Question 2: Edward O. Wilson (Revised)

            The conservation of the environment is a tricky topic to talk about because you have two different extremist parties clashing. Right- hand conservatives “strongly” believe that global warming isn’t real and that people have nothing to worry about. Environmentalists believe that global warming is real and that we must take drastic steps to save the world. In the two passages, Edward O. Wilson cleverly pits the environmentalists and conservatives to “battle it out” to illustrate the unproductive nature of such arguments. Both sides of the argument are very ignorant of each other and do not acknowledge each other which is ironic considering how similar they are. Both sides are illustrated as bickering children. It seems as though both sides do indeed have a hidden agenda that the other is desperately trying to expose.

            Both the environmentalists and the conservatives talk about each other in an uneducated, ignorant, tone, which is ironic because they sound the same. Conservatives are just angry at the fact that their way of life is being threatened by all the limitations that Environmentalists are placing. “Business investors can’t get at the oil and gas on federal lands…” “Conservation should be kept in perspective. It is best put in private hands.” Now he is starting to sound like a true American. Arguments made by the environmentalists aren’t that much nobler either. “In America the right wingers have made the word ‘conservative’ a mockery. What exactly are they trying to conserve?” There is enough reasonable evidence in the world to prove global warming and the deterioration of the environment, but that isn’t the only issue facing the world right now. Events like extremist terrorist organizations and economic unbalance also plague our world. Politicians shouldn’t have to just drop everything they are doing to focus on environmental issues. If both sides saw how ignorant they are being, they would understand how unproductive such discussions are.

            Edward O. Wilson illustrates the environmentalists and conservatives as bickering children. Usually when children bicker, it is because they had a disagreement and when they do argue, it sounds very informal and for lack of a better word, “childish.” The wackos have a broad and mostly hidden agenda that always comes from the left, usually far left.” “They keep their right- wing political agenda mostly hidden when downgrading climate change and species extinction…” The conservatives and environmentalists are using the same argument against each other! They might as well make an ass out of themselves because there is no real meat to their arguments. They are essentially arguing kids.

            Lastly it seems as though each side does have a hidden agenda that other is desperately clawing at. The conservatives don’t care for anything except money. When you think of a conservative, you think of an ugly, old white male. There is nothing in the world an ugly, old white male loves more than money. As the environmentalists say, “ for them economic growth is always the ultimate, and maybe the only, good.” That’s not to say the environmentalists are white knights in shining armor. “The environmentalists are pushing to create more federal jobs and waste tax payer’s dollars. Now no true American would want that would they.

Civil Disobedience

                 Webster Dictionary defines civil disobedience as refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government. When there is a miscommunication between the government and the public, civil disobedience is one of the most effective movements to change the government’s opinion. Peaceful civil rights movements such as Anti- Vietnam protests, Indian Independence Movement, and civil rights movements of the 1960s are all powerful examples of civil disobedience. The Anti- Vietnam War protests are prime examples of effective civil disobedience. After World War II, America and Russia entered into a rivalry. As Russia began spreading communism throughout Eastern Europe and eastern Asia, America intervened to stop the spreading of “bad ideas.” As Americans witnessed the horrors of the war, they knew that the cause couldn’t justify the war. But as the American government wanted to continue the war to fight the Russians, Americans created a counter culture of hippies and protested the government’s decisions. The Indian Independence movement is considered one of the first peaceful transfer of power to an independent state. Since the colonial age of the 1500s and 1600s, India has been under the colonial rule of Great Britain. Gandhi led successful peaceful protests to make Britain free India. The Civil Rights Movements in the 1960s is another example of peaceful protests that forced the government to change their decisions. The leader of the protests: Martin Luther King Jr., was highly influenced by the works of Mahatma Gandhi.

            When America entered Vietnam, Americans were patriotic and proud. They were under the belief that they were stopping the evils of communism to instill democracy. That was not what they experienced. The people of Vietnam didn’t care whether they became communists or democrats. Americans realized they were sending good men to die for no good reason. “And by the time U.S. planes began regular bombings of North Vietnam in February 1965, some critics had begun to question the government’s assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from Communist aggression.”(History.com) Most people still supported the war but a small minority of people that were mostly made of college students began a small flame resisting the war. “This minority included many students as well as prominent artists and intellectuals and members of the hippie movement, a growing number of young people who rejected authority and embraced the drug culture.” (History.com) But as the tides of war changed, many people began opposing the war and drafts. The U.S. government told the American Public that the war was going well. When the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive and effectively knocked out American military bases for a short time. After this military move, the American public lost trust in the U.S. government. “The launch of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops in January 1968, and its success against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, sent waves of shock and discontent across the home front and sparked the most intense period of anti-war protests to date. By early February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson’s handling of the war and a full 50 percent disapproved (the rest had no opinion). Joining the anti-war demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches.” (History.com)

