A Spiritual Duty

On December 2, 1942, Richard Lieber gave a speech at Turkey Run State Park, Indiana. The event was the 25th anniversary of the Indiana state park system. As would be expected, the speech was epideictic in nature. Lieber managed to do quite a bit more than merely celebrate the occasion. In the midst of the festive atmosphere he was able to promote his vision of a greatly expanded park system and warned his audience against changes in the system.

What really struck me most in this short speech was Lieber's reverent attitude towards the land. He had been highly instrumental in setting up and administering the park system in its formative years. He also spent a great deal of his time after public service campaigning and lobbying for the benefit of the parks. He was clearly driven and his speech betrays his motivation in several key passages. Conservation for Richard Lieber was a spiritual duty. He was not beyond patriotic pleas in his persuasions but it seems that the root of his motivation lay in his spiritual relationship with the land. Lieber was an immigrant, originally from Germany. He was too late to be a pioneer but held a deep respect for those that preceded him. Realizing that in the classic "man against nature" theme, humans had gained the upper hand, he sought to save some of the wildness for its own sake. As he said at one point, "... state parks are a dedication to the soul of the land."

Lieber then pulls a trope from his pocket and says, "They (state parks) will, through their ancient rocks, hills, shores and giant trees continue to preach a silent but mighty sermon to the generations yet unborn, of the struggles, hopes and ambitions of pioneer days." Lieber realized a basic tenet of environmentalism in the closing paragraph of his speech:

It is the land on which we all depend in the last essence. It is the land and the very soil, the trees and water, the dales and hills which we love. Without vision a land will die. Without inspiration we remain disconnected from the immortal order of all things.

Our state parks; let us preserve the sources of our inspiration.

Healthy Change or Decline: You Decide

For this post I've considered "Forum: Is There a Decline in literacy?" as sustainable public discourse according to its form (Winterowd, "Dispositio")
This article is a debate on whether literacy has declined. J.T. Ledbetter takes the view that literacy has declined while Harvey Daniels argues that "Breast beating expostulations about the imminent collapse of our Mother Tongue are as common a part of world history as are wars, and almost as regular" (pg 17)
This debate is organized as classical oration but without reprehensio. That is,the structure of the debate is exordium, narratio, confirmatio and peroratio.
Ledbetter argues that literacy has declined and blames the educational system. He relates that "I've had teachers tell me they could do a good job with just about any reading program if only they would be left alone with the program for a few years..." (pg 16) Ledbetter also notes a decline in familiarity with literature. Rather than being exposed to good literature students have "instead been bombarded with insipid, inane educational expertise designed to chart and define rather than stimulate and ennoble" (pg18).
Daniels, on the other hand, finds justification to take the current literary crisis lightly. He concentrates on a historical approach and shows a recurring pattern of concern for literacy. "But our response to the contemporary language crisis should be based on the understanding that what some people like to call degeneration is almost certainly change, a process which is an inevitable and healthy element of any living language" (pg 20)
The debate as a whole functions as sustainable public discourse in that rather than settling the issue it brings it into a public sphere to provoke thought and further the debate. This was published in The English Journal and so one would expect the readers to have their own opinions and respond. In that respect the article seeks to polarize its audience.

Works cited

Ledbetter, J.T., and Harvey (Smokey) Daniels. "Forum: Is There a Decline in Literacy?" The English Journal 65.5 (Sep1976): 16-20

Winterowd, W. Ross. "Dispositio: The Concept of Form in Discourse." College Composition and Communication 22.1 (Feb 1971): 39-45

An issue I would like to persue in my historical-causal analysis is that while cell phones and social networking have made it possible to communicate instantly and constantly with our "friends", it has also contributed to the decline in the quality of personal interactions. The new technology intrudes itself on face to face interactions and has spawned a new etiquette.
In considering genre selection, the classical oration pattern comes to mind as possibly effective in exploring this issue. To be maximally effective the genre needs to be persuasive that a new etiquette does in fact exist among the younger generation. Furthermore, that younger generation is the people to be to be convinced.