A Tree Analogy
Twigs
Within Aichi’s Target 5, this question is asked:
What factors are causing habitat loss in your country and which of these are the easiest to address?
Branches
From the 20 Aichi Targets, number 5 was for the:
Habitat Loss to be halved.
Boughs
That report has five key target areas, the second of which was:
Biodiversity and the Aichi Targets.
Trunk
Within that Daoist thought we can place the recent United Nations report:
Making Peace with Nature.
Roots
Zhong Daosong, a Taoist master at Baiyun Temple, Beijing, suggests that: ...human life is really only a small part of a larger process of nature, the human life which makes sense are those which are in harmony with nature. Although different countries and various regions have their own cultures, if we pursue harmony between humanity and nature, there will be no friction and no violence.
The above
analogy
Analogy and its work for language.
is offered to help with a problem that is commonly felt: philosophical abstractions do not relate to the practicalities of life. Why bother with the distinction between
noumenon
A whole page devoted to that about which we can say absolutely nothing - Kant's Noumenon.
and phenomenon,
self
A little on the idea of 'self'.
versus other, or the contrast of the urban with
nature?
The argument that humans need to make peace with nature is as old as Daoism.
We bother because ideas of great abstraction do indeed motivate people to act - just consider ‘crusades’ or 'jihads'. Maybe the tree analogy offers assistance. The parts of the tree draw attention to the way that interconnections, steps in a chain of argument, are vital to action, just as the tree's roots, through its boughs, nourish its twigs; sheared of their abstractions, actions readily become meaningless dis-articulated routines, adrift from our
life stories,
The unique individual story that forms each of our lives.
or the stories of our societies and cultures. Humans need meaning to
act;
We need more than facts, pictures or films to challenge our abuse of the planet.
trees like this one promote meaning.
The 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets (so named after the prefecture of Japan where they were originally composed in 2010) can be
downloaded.
In February 2021 the United Nations Environmental Programme issued a comprehensive, urgent, and valuable report entitled: Making Peace with Nature which can be
downloaded as a pdf.
The China Global Television Network (CGTN) was launched in 2016, its article from which the above quote is taken is at
this site.
It appeared there on 21st May 2019.
The beech tree photographed was on the east side of Gallowhill by Moffat, Scotland. It was estimated to be about 180 years old when it was felled in 2005.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 10th December 2022
...guide to this site