Keynote address for the International Association of Environmental Philosophers

October 2006, Philadelphia

The Thing Itself, under Asphalt

Joan Maloof

Perhaps you have been asked at some time to: “Close your eyes and imagine a beautiful place.”

Some of you will envision the seashore, but for many of us the scene that comes to mind is very green. Human imagined scenes of an idyllic paradise are typically dominated by green plants, and perhaps some water.

If that is what we imagine as a beautiful place, why then is it not what we are creating? Or perhaps I should ask: why aren’t we are leaving that in place? This is the question I would like to examine this evening.

The majority of our planet is not green of course. Most of our planet is blue. It is wet. 71% water and 29% land. A quarter of this land is not green because it is too rocky, or dry, or cold. But the most of the land area is green. Or perhaps I should say was green.

We are creatures of the land and we have become human in the midst of plants. It’s no surprise then, that we imagine a green place as a place of beauty. Ecologist E.O. Wilson would say that our love of places filled with plants is an example of “biophilia” – we love what we know, we love what tells us that our surroundings are healthy and can feed us and shelter us.

These days we may be able to say the same thing of a hotel – it can feed us and shelter us – but that knowledge is new, it is not deep in our DNA. The love of green places has been part of our psyche for forty thousand years – and probably beyond.

So when we are asked to close our eyes and imagine a beautiful place I doubt that any of us are imagining a hotel. The poet Gerald Manley Hopkins does not say:

What would the world be, once bereft

of Sheraton and Hilton?

He says:

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness?

His poem has been popular for over a hundred years, because we can so relate to his cry.

But having now acknowledged that most of us love the green, the wet, the wildness; when we look around we see very little of it.

Where is the disconnect between what we consider beautiful, and how we actually shape our surroundings? This is a huge question. I will repeat it: Where is the disconnect between what we consider beautiful, and how we actually shape our surroundings?

As a botanist I am most interested in forest ecosystems and what they can tell us about how humans behave. We inherited a plant where 70% of the land was covered in forest. Primitive humans used these forests, of course, and had some impact on them. But for tens of thousands of years the impact was minimal. The majority of the Earth was clothed in virgin forest that supported diverse populations of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects. This scenario began to change about six thousand years ago when humans created something called “civilization.” One of the first civilzations was in the famed Tigris – Euphrates River valley. Today we know that region as the Middle East or just the Mideast. It is a place we have dropped many bombs. The earliest examples of agriculture, mathematics, literature, even money can be traced to that area. And it is from that place and time that humans began to have a more permanent impact on the forests of the earth. Forests were felled in the name of progress, in the name of religion, in the name of civilization.

The oldest known piece of Western Literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is thousands of years older than the Hebrew Bible. I find it interesting that both of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible discuss logging.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is set in that “cradle of civilization:” the Tigris-Euphrates River valley. In the tale the cultured, but ego-filled, Gilgamesh teams with mountain man Enkidu to accomplish a mutual goal: material wealth. The wealth was to be gained, as it so often is, by taking it from nature’s stores. In this case the wealth was large old cedar timbers that were to be used to build palaces and the like.

But in olden times the forests were protected by gods, or by mortals who were empowered by the gods. The Cedars of Lebanon were protected by Humbaba, a frightening hulk-like being. To cut the cedars Gilgamesh and Enkidu first had to kill Humbaba. The Epic tells the story of their preparation for battle and their travels to the forest. It tells of their arrival at the forest and their amazement and awe at seeing the magnificent trees.

The shade of the evergreens was cooling and comforting. It filled them with happiness. The undergrowth was full and tangled. The sweet smell of pine and cedar was intoxicating to them. The sound of strange birds and creatures filled them with wonder.

Humbaba tried to talk them out of cutting the forest. (Please keep in mind that these words are from the oldest piece of literature known.) He said:

Most of what is important and necessary on the earth is encoded in this old forest. That is why the Gods love cedar incense....This forest has been here since before there were people on earth....The Gods sent me here in their wisdom. They know that people are greedy and shortsighted. They will cut down the entire forest to get rich and the wealth of Lebanon and Syria will be depleted. It will take only a few years after I am dead and these trees shall all be gone. There will be no more Cedars in the land of the Cedar.