            British control of the South Asian Subcontinent began as a trading venture in the early seventeenth century with the English East India Company. Following an uprising in 1857 India came under direct administration by the British Empire. The British colonial government relied on the cooperation of Indian elites and soldiers for formal control of government and the population. “Mohandas Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement of 1930-1931—launched by the Salt March—is a critical case for understanding civil resistance. Although by itself it failed to bring Indian independence, it seriously undermined British authority and united India’s population in a movement for independence under the leadership of the Indian National Congress (INC).” (nonviolent-conflict.org) Gandhi believed in peace. He knew that fighting fire with fire would no resolve anything because using violence to fight injustices from Britain would not solve anything. “On the anniversary of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar—in which hundreds of unarmed Indians were killed and many more wounded by British soldiers—Gandhi reached down and scooped up a handful of mud at a beach and declared that he was shaking the foundations of the British Empire. He then boiled the mud in seawater to produce illegal salt, an act repeated by thousands which led to the arrest of an estimated 60,000-100,000 men and women who participated for the first time in mass public demonstrations.” (nonviolent-conflict.org) In August 1947, the Indian Independence Act was signed. This separated the Muslim majority areas from India to create the independent state of Pakistan. This new state was split in two, the two parts being 1000 miles apart. The act was not easy to put into action. Gandhi’s actions were brave. He introduced the idea that violent revolutions were not necessary to gain what they want. “His three major campaigns in 1920–22, 1930–34, and 1940–42 were well designed to engender that process of self-doubt and questioning that was to undermine the moral defenses of his adversaries and to contribute, together with the objective realities of the postwar world, to producing the grant of dominion status in 1947. The British abdication in India was the first step in the liquidation of the British Empire on the continents of Asia and Africa. Gandhi’s image as an archrebel died hard, but, as it had done to the memory of George Washington, Britain, in 1969, the centenary year of Gandhi’s birth, erected a statue to his memory.” (Britannica)

            From America’s beginning, America was always segregated. African- Americans were brought from West Africa in the early 1600s. They were forced as slaves until the late 1800s ahen the Civil War ended and effectively freed slaves. But even though the slaves were free, they were always “separate but equal.” In the early 1960s, segregation hit its tipping point. African- Americans had to drink at their own water fountain, they had separate eating spots, and couldn’t receive the same education as white people. Many people see Martin Luther King Jr. as the head of the civil rights movement. As a child he experienced heavy segregation. “By the time of the Little Rock incident, the nation had already become aware of the heightened struggle in the South. In 1955 blacks in Montgomery, Ala., organized a boycott of city buses in protest of the policy of segregated seating. Instigated by Rosa Parks, the boycott lasted 381 days; it succeeded in integrating the seating. It also led to the formation in 1957 of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in Atlanta, Ga. This was presided over by a local black minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. As SCLC head, King would later become a central leader in the larger civil rights movement.” (scholastic.com)

Works Cited

1. "Civil Disobedience." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

2. "Vietnam Protest Movement." Spartacus Educational. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.

3. History.com Staff. "Vietnam War Protests." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

4. Kurtz, Lester. "The Indian Independence Struggle (1930-1931)."Movements and Campaigns. N.p., June 2009. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

5. "India 1900 to 1947". HistoryLearningSite.co.uk. 2014. Web.

6. Davis, Jack E. "Civil Rights Movement." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2014. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

7. History.com Staff. "Civil Rights Movement." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

8. "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 20 Jan. 2015

2011 Question 2: Florence Kelley on Child Labor

                   Before child labor laws, safety laws, and minimum wage, there were no rules to govern the working class, especially children and women. Children and woman would work nine to twelve hour shifts at night to make a living. Florence Kelley was a United States Social Worker and reformer who fought successfully for child labor laws and improved conditions for working women. Kelley carefully wrote her essay to convey her message about child labor to the audience. She achieved her goal through the use of ethos, bandwagon appeal, and logos.

                    One of the main strategies Kelley applied was emotion. She knew that to get her point across to the audience, she would have to break their heart with stories of children trying to not die of starvation. “boys increase in the ranks of the breadwinners;” child labor reached its peak during the early 1900s around the time of the Great Depression. A time when most families could barely afford food. Many boys, girls, and women now had to take up jobs at dangerous jobs with horrid working conditions. Kelley uses this example to help appeal to the audience's sense of emotion. “ A girl of six or seven years, just tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or night. And they will do so tonight, while we sleep.” Here Kelley fires another emotional outcry in to the audience. A young girl who is barely tall enough to reach the tools, will work eleven hours all while the people in the audience sleep. Kelley uses emotion as her main driver in her argument.

