KEYNOTES

As a person who writes about the values and feelings that link us to the land, Moore is often called upon to speak to audiences of conservationists, ecologists, and others who love the land and the sea. Her audiences range from National Park Rangers and fisheries biologists to river activists, professional foresters, and young philosophers. Here is a sample of some of the talks she's available to present:

An Environmental Ethic of Care. "All ethics so far evolved," Aldo Leopold wrote, "rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts." This web of emotional and biological relationships calls for acts of commitment. Right ways of acting are those that nurture, enhance, and celebrate healthy webs of connection among all the members of the biotic community. "Sing our love for and obligation to the land," Leopold advised, and it's important to notice how quickly obligation follows on the heels of love.

The Second Premise: Our Obligation to the Future. When scientists told the world of the harms threatened by global climate change, they provided the first premise of an important argument. But scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do or convince people to fulfill those obligations – as the scientists discovered to their intense frustration. The missing premise of the argument is outside of scientific purview, in the world of social and ethical values. We need to provide the important second premise: we have an obligation to leave to the future a world at least as rich in possibilities as the world that was left to us. From the combination of scientific facts and moral convictions, but from neither alone, a conclusion follows clearly and powerfully: we have an affirmative moral duty to take immediate steps to prevent or reduce the effects of climate change.

The Secular Sacred. I don’t believe in God. I don't practice a religion. But I believe that the natural world -- the world we prod and pollute and irradiate and pave -- is sacred. This claim has profound moral consequences. It closes the distance between what is and what ought to be. If this is the way the world is -- mysterious, beautiful, contingent, wonderful -- then this is how I ought to act in the world -- with gratitude, with caring, with joy, and with a profound sense of responsibility for its thriving.

Duets: The Music of Words. In a concert performance, Kathleen Moore, essayist, and Rachelle McCabe, pianist, explore the ways that music and the written word can speak to each other. "I can write about wonder or love, mystery or beauty, but the words are ink on the page," Moore says. "Then Rachelle goes to the piano and plays Bach or Schumann, and suddenly we don't need words any more." The concert weaves essays and music into a new sort of duet -- Bartok and blackbirds, Bach and nightfall, Simon and Garfunkel and a Seattle hotel.

The Moral Significance of Wonder.

This Must Remain: The Necessity of Wild Mountain Storms

The Roots are Burning: Toward a Culture of Place and Civic Engagement

The Moral Necessity of Ecological Restoration

Wild Comfort

To schedule an event for Kathleen Dean Moore, please contact writer’s assistant Carol Mason at carol3568@comcast.net.

FREQUENTLY REQUESTED MATERIALS

Advice to Students
Transcript of an interview with students at the University of Otago, in New Zealand
October 21, 2009

Q: Today we’re very lucky to be able to speak to Professor Kathleen Moore, from Oregon State University. Kathleen is a philosopher of nature and she’s visiting us here in Dunedin currently. What brought you to Dunedin?

A: What brought me here was the opportunity to come into the Centre for Science Communication and learn about the kinds of environmental issues you have here in New Zealand and to talk with students about some ways to make positive progress.

Q: How do you think we’re doing so far in New Zealand, in Dunedin?

A: I am astonished by, shall we say, the schizophrenic nature of your environment. When we look across the landscape, it is utterly beautiful.  The scotch broom is in full bloom, the fields are as green as they can possibly be, the ocean is lovely, the rivers are flowing clear. Then when we travel across the landscape with ecologists and others, we learn the costs and the losses that are involved in this landscape. I feel battered by the issues that you face. The American, Aldo Leopold, says that one of the consequences of an ecological education is that you live in a world of wounds.

Q: Can you maybe just tell us what philosophy of nature is, exactly, as it’s not a term I’ve heard before.

