The Conflict Between The Rich And Poor

These dilemmas brought up in Part II make the Round River essays, inserted as the modern edition’s Part III, titled "A Taste for Country," particularly apt, because this is the section of the book that deals primarily with philosophies. It is here that Leopold states that "poor land may be rich country, and vice versa". It is here that Leopold introduces the concept, radical then but widely accepted now, that the planet itself is a living organism and, through the natural cycles of earth, wind, fire and water, continually replenishes its own means of remaining alive. The human role in this "Round River" ecosystem is prominent, of course, and for thousands of years indigenous people depended directly on the bounty of this natural system to supply their needs of food and fiber. Although modern civilization has been forced by its increasing population to create artificial cycles, replacing elk and deer and grouse with beef and hogs and poultry, and replacing the oaks and bluestem grasses which fed the wild meat with corn and alfalfa.

As Professor Foster explained the core of the needed ecological revolution is in viewing the world ecologically, which involves recognizing that modern human societies are ecosystem-dependent and thus rejecting the assumption that societies are “exempt” from the forces of nature. The wrong conceptual thinking that our technology and economic system can find solutions to our problems, recalls the Midas Effect in which Gold (THE CAPITAL) becomes more important than Life (Human beings and Planet Earth), where “the logic of capital accumulation runs in direct opposition to environmental sustainability” (The Ecological Rift, Foster,

A sociological imagination is the idea of how a personal experience can affect society as a whole. At some point a personal issue becomes a public issue. Conflict theory is the idea of competition over limited resources such as money. The theory is about domination and power rather than peace and cooperation. Those with power and wealth try to maintain that position by suppressing those without. The United States poverty is most easily explained by the conflict theory because in the US, the wealthy stay wealthy and the poor stay poor due to suppression.

As civilization has evolved, economic inequality has existed since the feudal era and has made its place in modern society. It is a dilemma that examines the gap between the low wealth of the middle-class worker and the profitable earnings of the monopolizing upper-class business owner. It is a socio- economic issue that can best explored through the lens of the conflict theory; thoroughly explaining as to how the wealth gap came to exist and the consequences of such an economic state on the interaction between the middle-class worker and the wealthy businessman.

The relationship between people and their environment in A Land Remembered is one where the profit from land exploitation is naturally corrupting and exponentially increases the exploiters lust for larger profit, leading to the exploiter planning larger scale endeavors in the future. The author, Patrick D. Smith (1984), suggests the idea that communities naturally grow in a hedonic cycle to crave more resources to fuel loftier endeavors that require even more resources from the environment, an idea that is also discussed by Aldo Leopold in the Land Ethic as wholly negative, and that is also part of my world view that is rather more optimistic.

The issue of income inequality in the United States is complicated and does not have a definite answer. Income inequality can be measured in a few different ways. The first measurement for the income inequality in a country is to look at the percentages on households and group them into income categories, called distribution by income category. The second measurement for income inequality is called distribution by quintiles or fifths. This is when you divide the total number of people, households, families into five groups called quintiles to examine the percentage of total before tax income received by each quintile. Each quintile would then be ordered by income and households in the category.

Aldo Leopold is on the forefather of modern environmentalism. His book, A Sand County Almanac, is based on the notion of viewing land as a community and as a commodity. In the chapter “The Land Ethic”, Leopold invokes a rethinking of our relationships to our world and is based on the principle that ethics are “a process in ecological evolution” (238). Leopold describes the stages of ethic evolving and explains that the rules for socializing were originally defined for human beings. These rules are expanded upon in the next stage of “Ethical Sequence” (237-238), describing how humans interact toward their community. The third stage is the ethics between humans and the land. Upon analyzing “The Land Ethic” I have come to the conclusion that in order to have respect and ethic for land, or anything, one must make a personal connection.