                  Bandwagon appeal is another one of Kelley's rhetorical strategies used. She uses this to gather the audience into one mindset. A mindset who's goal is to bring child labor laws and safety regulations to the working industry. “For the sake of the children, for the Republic in which these children will vote after we are dead, and for the sake of our cause, we should enlist the workingmen voters, with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil.” Kelley uses this paragraph as her main bandwagon appeal. When writing the paragraph, she always used the word “we” implying a sense of unity and that they are one cohesive unit. She also mentions that “ we should enlist the workingmen voters with us,...” She wants men who can vote (people who can make change) to join their cause. Bandwagon was another important technique used by Kelley.

                  Many people think that to persuade someone, you have to give as much scientific evidence as possible. That is false, most people have a moral code they believe in. It is more effective to appeal to their emotion and ethics. But it doesn't hurt to use logic. Kelley sprinkles in logic into her speech. “ In Alabama the law provides that a child under sixteen years of age shall not work in a cotton mill at night longer than eight hours, and Alabama does better in this respect than any other southern states.” Here Kelley lists a specific law and how it is applied. She also mentions that this is better than any other countries.

Question 1: The Locavore Movement

            Eating locally does not mean eating healthy or less strain on the environment. The locavore movement is promoting eating “locally” to help local farmers and to do less harm to the environment. But, if inspected closely, there is more harm than benefit. Buying locally may help local farmers but don’t forget about the people who work in corporate such as 1.5 million Sub- Saharan farmers. Also if a corporate farm ships 2000 apples over 2000 miles, that is more apple per gallon of gas than 50 apples from a local farm that traveled 50 miles. Also decentralized food systems would not function in today’s society.

            Locavores believe that eating locally is better for the environment rather than purchase groceries from a mega chain. That is not true though.. “A 2006 academic study discovered that it made more environmental sense for a Londener to buy a lamb shipped from New Zealand than to buy lamb raised in U.K.” (Source C McWilliams). New Zealand lamb is raised on the pastures with a small carbon footprint, whereas most English lamb is produced under intense factory-line conditions with a big carbon footprint.

            While localvorism sounds great on paper, it is ineffectively in reality. There is no set definition to what a locavore needs to eat. They might eat what is grown in their state or within a 50 mile boundary. “some areas might find it fairly easy to eat locally, people in other parts of the  country and world have to look farther afield.” (Source F. Roberts) Localvorism can be compared to communism in a sense that they both sound great on paper but in reality, don’t work out. Additionally localvorism tries to balance out local farming and corporate farming. But that is not possible with a large population to support, food has to be churned out as fast possible.

            The linkage of local farming to efficiently and sustainability is dubious. The locavore obsession with reducing food-miles has been debunked as a false economy that may actually worsen carbon emissions. That’s because the high-volume, long-haul food transportation perfected by industrial agricultural production in the world’s best locations has allowed much low-quality agricultural land to revert to a forested state; while the increasing concentration of people in cities has reduced our disturbance of wild areas.

          Because it would result in a less diversified, more expensive, and less safe diet, locavorism can only deliver the world of yesterday. As many subsistence farmer in any of the poorest regions of our planet can attest, t is a world where chronic hunger, malnutrition, and famine are always just one spell of bad weather away. Locavorism, far from healing what ails us, is a recipe for widespread human misery and ecological disaster.

Question 3: Creativity

            “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” (Albert Einstein). A genius of his time, Albert Einstein, argues the importance of creativity and imagination. The public is becoming less creative, especially children in America- from kindergarten through sixth grade. This is due to how schools are set up to encourage trying to get the highest letter grades and test scores. Creativity is the ability for an individual to “create” or imagine new ideas and creations. Schools should teach creative and independent thinking.  

            What is creativity? Many people talk about creativity and the need for it, but may not really know what it is. Creativity is an abstract concept. One can interpret creativity in many different ways. I believe creativity is the ability for an individual to “create” or imagine new ideas and creations.

            The decline in creativity can be blamed on society and the education system. Society wants kids to go to school and study. Afterwards, society expects the graduates to get a job and help with the labor force that pushes society forward.  The education system has much blame to accept too. The education system teaches students that there are strict boundaries to learning. Also how the education system is set up, students can’t think outside the box. They are forced to think inside the box for the sake of high letter grades and high test scores. Schools should teach students to think unconventionally and freely. Without doing so, students will become less and less creative.

            What is the solution to the problem? We can start by teaching children at a young age that making mistakes is all part of the learning experience. And instead of “traditional teaching” where the teacher explains a concept and students write it down. The teacher should introduce the concept and let the students think critically about. Afterwards, the teacher and students should discuss the concept, throwing ideas back and forth. Also starting at a young age, children should be exposed to a plethora of extra- curricular activities. This way the children get a broader view showing them that reading and writing aren’t the only source of learning.

            The lack of creativity in younger kids is a crisis. The future of America and the world are dependent on these kids. As time goes on, the world will only face sophisticated and harder problems that might not have an exact solution. If we teach children that education is not black and white but shades of grey, they will be creative thinkers that can solve political, environmental, and scientific problems that plague society today. Creativity is one of the most necessary quality of a great leader. The solution to wars, famine, and health care is thinking outside the box.