A: We think of philosophy as traditionally asking three questions: “What is a human being?” “What is the relation of a human being to the natural world?” “How then shall we live?” What we’re trying to do in the philosophy of nature is think hard about the relation of people and their places. Who are we? Are we the inheritors of God’s creation and the Lords of the Universe, or are we in fact part of a very complex web of interdependencies? Our answer to that question will tell us how we ought to live.

Q: So that’s pretty much summing up our relationship with nature, obviously playing a big role in the way we use resources, that’s really a big one and of course comes back to the issue of sustainability. So, how do you think the issue of sustainability is being tackled with regard to your background in the philosophy of nature?

A: If we are European people who descend from the ideas of the Enlightenment, we will tend to think in terms of consequences: “We ought to do whatever increases human happiness.” So, consequently many of our decisions about sustainability are based on furthering human interests, doing what saves our skins, in full knowledge that we can’t destroy our habitats without also destroying ourselves. The American writer Daniel Quinn says, imagine that we human beings are living on top of a hundred-story building. Every day we send workers down to the bottom of the building to take out a few of the bricks that we carry up to the top to make our beautiful penthouse. We can do this for ten years, twenty years, one hundred years, five hundred years. But at some point we will have introduced so many channels of emptiness into the world that supports us that the whole structure will collapse. Our position at the top of that heap will not save us.

            So we do need to judge our acts by their consequences. But, there’s a new movement in the ethics of sustainability that encourages people to think also in terms of personal integrity and personal responsibility. Don’t ask, Is my act right? but rather, What kind of person do I want to be?  Do I live the life I believe in?  Do my decisions truly reflect my values?  So the sustainability movement may well be moving toward a virtue ethic or a sense of personal integrity.

Q: That brings us to the issue of green fatigue which is something I’ve experienced. We get sick of just being told what to do and I really liked what you say there about just thinking about what we want to do. One of the things I love about New Zealand is like you say, our mountains and our rivers, that you can drive to the mountains or the beach in a day. So what do you think would be some fresh ways to communicate that message of living in harmony with nature rather than the panic message of “you are destroying the world”?

A: You know, I think that a lot of our most destructive actions are a way to cope with our grief at separation from the natural world. I think the time we spend in shopping malls, the speeds at which we drive, the distances we traverse -- many of these are fumbling searches for what we really value, which is a close and meaningful connection to the natural world, often in association with communities, communities that include people and natural places.

            So, when my students ask, how should I live in this world? I often quote the American philosopher Frederick Buechner.  He said, you will find your calling at the intersection of your great joy and the world’s great need. We often focus on our great guilt, and certainly we focus on the world’s great need,  But we forget to think about our great joy.

            What do you care most about? What do you love? What gives you the greatest joy?  And then, how does that intersect with the great needs of the world? So, if you love surfing, for example, what can you do about water quality? What can you do as a person who spends so much time in the water, to respond to the world’s great need for healthy places? If your passion is film-making, how can that meet the world’s great need? Those are the kinds of things I would advise students to think.

Q: That’s a really unique way of putting it. I think we all feel the same way, that there’s this massive feeling of guilt put upon you, as we see by the people that we would classify as “greenies” and it’s real, it’s a very real feeling of guilt and part of the approach has been to make you feel guilty about how you are. A lot of us don’t really have control of the systems we work within. We’re part of a social system that, for example, encourages us to consume stuff.  However, that is kind of changing, and it’s not necessarily stopping us from consuming, but lots of people have caught onto this thing of being conscious consumers, so maybe rather than  completely overturning the system, finding the best ways to integrate our way of life with protecting the interests of nature as well. What do you think about that?

A: You are in control. You make your own decisions. I believe that you absolutely have the power to make decisions that are in accordance with your values. In the United States during the Vietnam War, we had a great movement called “conscientious objection.” People said, “I don’t believe in this war, I don’t believe it’s right and I simply won’t participate.” In many cases the personal costs were high. In a consumer culture, we can practice the same sort of conscientious objection. “I don’t like it that there’s a big gyre of plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; I will not buy plastic.” “I don’t like what beef cattle are doing to the rivers in New Zealand; I simply won’t eat beef.” These are your choices. And profit margins are so narrow that it doesn’t take much movement to move the whole industry. So simply being clear in your own mind about what you most deeply care about and who do you most fundamentally want to be, can guide your decisions and have a big impact, maybe on the way the world is, but certainly on your own personal integrity.

