Siatta Merchant
Dr. Adam Johns
What are people for?
The idea I will present in response to this question stems from my religious beliefs, and also those of ancient and modern civilizations. What are people for? People are the caretakers of Mother Nature, although she may be capricious and cruel, and of this earth in its entirety. People are the intermediaries between divine, ever-pure natural creations and the Lord himself.
What are people for? People are to progress nature through their given capabilities such as intelligence and innovation. They are to propel nature with these given capabilities while spreading his word and being true to what he has created; this takes the form of their true self, one of love, compassion, and honesty. With these qualities, people are to have superiority like that of a mother to her child, a loving, undeniable power and bondage. “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) In the Lords book is a proclamation, one that is to alarm the people that inhabit this earth to carry out his purpose of creation.
What are people for? The biblical texts of many civilizations, the Incans, the Aztecs, the Greeks, and of the one most of our civilization has belief, tell at least one tale of when the people have not been true to their creational purpose to where God, or their Gods have punished people. In these creation myths, nature, usually in the form of a flood, is sent to destroy people when they have taken advantage of their purpose, their people, or their surroundings, and reminds them of their responsibilities as God’s creation.
What are people for? In “Challenging Nature”, a book by Lee M. Silver, Silver says that humans were created to hold a sort of domination over Mother Nature, but instead of caring over her and helping nature to evolve as we do, he suggest that we remake it as time progresses and look after ourselves as a species. This view of what people are for is incorrect.
Writer and environmentalist Bill Mckibben in his book “Enough” shows that he understands the meaning of people, but he also recognizes that we have drifted away from our purpose. “Our hunter-gatherer ancestors inhabited a very different world from ours, a meaning-saturated world where every plant and animal was an actor the way people are actors, where even rocks and mountains and canyons and rivers could speak. We look at the same world and see either silent landscape or pile of resources; either it has gone mute, or our hearing is no where near as sharp (Mckibben 44).” To complete Mckibben’s idea, I can tell you that we are now deaf to nature and her cry for help. We have lost our purpose. We have lost our calling. We now live in the empty, incorrect ideology of Silver. Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami were just two out of the millions of calls from a divine being to alarm us to carry out his purpose.
What are people for? We will forever have the purpose of caring for all natural, living things to which we co-exist as proclaimed by the biblical text of our civilizations and of modern and ancient civilizations. We have begun to recognize our wrongs in Silvers ideology, and what we must do is listen to natures call, and we shall fulfill our purpose.
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3 comments:
In your first paragraph you give more than one answer to the question, What are people for? First you state “People are the caretakers of Mother Nature and of this earth in its entirety,” and then you also state that, “People are to progress nature through their given capabilities such as intelligence and innovation.” Is the purpose of people to care for Mother Nature or progress nature? I feel like there is never a clear answer to the question throughout your paper and rather just an “idea” of what the answer is. It would be helpful if you just came right out and said it instead of proposing several answers based around a central idea. Also, I think you need to make your thesis statement clearer. I would suggest possibly creating a strong thesis that clearly states your answer to the question of What are people for? towards the end of your introduction paragraph. I’m not sure if you meant for your first sentence to be your thesis statement, but I think you might want to try to reword it. In my opinion, starting off a paper by saying “The idea I will present in response to this question…” seems too “textbook.” I think you can come up with a better introduction. But other than that, nice job!
Siatta Merchant
Dr. Adam Johns
What are people for?
What are people for? People have two purposes on this earth that are given to them by a divine being: they are to care after Mother Nature and to progress nature as they do themselves. By doing so, the world and our society will work to its full potential. Several civilizations, including ours, have sacred or holy texts that outline these purposes and have ways of punishing people when they veer off course.
People are the caretakers of Mother Nature, although she may be capricious and cruel. People are the intermediaries between divine, ever-pure natural creations and the Lord himself. People are to progress nature through their given capabilities such as intelligence and innovation. They are to propel nature with these given capabilities while spreading his word and being true to what he has created; this takes the form of their true self, one of love, compassion, and honesty. With these qualities, people are to have guardianship like that of a mother to her child, a loving, undeniable power. “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) In the Lord’s book is a proclamation, one that is to alarm the people that inhabit this earth to carry out his purpose of creation.
The biblical texts of many civilizations, the Incans, the Aztecs, and the Greeks, tell at least one tale of when the people have not been true to their creational purpose to the point where God, or their gods have punished people. In these creation myths, nature, usually in the form of a flood, is sent to destroy people when they have taken advantage of their purpose, their people, or their surroundings, and reminds them of their responsibilities as God’s creation.
In “Challenging Nature”, a book by Lee M. Silver, Silver says that humans were created to hold a sort of domination over Mother Nature, but instead of caring over her and helping nature to evolve as we do, he suggests that we instead remake it as time progresses and look after ourselves as a species. This view of what people are for is incorrect.
Writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben in his book “Enough” shows that he understands the meaning of people, but he also recognizes that we have drifted away from our purpose. “Our hunter-gatherer ancestors inhabited a very different world from ours, a meaning-saturated world where every plant and animal was an actor the way people are actors, where even rocks and mountains and canyons and rivers could speak. We look at the same world and see either a silent landscape or pile of resources; either it has gone mute, or our hearing is no where near as sharp (McKibben 44).” To complete McKibben’s idea, I can tell you that we are now deaf to nature and her cry for help. We have lost our purpose. We have lost our calling. We now live in the empty, incorrect ideology of Silver. Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami were just two out of the millions of calls from a divine being to alarm us to carry out his purpose.
What are people for? We will forever have the purpose of caring for all natural, living things with which we co-exist as proclaimed by the biblical texts of our civilizations and of modern and ancient civilizations. We have begun to recognize our wrongs in Silver’s ideology, and what we must do is listen to nature’s call, and we shall fulfill our purpose.
Dana - solid feedback, with perhaps too much focus just on the introduction.
Siatta - I'd like to know what you mean by "progress nature." How does "caring for" differ from "progress?" This seems, in my own view, very much like Marcuse's argument about how we should relate to nature...
This is a personal piece, with a strong and interesting point of view. What I'd like to see more of is a way of convincing people who *don't* think as you do that they *should* think as you do. Why should we think in terms of caring for and progressing nature rather than in terms of remaking it (for my part, I don't see the difference between "progressing" and "remaking")?
You have a very particular notion of God or the divine here, but you aren't giving us access to it. Why do you think of God the way you do? If the paper hinges on anything, it's this - if we understand your spiritual understanding of the world, maybe your defense of McKibben and disagreement with Silver would flow naturally from it, but we just don't know enough about your point of view.
Where, in other words, are you coming from, and why should we follow you?
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