Conquering

Because I feel as though my honors thesis has usurped my life in very twisted ways, I chose to work on it instead of going for a walk or sitting outside without thinking. I'd invariably end up thinking about my thesis anyway thus defeating the purpose of said excursion. That said, I did spend inordinate amounts of time starting out my window trying to not think about my thesis and instead picturing myself putting the numerous piles of leaves next to my building in giant mounds and jumping in them. I wanted to do something to the leaves and I wasn't quite sure of what that something was, only that they needed to somehow become within my power. It was interesting how when a project or concept becomes overwhelming, we as humans decide to gain power over something insignificant and meaningless like my leaves...but I digress. So I started back on my little tangent about conquering. Leopold says "the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating. Why? Because it is implicit in such a role that the conqueror knows, ex cathedra, just what makes the community clock tick, and just what and who is valuable, and what and who is worthless, in community life." (204) I love this quote for many reasons. The first of which being that it is more extraordinarily true, and seems like something that would be obvious, but for obvious reasons is not. What I mean is: the very mindset of the conqueror, of someone who knows all, is completely conducive to overlooking the role of the self, in this case conqueror, in terms of the larger picture that includes the conquered. I looked up ex cathedra and found it to mean "from the chair" specific to the name of the chair that bishops used to sit in when they gave orders to the masses. The conqueror knows everything implicitly, or thinks she does, and must therefore be correct in conquering.

I read a book a while back for a class called Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond. It's on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288036372&sr=8-1) which is actually a terribly boring account of the various ways in which humanity has perpetually conquered other peoples and a detailed historical account of how it was and was not done. Interestingly, the conquerors (usually Europeans) ended up succeeding but not with their own methods; they succeeded because of side effects of things they were trying to do and ultimately failed to do. As unrelated as this seems, this made me think about the ways in which we as humans try to conquer our environment and mould it to our own uses and the things we achieve as ultimately happy accidents that leave behind unforseen carnage and destruction.

What Leopold doesn't answer for me is how we stop attempting to conquer and what the difference is between conquering and husbandry of the land. Husbandry, as it's been described to me anyway, is complete and perfect care of another being, typically livestock on a farm, to the point that the husband, usually a farmer, has utter responsibility for the animals. If we are to take responsibility for nature, as her husbands in a way, are we not attempting a different sort of conquering? Is the complete understanding and absolute care for the purpose of well-being of nature somehow a good version of conquering? Can conquering be good the way he has described it?