            And I would point out also that young people have already provided some models of living in community. Students sharing housing, for example, is a lovely sustainable action.  But we lose it when we think, as soon as I graduate I’ll buy my very own house. But maybe that overlooks the joys of living with a group of like-minded people, sharing meals, sharing transportation. There are models students can provide for how we all ought to be living. So students should celebrate themselves, celebrate their ways of living, and sustain that joy, which is so easy to forget.

Q: So, you suggest creating the links between the positives rather than focusing on the negative, encouraging people to do and care about what they enjoy, about nature and about our lives?

A: Where do you feel most alive? What are you doing when you feel so completely happy that you don’t even know you’re happy? What are the things that you can’t stop doing, the projects that you work on deep into the night? Pay attention to those. Pay attention to how you might maximize those and create communities around those values.

Q: We’ve talked about how eventually the structure’s going to collapse, and how even though we’re at the top of the structure, that’s not going to be enough to save us. What do you think this  means for future generations? How is this going to affect our children or our grandchildren?

A: I’m deeply worried about that. I hold my granddaughter in my arms.  She’s not afraid, but I am. I think we have a deep obligation to the future to leave them a world full of possibilities. We can’t go around slamming doors and making things impossible for them. We may not know what particular choices they’ll want to make, but we have to leave them a world where choices are possible. Through the whole development of the universe, the spinning off of the planets, the evolution of life on earth, we have reached, right now, this month, this year, the greatest richness of diverse life this planet has ever seen. To mine it out, to strip it down, to allow it to vanish, to pave it over, and to leave a diminished world for our grandchildren is unspeakable. If there’s anyone we love, it’s going to be our children and our grandchildren. If there’s anybody we would sacrifice for, it would be them. So what are we doing, ignoring their interests? Or mistaking them, thinking they need great wealth when what they need is great joy?

Q: Obviously a lot of students don’t have children or grandchildren. So I’m wondering how you think they can get on that bandwagon of thinking about our future generations. We might not even be thinking of having children.

A: You might not have children, but you have ancestors. You know that the people who came earlier have left you a world with a reduced number of choices and some very painful decisions to make. The students here do live in a diminished world and an imperiled world. I’m sure you get that lesson all the time. Somebody did not think about you; somebody thought only about themselves. Because you know what it’s like to be harmed by the past, you know what the next generation will feel.  That empathy can speak to you about your obligations.

Q: You’ve done some research and written about indigenous people and their relationship with nature. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Do you think there’s a big chasm between the western world and native people and how they treat the environment?

A: I had the honor of editing the papers of my late friend Viola Cordova, who was a Jicarilla Apache philosophy PhD.  She spoke beautifully about her indigenous views in language that those of us with western world views could understand. One of the things that she taught was that there are many ways of knowing. The earth “made many kinds of human beings.  Some she made for mountains, others for rivers and deserts and plains and lakes. The story of the mountain people will not be the story of a desert people. But all of them, the stories, will be true.”

            If so, then we have to honor a variety of different ways of thinking. As we move forward to deal with issues of climate change, for example, it won’t do to think only in terms of western science or western industrial economies. We need to listen also to the voices of the land and of the people of the land. When we listen to indigenous voices, we hear an important way of understanding who a person is. My friend, Robin Kimmerer, who comes from the Potawatami people in the northeastern United States, says, “When you ask what are my gifts, then you’ll know what are your responsibilities.” She says, “The gift of the salmon is this beautiful red flesh. Its responsibility is to feed the people. The gift of the songbird is the song. Its responsibility is to raise the sun in the morning.” Humans have the gift of imagination; our responsibility is to imagine how we should live on earth. Because we are able to imagine the future, we must live in a way that is responsible to that future.

