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A just society
How to form a just society
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Dive: Living off America’s Waste (which this paper will refer to as “Dive!” from henceforth), is a movie about Jeremy Seifert and his life of voluntary simplicity through dumpster diving. Seifert presents and analyzes data about food waste in America, causes of a production system that wastes one-half of what it makes, and methods to counteract this waste. Hinted at before, this documentary has much to do with the articles Voluntary Simplifiers, Spirituality, and Happiness and Creating a More Just and Sustainable World that were read for class. By using these two readings, we can come to understand the sociological concepts that are presented in the film Dive! Seifert is living a life of voluntary simplicity. Which is described as “a movement
Atkins composes a reflective essay to demonstrate how guilty pleasures that are not environmentally friendly should be payed back by juxtaposing his lifestyle with the habits of so called nature lovers. The author of Shut Up About My Truck amplifies his syntax by embellishing his sentences, using descriptive imagery and shifting tones to vindicate himself from the misuse of the environment.
“Thoughts in the Presence of Fear” is a manifesto written by Wendell Berry, dated October 11, 2001. It is a post-September 11 manifesto for environmentalists. Berry uses terms such as “we” and “they” as he expresses his ideas, regarding how our optimism for a “new economy” was founded upon the labors of poor people all over the world. I will conduct a rhetorical analysis of four sections of Berry’s manifesto; Sections XI, XII, XIII, and XIV; and discuss his use of ethos, logos, and pathos. Berry uses pathos more often in his paper, to instill feelings of guilt and fear in his readers. While many areas of his paper can be thought of as logos, Berry makes little use of ethos.
In his provocative article “Green Guilt”, Stephen T. Asma elaborates the sources behind why civilians of Western culture feel passionately guilty about the current norm of environmentalism. Asma’s purpose of such text is to inform readers that Western culture is taking environmentalism to the extreme by developing guilt with an association of not living a valued “green life”. Stephen Asma achieves his analysis to the audience of vast environmentalists by emphasizing this extreme guilt and self-loathing through the rhetorical appeal of pathos and ethos -- as well as using diction and tone to support his evidence.
In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability. I agree with Kingsolver that knowing the origin of food is an important and healthy benefit of developing a true food culture, but it is impractical to maintain that everyone is able to buy more expensive food. Kingsolver presents a compelling argument for developing a food culture, however this lifestyle change may not be practical or even possible for a poverty-level citizen. The following essay will summarize and respond to Kingsolver’s argument to demonstrate how “Called Home” is a model for novice social scientists.
A) Lars Eighner, in “On Dumpster Diving”, portrays the waste that is accumulated due to modern consumerism and materialism. He also demonstrates the issue of the wage gap. Consumers of the modern age spend too much and therefore waste too much. In the essay, Eighner describes life as an scavenger and demonstrates how people are able to live by the minimal resources. “Scavengers” are able to survive on the waste of the consumer. Eighner presents this scenario as a contrast to the life of a modern consumer, in order to portray it’s unnecessary wastefulness. Mainly, food seems to be taken lightly by society, as Eighner as a scavenger finds “a half jar of peanut butter”,
The taste of the processed chicken from my elementary school cafeteria remains imbedded in my memory. I can still taste the chunks of chicken that could not be broken up by my teeth, and the tired, lazy feeling I had walking back to my next class. This is the exact situation organic farmer and producers are trying to avoid by making healthy products. The documentary, In Organic We Trust, attempts to persuade the viewers that organic products create a healthy lifestyle, and improve living conditions for people all over the world. Kip Pastor’s use of ethos and logos in his documentary are strong and provide supporting evidence, however, Pastor is lacking an abundant amount of pathos. Pastor incorporates logos into his documentary by allowing the audience to experience a multitude of facts and supporting evidence. Ethos is used in the film through Pastor’s interviews with professionals, and pathos is shown by the touching stories of individuals.
