[Daktoria]

What?

Just because we know a common intermediary does not mean we know each other.

[grassroots1]

No there is no such thing as a despot even in China. The party simply does not do what Hu Jintao says. There is a group of people whose vote is equal to each other and Hu is simply a speaker for the party.

An enlightened central committee, then. I see what you're saying but I don't have faith in an authoritarian political system (meaning, non-democratic) to produce the best possible outcome when it comes to the environment.

And I believe we almost have the same opinion on this issue.

I think that's probably true.

[Figlio di Moros]

Protecting the evironment is essential for protecting the volksgeist of the people. The closer we are to nature, the closer we are to our own nature, and the source of our own national identity. Basically, people abandoned in cities, with no hunting experience, are pussies(generalized).

[grassroots1]

That's probably the most retarded reason for a sustainable society I've ever heard, Fig. First prize, buddy.

[Rei Murasame]

Not necessarily, it's certainly a valid reason to add to the list of reasons. What would Appalachia be like without the Appalachian mountains?

[Figlio di Moros]

That's probably the most retarded reason for a sustainable society I've ever heard, Fig. First prize, buddy.

Of course you'd think so; you oppose the concept of national indentity instrinically. Maybe you shouldn't be in this subforum if you believe the nation isn't worth protecting.

[grassroots1]

No what I thought was retarded was more along the lines of "if we don't have an environment, people won't have a place to hunt and will therefore be pussies." Of all the reasons, this is the one you choose.

It's not like I really care... at all.

[myrmeleo]

Protecting the evironment is essential for protecting the volksgeist of the people. The closer we are to nature, the closer we are to our own nature, and the source of our own national identity. Basically, people abandoned in cities, with no hunting experience, are pussies(generalized).

Too true.

No what I thought was retarded was more along the lines of "if we don't have an environment, people won't have a place to hunt and will therefore be pussies." Of all the reasons, this is the one you choose.

The wild isn't just for looking at through some plexiglass, zoos are more than sufficient for that. The lack of interaction with the environment is one of the primary factors that is contributing to its decline. Without truly interacting, the disconnect grows between "nature" and humanity. Soon, the only defenders of the wild will be those who wish to appear most "green," perhaps by symbolically using 50%-post-consumer toilet paper. Alternatively, hunting (or for those of weaker stomach, even hiking) is a way to spiritually reconnect with the land that has shaped its people.

If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it, to conquer the surly brute through his own effort and skill with all the extras that this carries with it: the immersion in the countryside, the healthfulness of the exercise, the distraction from his job.
~José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting

[grassroots1]

I think you're reading too far into our friend Figlio.

[Rei Murasame]

I think Figlio really does see it the way described, since me and Red Barn had this same conversation a while ago and Figlio seemed to agree with it then too. I'm not sure why, but the entire centre-left seems to think that Figlio is a cave-man or something?

He does indeed think his positions through, he's just often underestimated for some reason.

[ThereBeDragons]

Semi-out of context, but whatever.

The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education- make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness- hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who "yave not of the text a pulled hen | That saith that hunters ben not holy men." There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men,- as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

[grassroots1]

Um, for the record, I'm not against people being with the environment or hunting or anything, I only found it funny that after all of the discussions that have taken place here and in the world in general around sustainability, climate change, etc., etc., the one thing that Figlio cites as a reason to conserve the environment is "so that people won't be pussies." Is that not comical to anyone else?

[Preston Cole]

is "so that people won't be pussies." Is that not comical to anyone else?

No. Why would it be? It's as justified a reason for conserving the environment as preserving clean air is. Hunting has always been an important practice and it has its benefits.

[grassroots1]

Either fascists don't have a sense of humor, or I have a distorted sense of reality. Nice talking to you guys...

[Pants-of-dog]

Either fascists don't have a sense of humor, or I have a distorted sense of reality. Nice talking to you guys...

If you imagine that fascists actually believe their mythology, their comments make more sense.

[Rei Murasame]

Interestingly enough, if any of those guys above had said the same exact words while not being from a Northern population, you two on the centre-left would've been very sympathetic to it, I bet.

Which is why it felt to me like you were out to get Figlio simply because Figlio is Italian.

The closer we are to nature, the closer we are to our own nature, and the source of our own national identity.

This seems pretty normal to me!

[Daktoria]

Basically, people abandoned in cities, with no hunting experience, are pussies(generalized).

Thank you... so true. City people don't know how good they have it.

You take them out of their element and ask them to actually survive in the REAL real world, and they don't have a clue wtf they're doing.

That isn't to say country folk are superior, but city people don't know what it takes to really make a city work. They have no clue where or how the natural resources they depend upon on a day to day basis come about.

_____________________

That's probably the most retarded reason for a sustainable society I've ever heard, Fig. First prize, buddy.

Well yea, I laughed at it too at first because city dwellers are some of the most adamant environmentalists around. Then you have the gangsta types too who claim to be all tough but get scared by a deer.

The thing is they're defending a cause they really don't even bother relating with. Talk about being bohemian bourgeois...

...likewise, you have lots of country dwellers who try to be social hotshots, but they're really just taking advantage of people who are more outcast than themselves. Some of the people who are worst at socializing rurally are pretty good at socializing in the urban jungle.

[Pants-of-dog]

This whole "urban people can't relate to nature" meme is foolish. Rural people don't live in caves, using every single part of each animal they hunt. They drive to the supermarket like the rest of us. They just drive farther and have less selection.

Also, urban dwellers have less of an environmental impact that rural people. Like I said, we don't have to drive as far.

[Rei Murasame]

Irony thy name is Daktoria:

They have no clue where or how the natural resources they depend upon on a day to day basis come about.

Okay, when are you planning to visit a developing country?

[Daktoria]

Also, urban dwellers have less of an environmental impact that rural people. Like I said, we don't have to drive as far.

Oh shit, you made me laugh so hard I started crying.

Yes, because ALL environmental impact boils down to how much you drive...