            Indigenous people understand that persons are created by their places. We are, literally, the bones of the salmon. We are, literally, the minerals in the water. We are, literally, the poisons in the run-off from agricultural fields. Another colleague, Jack Forbes, from a California tribe, says, “You know, you could cut off my arm, and I would still live. You could cut off my leg and I would still live. You could cut off my nose or my ears, and I would still live. But if you stop the sun, I would die. If you stop the wind, I would die. So why do I think my legs or my arms or my ears are more a part of me than the wind and the sun?”  I think that’s a beautiful and very important way to think about ourselves. We are created by our places. As our places are damaged, so are we.

Q: Is there anything you wanted to add?

A: I think what’s happening here at the University of Otago is wonderful. The program in Science Communication that I’ve become a part of is showing me students who really do want to have a positive impact on the world.  They believe they can. And I believe that they will.

A Box of Wind: Nature writing, spirituality, and science
Associated Writing Programs meetings, Chicago
February 14, 2009

. . . The question before us is this: How to nature writers bridge the spiritual and the material, and why does that matter?

I’m a philosopher, which is someone who looks at her watch and asks, not “What time is it?” but “What is time?”  So of course I feel the need to be clearer about what ‘spiritual’ means. . . . People tell me my work is spiritual, and I’m astonished. I am a hard-headed, some would say bone-headed, secularist.  So I asked my colleague what ‘spiritual’ means.  He studies Jesus, and I thought he would know.

He said, that’s not hard.  Just remember this:  Spirituality is to religion as love is to marriage.

So I think about that.

I have known love, that longing for physical nearness, the feeling of being lifted in his presence, expansive, suddenly joyous, blown away by how beautiful he is.  And I have known marriage, the comfort of that, the world suddenly made safe. In my relationship with a man, I have chosen marriage.  In my relation to the natural world, I have chosen lust. Avoiding institutional strictures, avoiding even serial monogamy, I have loved the natural world in a way that might be described as promiscuous, lascivious.

So I get the analogy between spirituality and love.  The ‘spiritual values of wild places’ are whatever it is in the world that speaks powerfully to the imagining and feeling part of the human mind, what lifts and enlivens the human spirit.  Spirituality in a person is (as Scott Russell Sanders said) the impulse in ourselves that rises to meet the energy and glory in creation.

If this is so, then you don’t have to be religious to be spiritual.  And you don’t have to believe in God to believe that the world is sacred. In my work, I call the world the “secular sacred.”  I believe that the most reverent thing you can say is “Look, just look.”  And the most reverent stance is not on your knees or prostrate on the ground, or kneeling at the edge of your bed with your eyes closed, but standing outside with your head thrown back, looking into the night.  Look, look at the darkness, this moonlight on the water, this wash of stars, as if you were seeing them for the very first time.  Then the astonishing fact of the world is revealed to us, that there is something rather than nothing, and that it is so beautiful.

That said, my husband is a scientist, a self-described hard scientist.  You should see us try to paddle a canoe.  Philosopher in the bow, scientist in the stern.  I’m rejoicing in the sounds of the night and Frank?  Frank is explaining the biomechanics of frog song.

“Imagine blowing up a balloon,” he says.

“Now imagine blowing up a balloon made of your neck skin,” he says.

“Now imagine blowing it up twice your size.”

“Now,” he says, “hold it there and tremble all night long. The energetics of this music are so tough – so much energy expended -- that it could kill a frog.  Some tree frogs have only enough energy to sing for three nights.  Three trembling nights.  Imagine that.”

“Imagine the silence of the frogs on day four,” he says.

I do.  I sit quietly, listening to that silence.

Then he said, “Now imagine swallowing a moth so big that you have to push it down your throat with your eyeballs.”

