How the "war on religion' backfired into a war on women

Ecology

Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands.Â This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it.Â I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment.Â I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital.Â This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world.Â It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naÃ¯ve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony.Â The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.

Politics & Social Theory

Scale and Magnanimity in Liberal Theory: Reflections on Civic Liberalism (PDF)
Critical Review, 1-2; 2003
Thomas Spragens argues realist, libertarian, egalitarian, and identity liberals all grasp valid political insights, but develop them in unacceptably one-sided ways. By returning to the concerns of early liberals Spragens clarifies these insights’ role, developing a liberal theory incorporating autonomy, equality, civic friendship, and civic virtue as basic qualities. His effort is weakened by insufficient appreciation of the role scale plays in liberal theory and confusions over civic friendship. Appreciation of Hayekian insights and a more nuanced treatment of affective elements in politics would make for a more viable theory. However, his approach holds promise for improving liberal theory.

Why Organizations Lie (PDF)
A paper commissioned by The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Bozeman, MT.
Big organizations, public and private alike, institutionalize an amoral approach to their environment. The problems that arise from organizational dishonesty can only be ameliorated by understanding their causes, and institutionalizing counter measures.

Liberalism, Democracy, and the State: Reclaiming the Unity of Liberal Politics (PDF)
Review of Politics, Fall, 2001.
Today Liberalism is deeply divided between “classical” and “progressive” traditions. Both treat democracies as states, and thereby go astray. “Classical” liberals make a long series of bad predictions that never come true while “progressive” liberals misidentify democratic equality and often devise self-defeating public policy initiatives. Neither identifies the most basic division within liberal modernity. Both would be more successful, and less bitterly opposed, if they realized democracies are not states but self-organizing systems.

Democracy as a Spontaneous Order (PDF)
Critical Review, Spring, 1989, pp. 206-240.
Classical liberal thinkers have long been distrustful of political democracy. Yet in practice, liberalization of societies has also involved their democratization. This paradox is resolved when we recognize that democracies are, in F. A. Hayek’s terms, spontaneous orders like the other liberal institutions of science and the market. Hayek and other classical liberals failed to grasp this insight because of their misunderstanding of the character of democratic politics.

Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)
Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.
Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.

The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.

Equality, Self-Government, and Democracy (PDF)
Western Political Quarterly, now The Political Research Quarterly, Summer, 1987.
Robert Dahl is widely considered the most influential contemporary American democratic theorist. Here I criticize Dahl’s model of democracy, arguing that it is internally incoherent, ethically confused, and misleading as a guide to empirical research.

Federalism, Self-Organization, and the Dissolution of the State (PDF)
Telos, no. 100, Summer, 1994.
Viewing representative democracies as self-organizing systems gives us a new perspective on the perennial question of whether centralized or decentralized and federal democratic systems can best serve the public interest. Democracies have fluid borders and local isle-governing institutions can often have more in common with neighboring local units in other countries. With the end of large scale threats against democratic governments and growing complexity in their societies, the future of novel local rearrangements is bright.

Elites and Democratic Theory: Insights From the Self-Organizing Model (PDF)
Review of Politics, June, 1991.
The self-organizing systems model of democracy offers a fresh perspective on political elites. It shows that they, as in other such systems, perform essential as well as controversial and dangerous roles. This model corrects confusions in both “elitist” and “pluralist” models of liberal democracy.

Democracy and Peace: The Self-Organizing Foundation of the Democratic Peace (PDF)
The Review of Politics, 57:2, Spring, 1995.
Alone among human societies, democracies do not fight wars with others of their own kind. The reason is because they are self-organizing systems rather than instrumental hierarchies, like undemocratic states.

Market Non-Neutrality: Systemic Bias in Spontaneous Orders
Critical Review, Winter, 1997.
Many libertarian and conservative scholars argue the market is a neutral means for facilitating human exchanges. In fact the market process actively shapes the kinds of values it rewards through successful exchanges. Similar biases exist in other self-organizing systems. Once we understand this we will recognize the necessity of putting limits on and particular spontaneous order.

Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)
in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.
Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.
(Related subjects: Community)

Community

Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)

Spirituality

Nature Religion and the Modern World: The Returning Relevance of Pagan Spirituality (PDF)
Sacred Cosmos: CUUPS Journal of Liberal Religious Paganism, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 2000
Nature religions make up one of two basic categories of human spirituality; finding the sacred manifested within the world rather than emphasizing that the world is in some way radically defective. Today the nature religions are once again growing in importance, largely because they are very well suited for people’s spiritual concerns in post-modern times.

Ken Wilber’s Critique of Deep Ecology and Nature Religion (PDF)
The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Fall, 1996.
Ken Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, among other things, attacks deep ecology and nature religion as spiritually and psychologically regressive threats to human well being. I argue here that Wilber’s criticisms attack a one sided caricature of these perspectives. I show that in fact deep ecology and nature religion offer essential insights for enhancing the quality of human life, both materially and spiritually. Since our debate, Ken Wilber and I have been discussing these issues privately. I am happy to report that the gulf between our positions has narrowed dramatically. So dramatically that, along with a fellow Wiccan scholar, Don Frew, we have issued a joint statement on Nature Religion and Deep Ecology. Also posted here is a record of the most important correspondence between Ken and myself over these issues. To find this information click here . Then link to the Reading Room from there. (Related subjects: Ecology)

Love, Suffering and Evil: A Neopagan View (PDF)
The Pomegranate, 7: Imbolc, 1999.
Pagan spirituality takes a very different approach to questions of suffering, evil, and love than do most spiritual approaches common to our society. This article argues that both suffering and evil can be understood as “natural” results of a material world manifested by an immanent and transcendent source of perfect love. They are not evidence of fundamental flaws. Nor are they fundamental to reality. When adequately understood they often enhance our ability to manifest love and compassion.

Bio

Gus diZerega is a political scientist/theorist with a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. While living and working as an artist and craftsperson to finance his degree, he met and later studied with teachers in NeoPaganism, the earth religions more generally, and shamanic healing.

His spiritual studies took him far from academia’s libraries into seasonal Wiccan celebrations, encounters with Pagan deities, and out into solitary fasts in the California desert, alone on remote beaches or isolated high on mountains doing vision quests. He was blessed with three very good teachers, Don Frew, Timothy White, and Antonio Costa e Silva (now Segyu Choepal Rinpoche).

The past 25 years Gus has aimed to bring together the disparate strands of modern social science, Pagan spirituality, and shamanic spiritual practices. He has done so through his own practice and through his teaching and writing.

Gus continues being active in scholarly publishing in political and environmental theory and is the author of Power, Politics and Persuasion: A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization, Pagans and Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience, and Beyond the Burning Times: Christian and Pagan in Dialogue. He is also founding editor of the new online open source academic journal Studies in Emergent Order.

Now that Barack Obama has been elected President, Gus aims to focus more on his spiritual writing instead of trying to prevent the triumph of what he feels are the moral monsters that long controlled the U.S. government and still dominate the Republican Party.

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How the “war on religion’ backfired into a war on women

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