"An Ocean Of Trash." Scholastic Action 33.12 (2010): 16. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
In Wendell Berry’s “The Pleasures of Eating,” this farmer tells eaters how their separation from food production has turned them into “passive consumers” who know nothing about the food they eat, or their part in the agricultural process (3). They are blindsided by a food industry that does not help them understand. Berry argues that the average consumer buys available food without any questions. He states consumers that think they are distanced from agriculture because they can easily buy food, making them ignorant of cruel conditions it went through to get on the shelf. Humans have become controlled by the food industry, and regard eating as just something required for their survival. Berry wants this to change as people realize they should get an enjoyment from eating that can only come from becoming responsible for their food choices and learning more about what they eat. While describing the average consumer’s ignorance and the food industry’s deceit, he effectively uses appeals to emotion, logic, and values to persuade people to take charge, and change how they think about eating.
Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher and cultural critic. He is currently a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He writes widely on a diverse range of topics, including political theory, film theory, cultural studies, theology, and psychoanalysis. (Wikipedia) Although, Slavoj Zizek was hard to understand and a challenge to follow, his part in “Examined Life” was to make us aware. Surrounded by trash, Zizek talks about trash and ecology as ideology. Trash is an unavoidable consequence of human life and we try to imagine it goes away by some magical process. Out of sight out of mind, is often the case but Zizek wants us to see the trash and know (premise one) that our society is not good for the environment or ultimately good for humanity. Trash does disappear but we are not paying attention to its disappearance, since without a doubt it never really does disappear. It gets us thinking how much can we safely pollute our environment?
Waste Not, Want Not: if you use a resource carefully and without extravagance, you will never be in need. In a 2009 essay, “Waste Not, Want Not”, writer Bill McKibben argues on the excess of unnecessary waste. To halt climate change, he proposes to convince the reader to shift priorities in waste management and go back to the frugality of simpler times. Bill approaches his argument with a vast amount of informative charged words to convince the reader into taking his side of the argument. The writer’s intended purpose in writing this piece is to make a statement and develop his argument against the unnecessary waste. To make this argument effective, the writer utilizes logic to persuade the audience with overwhelming data and reason. His primary instrument of choice in this essay is using logically charged words followed by factual evidence to back up his claims. Although his use of emotion and pathos are less obvious, but where used, is effective.
It is a melancholy object to those who travel through this great country to see isolated corners of this fair realm still devoted to protecting the environment. The wretched advocators of these ideals are frequently seen doling out petitions and begging at their neighbours’ doors to feed their obsession, which keeps them in the contemptible poverty that they so richly deserve.
he concern is that nobody can change what they do not know. The only way to get people to consider their dreadful habits is to draw awareness to it. At the same time, it can also be seen as satirizing the previously stated audience. The satirizing can be seen in the fine print on the car reading “BLINDSPOT EX”. This is humorous because the carbon footprint is so large, its impossible to miss, yet t...
A variety of reasons people choose to participate in the freegan lifestyle are more diverse than one would think. Uninformed bystanders may initially imagine the homeless scavenging bins to survive, but many members of the subculture dumpster dive with economic, political and environmental condition in mind. The primary purpose for most is to positively impact the environment by minimizing the amount of wasted food (Kurutz 3). By some, this act could be viewed as a symbolic, political act against capitalist overproduction and waste. Acquiring food from dumpsters can be for both individual consumption and the benefit of the surrounding community....
“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell what kind of man you are,” a famous quote by the lawyer, gastronomist, and author, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Although proper recycling is probably the goal of many people, there are some who still overstuff a plastic garbage bag for the trash guys to pick-up. According to Edward Humes in his book, “Garbology, Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash,” newspapers make up point six percent of the nation's landfills, but paper contributes twenty-eight point two percent.” My narrative essay assignment which is designed to record what type of garbage I create and how much accumulates during a pre-determined time frame can result in a positive outcome. Hopefully, this assessment gives me insight into whether my most surely negligible amount of trash makes any difference.