We look across the lake, the path of the moon glittering with the discarded wings of a trillion flying ants.  And we look at the moon itself, bulging out between black mountains. We note in passing that we ourselves are sailing at a zillion miles per hour through the darkness, spinning in a spiral galaxy slung across space, slung out with all the singing frogs and the quiet ones, up to their eyeballs in swamp.

And if we even think about our own sparking minds on that sparkling lake, the molecular structure of awareness, the biochemistry of celebration, the universe singing its own praises in the language of philosophy and science, then we have to hold on to keep from swamping the canoe.  Astonished, yes.  And shaken.

The secular sacred.  Secular: living in the world. Sacred: worthy of reverence and awe.

Now. 

Now to Tom’s question: How do nature writers bridge the spiritual and the material, and why does that matter?

Second question first.  Here’s why it matters: This profound seeing with science’s powerful lens, this sense of wonder, with science’s endless astonishments, this impulse to honor the sacred world, has radical moral consequences.  It closes the distance between what is and what ought to be.

We live in a physical world of rocks and storms.  And at the same time, we live in a moral world of hopes and a vision of what ought to be.  Some philosophers and scientists would have us believe they are different worlds, the is and the ought. But I believe the worlds come together.  The same impulse that says, this is wonderful, is the impulse that says, this must continue.  If this is the way the world is – extraordinary, surprising, beautiful, singular, astonishing, mysterious, meaningful, contingent – then this is the way I ought to act in the world – with gratitude, with joy and celebration, with wonder, with caring and respect, and above all, with a sense of responsibility to care for it, that it may continue to be.

Maybe I should parse this out.  Maybe I should say this all over again, but in a syllogism.

Every argument that has as its conclusion a statement about what we ought to do (for example, we ought to act so as not to wreck the world), will have two premises.

First, it will have an empirical premise, a descriptive premise, which comes from scientific or other observation.  It says, this is the way the world is.  (For example, global climate change is real, it is dangerous, it is upon us, it threatens the existence of the natural world as we know it.)  Every argument about what we ought to do will begin with a statement of fact.  But you can’t get to a prescriptive conclusion – I ought to do this or that – without a second premise.

The second premise is normative.  It is an affirmation of what is worthy and worth doing, of what is right in human actions.  It says, this is good, this is sacred, this is what I believe in, this is what it means to be fully human.  (Say, for example, this world is worth saving).

From the descriptive premise and the normative premise, but from neither alone, a conclusion follows about what we ought to do.

Nature writers, I would venture to say all writers, work in the world of the second premise.  Literature is a record of a culture’s exploration of what is worthy, beloved, what is just and beautiful. That work is at the center of any inquiry into the greatest question of all time, How, then, shall I live?

I am convinced that there has never been a greater need than there is today for all the premises of the argument – the scientific and the inspirited.  The landscapes and creatures we nature writers write about so carefully are vanishing far faster than the publishing cycle, and we can barely stand under the weight of the grief.

The times call for “applied reverence.”  Reverence is not enough. Standing in witness to the beauty of the world, as it gets sucked down and bulldozed over and ground down and irradiated, poisoned, paved, is not enough.

What if we really took seriously the idea that the world is sacred, really.  Imagine that.  If the world is sacred, what the hell are we doing, standing around while it vanishes before our eyes?  Look out the window.  Where is the marshland? Where are the rafts of ducks?  Where is the window?

Action without reverence is dangerous.  But reverence without action is empty, as many have said.  Reverence without action is as hypocritical as the Sunday Christian.  Reverence without action is the ‘woo’ that people despise in nature writing.

I had better close quickly, because my time is up and because when I think about the need for environmental action, I struggle not to sink into despair.

As it turns out, lawn chemicals are killing frogs in my town.  I have seen the corpses in the pond, just their empty, sunken skins, bleached white by winter.

Why does it matter, this connection between science and spirit? Because this is the work we must do together, to sing for the silent frogs and for all the rest of the silenced sacred world.  With bulging eyes and a trembling throat, to sing for what is wonderful, irreplaceable, sacred, and green.  [end]