anno ab incarnatione lupus 123 E.E., Annual Letter to Lobo

 

Valley of the Corrumpa where Lobo lived in 1894. dlw photo from Capulin Volcano 2010

Dear Lobo,

                  I have been writing these to you yearly, expressing appreciation for all your work in the world, even dating a new historical era from the date of your death, now that BC, AD, CE, etc. seem irrelevant.

                  January 31 of the Environmental Era is a special day with the growing hours of light (in New Mexico at least) becoming more evident. While Earth Day (April 22) is a day to celebrate Nature, this date should become one of reflection on what is happening to the world you knew only so briefly.

                  Unfortunately, I don’t have much positive news to report. This past year of 122 E.E. was not a particularly good one. First and most importantly, it was the hottest on record in terms on averaged annual global temperature. The temperature has risen 1.3° Celsius since the time when you roamed the plains of the Corrumpa. (That translates to 2.3° Fahrenheit for you as a non-scientist wolf.)

                  According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, earth is now “on the edge” of runaway heating. Imagine yourself in ferocious pursuit of an antelope on an exceptionally hot, sunny day when, at the end of the chase, there is no way to cool off. That should give you an idea of what we are up against.

                  On the same day as the release of this report, National Public Radio ran an interview with someone who, as I recall, has the title of Secretary of Energy. He spoke calmly about someday, decades from now, when carbon fuel use will gradually be replaced by renewables such as solar power. Decades from now! He should have been panicking, promising to lead a campaign to get us off of carbon right away. And, compared to the joker who has replaced him, well, words fail. Makes me want to howl.

                  Almost no one mentions—outside of obscure corners of the internet, something like the scent marking you use to interpret—that cows, as leading methane producers, are just as important in causing climate change as fossil fuels. Little did you know (or at least I think you didn’t know) that by killing cows you were doing your part to combat climate change. You were right to kill so many of them.

                  I could go on with list of terrible and destructive political developments here and abroad by populists, fascists, and terrorists, but I’m running out of energy (so to speak). To put it in terms you would understand, imagine a world of wolf hunters run amuck (actually, last year 14 Mexican Gray Wolves were murdered in New Mexico and Arizona) and you will get an idea of what 122 E.E. has been like.

                  Thanks again for your sacrifice in attempting to warn us Lobo, and for your ongoing inspiration. I will hope that our collective environmental consciousness will continue to grow stronger and that next year, I may be able to give you a better report.

                  (Actually, I’m not counting on it, but according to Joanna Macy and other environmentalists, we must hold on to positive thoughts if we are to have any chance to making it to 124 E.E. and beyond.)

Your devoted admirer,

The Author

Was Seton a Conservative or Liberal?

The White Wind Blows (from winter into spring)

Ernest Thompson Seton didn’t leave a published record of his political beliefs, although there are clues. He greatly admired Theodore Roosevelt (more than Roosevelt admired him as it turned out) but Seton was not a U.S. citizen during the period of TR’s political activity; their relationship seems to have defined by their common interest in natural history. By the time of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt presidency, Seton had become an American citizen and a supporter of FDR.

 

Seton made clear his admiration for the historical communitarianism of American Indians and First Nations peoples. I suspect that he would have liked at least some of what Bernie Sanders stands for as a “democratic socialist.” Ralph Nadar has defined those who use this term in the American context as “New Dealers,” that is,  supporters of government programs meant to benefit a broad segment of the population, as opposed to a select few. That would seem to position Seton on the political left, at least as it was defined in the 1930s and 1940s. He would have been appalled at the current rise of populism.

 

“Politics” as an activity is usually taken to mean partisanship in favor or in opposition to certain issues in economics, domestic social issues, war and peace, etc. In a more general way, an attitude or belief can be political, such as Seton’s belief in Darwinism or his championing of Native Americans or his stance regarding the existence of an emotional life among non-human animals. But ascribing these attitudes to the political “left” or “right” doesn’t fit with our current notion of politics.

 

In this series of essays I have addressed the many aspects of Seton as naturalist, explorer, artist, writer and so on. These parts of his life do not exist outside of the political (in the general sense mentioned above) so the question of his conservatism or liberalism is worth asking in an investigation of his life and views. He was not doctrinaire; he took the best of both positions.

 

Seton called for justice for native peoples (liberalism) while also promoting what he understood as their traditional values (conservatism). He rejected the conservative position of accepting our birth-assigned status place (he certainly didn’t) but rejected a notion sometimes followed by liberals of putting present needs above future concerns. Lifecraft philosophy, while strongly supportive of creativity, also looks to the restraint of authority to hold down the chaos. In this regard, Seton seems to weigh in on order and interest above liberty and choice. 

 

Through Lifecraft, Seton attempted to strike the right balance: the honoring of individual expression and achievement within a community to which one owes service as the price of liberty.

This service to community, moreover, comes out of individual choice, not through convention or force. By contrast, taking a traditional conservative line, Robert Baden-Powell held that service is owed to the prevailing societal arrangements—especially one’s country—because order flows from nationalist respect. The difference between these two approaches is monumental.

Seton took his most extraordinary step when he claimed that animals are different from us only by degree, that they, like us, have emotions, thoughts, feelings and desires. While his stories made him famous (and wealthy), the conservative backlash to this position destroyed much of the literary reputation he had worked so hard to achieve. Theodore Roosevelt, among others, could find no meaning in what Seton was attempting to convey. If Seton was correct, then everything believed by most people at that time had to be mistaken. This was Seton’s most revolutionary position—and it cost him dearly.

His most prescient position was one that cannot be characterized as either liberal or conservative.  Seton began drawing and writing about what I would call our war on nature as early as 1901. By 1925, he felt that damage to the environmental was already spiraling out of control. He did not promote specific policies but through his own life modeled the power that a rising consciousness about our place in the world might hold.

The Seton Legacy offers us an acceptance of the rational (in the case of climate change, conclusions derived from the scientific method) combined with an acknowledgement of history (we can compare conditions from past times to our own) and an obligation to the future (what we do now matters in a deeply moral way).

See my Seton Legacy Project blog on achieving peace through justice posted October 22, 2012, “St. Paul the Apostle.” For a comparison of liberalism vs. conservatism, inspired by a reading of the scholar Yuval Levin, see “Why the Environmentalist Movement Has Not Saved Us (Yet)” December 2016. at www.davidlwitt.com.