Contemporary Dilemmas: "Riding the Blinds"

(1) Anthropocene: The Era of Human Impact on the Earth

QUESTIONS FOR GROUP 1

1. What feelings of control (or lack thereof) come up when you read/learn about the Anthropocene era?

2. What conflicts appear between the human-earth relationship in vv. Gen 1:28 and 2:15?

3. Who does the earth belong to? (BONUS: look up Ps 24:1)!

4. How does Nelson's narrative align (or not) with the Biblical texts?

"'It was April 1784, when James Watt patented the steam engine, an act that commenced the depositing of carbon in Earth's crust--namely, the inception of humanity as a geophysical force on a planetary scale.' This era--our era--which is defined by human impact on the earth--is widely referred to as the Anthropocene."--Maggie Nelson in "Riding the Blinds" (p.172)

"Yes, there have been mass extinctions before, including a handful of occasions on which carbon dioxide has flooded the atmosphere. But in Earth's half-billion-year history of animal life, there have been only a few and none was preventable in the way this one is (or was); none was caused by a single species (not to mention a species with the ability to address the threat to itself)."--Maggie Nelson in "Reading the Blinds" (p.174)

(2) When Favoring Freedom Means Choosing Constraint

QUESTIONS FOR GROUP 2

1. What issues of freedom and restraint come up for Nelson (and us) when facing the climate crisis?

2. How do our limits and constraints (especially in the world of halakhah) challenge/support us?

3. What is the relationship between heaven, earth, and humanity that seems to be set up near the end of Deuteronomy?

4. Why is Moses asking for heaven and earth to hear him in the penultimate parasha (Ha'azinu!)? Who might you ask?

"No matter our truly impressive reserves of ingenuity and resiliency, no matter the bubblesuits a costume designer imagines we might someday wear in that fabulous Mars terrarium, no matter the celebrities taking field trips to experience weightlessness at Zero G facilities, no matter the Google executives trying to upload their consciousnesses to the cloud, we cannot and will not escape the constraints that constitute the parameters of our mortal existence, such as our need for water, food, air, shelter, and love, nor do I see why we would want to. Accepting and working with such constraints rather than hoping to be liberated from them by some unforeseeable technofix, divine intervention, or bloody boogaloo demands a more sensible, some might say a more grown-up conception of freedom."--Maggie Nelson from "Riding the Blinds" (pp. 183-184)

“Shmita tells us to put limits on our activities because we are not the center of the universe, because we are in relationship to something larger than ourselves. One way to look at this is to say that shmita reminds us that whereas the ethos of our times is to move forward unceasingly, in a more sane and interconnected world there are rhythms.”

—Rabbi Natan Margalit, from Shimta: The Rhythms of Life

The Fantasies and Futilities of Future Discounting

QUESTIONS FOR GROUP 3

1. In what ways do we as a Jewish community engage in "future discounting?" Does this engagement differ when it comes to the environment?

2. What do you think the difference is between corrupting the world and destroying the world? Which have we done?

3. How does time play into the actions that we should be taking? How do we frame the future?

4. Are we able to reverse/rebuild/revitalize damages from the past?

"One of the intellectual and emotional vexations of the climate crisis is that it strands us in a state of bewilderment as to whether our moment is mundane or exceptional."--Maggie Nelson in "Riding the Blinds" (p. 173)

"When economists contend with global warming, they engage in a process called 'future discounting,' in which one 'weighs future people's benefits against costs borne by people in the present.' In contemplating the future, one can ascribe to it a high or low discount rate: as climate researched David Hodgkinson explains, 'If a cost benefit analysis uses a high discount rate, it discounts future benefits to a high degree, giving little weight to the interests of future people.' If one uses a low discount rate, then the present generation is called upon to 'make urgent sacrifices for the sake of future people.'" -Maggie Nelson in "Riding the Blinds" (p.196)