You may be able to guess what happened next – Gilgamesh and Enkidu killed Humbaba and began cutting the great forest.

In the bible, an angel of the Lord appeared to David, the King of Israel, and instructed him to build an altar. David decided that the altar should be a large and lavish place, befitting of the Lord, and he began collecting timbers of cedar logs “beyond number”(I Chronicles 21:18 - 22:4). But before he could complete the “house for the name of the Lord” David became old and ill, and died. He appointed his son Solomon to succeed him as King of Israel, and Solomon continued construction on the temple. But Israel did not have enough cedars left. The remaining old-growth cedar forests were in the land where Hiram was king. So Hiram and Solomon struck a deal. “I have heard the message which you sent me;” said Hiram, “I will do what you desire concerning the cedar and cypress timber. My servants will bring them down from Lebanon to the sea; and I will make them into rafts to go by sea to the place where you direct me, and I will have them broken up there, and you shall carry them away” (I Kings 5:1-10).

Lebanon once had over two hundred thousand acres of cedar forest and now there are not even five thousand acres left. The cedars that do remain are divided into small parcels.

Today when we think of the nations of the Middle East; like Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel, we think of dry and dusty places. But they were not always like that; they were covered in forest before they became “civilized.”

And “civilization” spread. Civilized humans needed open land for agriculture, and an abundance of wood to smelt metal and fire pottery and melt sand for glass. The forests of Cypus fell, and the forests of Rome, and the forests of Athens. Most people are not aware that those lands were once forested, before they became “civilized.”

Even Plato observed the changes to his land. He said, “What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left.....”

England became civilized later than Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. As a result of this delay, in the 1500’s England still had vast forests and was able to build massive wooden ships. These ships gave England world dominance of the seas, but their construction eventually decimated her forests...and the forests of Ireland. Even the Sherwood Forest was logged.

It should not be surprising that the vast forests of the New World were soon being shipped back to England. The organization that sent the pilgrims to America instructed them to cut boards and load them onto the ship for its return journey (A Forest Journey, John Perlin). Eventually, many English shipbuilders moved to the “New England” to build ships where the wood was plentiful.

Just four hundred years ago this New World was filled with towering trees that had never been expoited by “civilization.” Now look at it.

There are still a few corners of the globe where civilization has not arrived, and the trees still remain. But very few. And we are closing in on them fast.

Seventy-five percent of the planet’s forests have been logged or burned. Some have recovered, but the planet now has only half of the forests it had when Gilgamesh walked on it.

This is not just a history lesson. As we lose the forests we lose other species that depend on the forests. We lose birds, like the Ivory Billed woodpecker, we lose salamanders, we lose bats, we lose tigers. Biologists say we lose biodiversity, artists say we lose beauty, philosophers say we lose “the thing itself.”

None of us, as individuals, want to lose these things. (Even Gigamesh was emotionally moved by the forest he was about to destroy.) But something strange happens to us when we come together as a “civilization.”

Any one who has studied systems theory knows that there can be a level of organization beyond the individual organism. Call it a super-organism if you wish. Insects such as ants and bees can illustrate for us the difference between an organism (a single ant or bee) and a super-organism (a colony or a hive).

I think that as individual organisms, humans are mostly good. But our super-organism – civilization – is destroying the health and beauty of our planet.

Historians have documented the lessons, biologists have published the evidence, artists have tried to reach us through our hearts, but none of them seem to be able to direct our super-organism away from destruction. Now more than ever we need those who are not afraid to examine the big questions: the philosophers.

In closing I will repeat the question I opened with: If a healthy planet with clean water and abundant green vegetation is what we imagine as beautiful, why aren’t we leaving any of it that way? Why are we covering the “thing itself” with asphalt? Where is the disconnect between what we consider beautiful, and how we actually shape our surroundings?

For some mysterious reason civilization lacks the collective will to protect what we, as individuals, love most. We may not be able to change that, but we can look it in the eye and tell the truth about it.

Joan Maloof is the author of Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest. She teaches biology and environmental issues at Salisbury University in Maryland.