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Great Minds Think Alike
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Simon: Hey Lily!
Lily: Hi Simon! Walking to work too?
Simon: Yeah. I don't like biking in the rain.
Lily: Same. Here's a question: If great minds think alike, how come two heads are better than one?
Simon: Because if two people come up with the same idea, you KNOW it's good.
Lily: Brilliant. I don't see any way that conclusion could steer us off course as a society.
Suppression of Wild Ecosystems
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Simon: One of the evils of humankind is the coercive suppression of wild ecosystems. A lot of the standards for having a well-maintained yard are pretty bad for the environment.
(image with selectively bred plants, exposed mulch beds, chemically-treated & watered lawn)
Simon: But if someone turns their yard into a wild forest, people complain. In some places they can get FINED for it, even though it has more ecological value. We've just DECIDED that outdoor spaces are supposed to look a certain way, and it's enforced by a web of social, legal, and economic factors. This area of environmentalism is still stigmatized. When a company's corporate headquarters is overgrown with wildflowers, THAT's when I'll know the company is serious about being green.
Lily: Or they're going bankrupt.
Planting Trees
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Lily: If you want to be a TRENDY environmentalist, you just plant more trees.
Simon: Yeah, and a lot of tree-planting projects DO improve the environment. But let's say you buy a random tree from a store. That tree was likely mass-produced from a limited genetic pool and transported across the country in the back of a truck. Right here we have trees growing on their own, and they're genetically diverse and adapted to their location. These trees are more ecologically beneficial than the ones you can buy. And they come up in everyone's yards around here. All we have to do to "PLANT" them is NOT MOW THEM DOWN.
Religion, Violence, and Oppression
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Lily: When it comes to gardening, it seems like God knows what he's doing.
Simon: That's not how I'D put it. I don't have a good impression of religion, with all the violence and oppression it has caused.
Lily: Oh. I think the problem is how governments and other systems of power have all historically been INTERTWINED with religion.
Simon: The Crusades, though?
Lily: Committed by humans oh BEHALF of religion. The core of faith is separate from that, in my mind. Jesus spoke out AGAINST violence. We humans have a tendency to corrupt institutions. It's awful that people have caused harm in the name of God, but I don't blame God for that. Like what if you were invisible and you told your friends to do good things, but they misunderstood and did bad things instead? Would you want people to hate you and abandon you because of it?
Simon: I mean, if I tried that once and it went terribly wrong, I'd just be like "nevermind, guys. Use your own judgment. You'll do better without my input."
Discriminatory Beliefs
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Lily: People say discrinimatory beliefs are inherently hateful, but I don't think that's true. Like, my friend Tyler doesn't believe in gay marriage, but he doesn't hate anyone, it's just what he was taught at his Christian school. And he believes it because he CARES about people and doesn't want anyone to have an eternity of suffering.
Simon: It doesn't really matter what their motivations are. That belief hurts LGBT people, so it can be considered a hateful ideology even if they don't actually hate anyone.
Lily: But that might give someone the impression that people DO hate them. And if people don't hate you then why would it help you to believe they do? Wouldn't it just isolate you more?
Simon: If someone disrespected a fundamental element of who you were, would you really care whether they hated you or not?
Lily: Yeah, I would. You don't respect my religion, and I don't want YOU to hate me. (Simon and Lily look at each other)
Simon: I don't.
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