Coming from an uncultivated society, such as the one that brought farming and ranching to the settlement of North America, humans have retained some sensitivity to environmental issues as they derived their livelihood directly from the land. But with the advance to an urban or metropolitan society, there has been a major disconnect between humanity and nature. Today’s urban society is provided with mowed parks, paved playgrounds, plush automobiles to move the public around on asphalt roads, housing with automatically regulated heat and cooling, and supermarkets with shopping carts and baskets, in which people can gather their food supplies from orderly shelves and freezers. Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” term suggests that humans stop treating the land as a mere object or a resource, like how the world does today. For Leopold, land is not merely soil, like the public would think of today; land is a fountain of energy, flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.

Val Plumwood in her essay “Paths Beyond Human-Centeredness,” illustrates the impact that humans have on nature and non-animals when it comes to preserving environments. Understanding that nature has it’s living properties that let it thrive among its resources allows for people to grasp the complexities that come about when construction companies destroy the environment in which they work. Plumwood uses the term dualism to refer to the sharp distinction between two classes of individuals. There is the high class, which is considered as the “One.” In contrast, the other side of the division consists of individuals that are classified as lower and are subordinates to the “One” as “Others.” This account on dualism allows the reader to understand how humans can significantly alter the environment because of the way they perceive its resources and inhabitants. Plumwood defines five characteristics that illustrate the oppressive actions that change the connection between human relations and the relationship between humans and nature.

Poverty is not easily defined, because it plays out in many different ways. To be in poverty, one is generally making at most three times the amount of money they would need to sustain themselves and their family members living a minimalist lifestyle. These families tend to eat cheaper food, use public transport, have less access to good educational institutions, are exposed to harmful environments, and have less access to healthcare, among many other things. Through the lenses of conflict theory and functionalism, one can begin to understand why poverty so affects many aspects many people’s lives in ways that carry them through adulthood, and sometimes pervades later generations of their families.

The people nowadays also abuse on what nature can provide to them. People are influenced by the western Culture, Man is more powerful and can have dominion over nature and that nature as they see become merely an instrument to satisfy human needs and wants. This kind of thinking or we can say attitude towards nature is called the “Anthropocentric Attitude”. Man reduce the value of nature as it is and it’s important because nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man and that the value of non-human things in nature is merely instrumental. An opposite thinking would be the Eastern Culture, for they value nature very well and they treat nature being one with them. This thinking or attitude is known as “Ecocentric

Shiva explains the privatization of these natural recourses of the earth, an ideology known as corporate globalization. Corporate globalization treats earth as something to be marketed and made profit of, ignoring all the harmful things done to the environment. Privatization of this planet and its resources impacts mostly the poor. The rich and

Conflict theory simply means that more powerful groups use their power in order to exploit groups with less power and the money is the mechanism which creates social disorder. Yesterday, I read a news about how so many kids are dying due to malnutrition in Yemen. I read some comments to see what people are thinking and what can be done about it? One comment said “if they cannot feed their kids they should stop having children and the problem will be solved”. Really, is that a solution, is it moms fault that their kids are hungry in a world that there is enough food for the entire population yet most people are hungry. She does not get hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. What that person who made the comment and many others who have the same perspective do not know is that inequality perpetuated because it benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and “capitalism is the core of inequality and suffering” (lecture). And as you said in the lecture notes many people cannot see “how capitalistic system shapes all of society” that and blames the individuals for the suffering as in the example that I gave above. I also believe many of us know the consequences of capitalism but still continue to blame the individuals rather than taking an action, be an ally or rather than supporting those who suffer at least by making a supportive comment on the social media.

White’s thesis in The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis states that in order to confront the expanding environmental crises, humans must begin to analyze and alter their treatment and attitudes towards nature. The slow destruction of the environment derives from the Western scientific and technological advancements made since the Medieval time period. “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (RON p.7). Technology and science alone will not be able to save humans until we adjust the way of thinking and suppress the old ideas of humans power above nature. Instead, we need to learn how to think of ourselves as being

Over time Western culture has been obsessed with dominance. Humans over non-humans, masculinity over femininity, wealthy over poor, western over non-western cultures. Deep ecological consciousness allows us to see through the perception of this dangerous illusion. A dominant world view is centered around maximizing and using natural resources for our destructive consumerist habits. Deep ecology is about minimizing and finding harmony with nature.