Oral Abstract Details

Author(s):
murungi

Affiliation:
Towson University

Presentation Type:
Oral

Topic Area:
Ecosystem impacts on human communities (e.g., human health, economic well-being, political action)

Abstract Text:
Trees are US The growing interest in ecology and environmental science has heightened our attention to tress especially our attention to the fact that the future of humanity is inescapably tied to the future of trees. There is ample evidence to show that this is indeed the case and there is no doubt that more and more evidence will be produced. It is not entirely my objective in this paper to produce more evidence to reinforce the evidence that is already available. I do not want to dwell on the usefulness of trees to us and to other living organisms. My primary objective to make the case that trees are us. In part, I will do this by deciphering the message that that Billie Holiday, the African American musician and poet, calls to our attention in her song “Southern Trees”. I will attempt to bring forth a definition of a tree that coincides with the definition of a human being -a definition that challenges the tradition understanding of what it is to be a human behind as well as the tradition of understating what a tree is -the definition that is given to us by botany and biology, generally. The coincidence of definitions is not accidental. It is a coincidence that affirms the identity of human beings and trees. Evidently, there will be those who will argue that this claim is logically absurd. But it is not self-evident that logic is the ultimate or the sole arbiter of what can be and cannot be said, or what is or what is not. I will try to show how music and poetry has much to teach us not only about ourselves but also about trees. Even if I am not successful in this undertaking, at least, I intend to provoke us into thinking who and what we are as well as what trees are. How we think about ourselves in relation to trees and vice versa inevitably bears on our destiny. If it is demonstrated that trees us we have an ethical obligation to treat trees as ethical subjects.