75
In the overall chain of contemporary human existence, the thousands of other
ingredients cannot be ignored, from scrap metals, to everything imported into a
community from the outside, utilitarian artifacts comprising alloys and plastics, pollutants, and other foreign bodies.
Bio-invasives on an island become overnight critical offenders of the indigenous
sustainability, with rare exceptions. As human population levels vary, and the model
of successful renewal is achieved, at what ethical price? When does rural sustainability necessitate a revisiting of basic moral preambles, most obviously in the case
of dietary and conservation shifts away from ever harming other animals? There are
plentiful examples of pseudomorphic transitional Faustian communities, as Oswald
Spengler characterized such windows on human cultures.
20
In the case of western
Scotland, a cursory glance at restaurants reveals a keen awareness of vegetarian and
vegan options, in addition to a great tradition of whiskey distilleries. But the majority of all food produced and served for the cadres of eco-tourists upon whom the
small island communities depend, continues a heavy reliance on killing, with cows,
sheep, chickens, salmon, halibut, and trout being six of the most martyred species.
21
8.4 Utopian Contradictions
When Sir Thomas More published his popular Utopia (1516) it is estimated that
members of one in four households in France and probably as many throughout the
Burgundian Empire, today’s Benelux, could read its Latin text exhorting and satirizing “the Best State of a Republic and the New Island Utopia” (in its sub-title). The
reading public had been spoiled with several million copies of hand-printed and
hand-illustrated Horae, the Christian devotional genre known as the Book of
Hours.
22
They could not have failed to grasp some of the basic contradictions
instated by More. For example, the size and extant of the theoretical island’s territory versus its having 54 cities, each of equal size and no closer than 24 miles apart,
yet not so distant that one could not hike from one city to another in a day. The math
doesn’t add up, and this Utopia is, if anything, a densely teeming human nightmare
20 See Spengler’s 2-volume Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918–1922, Oskar Beck, Munich,
1922.
21 See such studies as “Environmental Sustainability,” University of the West of Scotland, https://
www.uws.ac.uk/about-uws/uws-commitments/sustainability/Accessed January 27, 2019; and
“Western Highlands – Natural Heritage Futures Update,” Scottish Natural Heritage, https://www.
nature.scot/sites/default/files/2017-06/A306342%20-%20Natural%20Heritage%20Futures
%20-%20Western%20Highlands%20update.pdf, Accessed January 27, 2019; “Demographic
Change in Remote Areas,” the James Hutton Institute, https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/
demographic-change-remote-areas; See also, 1.3.7 Ecosystem Services, New Zealand Department
of Conservation, “Stewart Island/Rakiura Conservation Management Strategy and Rakiura
National Park Management Plan 2011-2021”Accessed, January 27, 2019.
22 See Medieval Must-Haves – The Book of Hours, by Sandra Hindman, Les Enluminures, Paris
and New York, 2018, p. 11.
8.4 Utopian Contradictions
In the overall chain of contemporary human existence, the thousands of other
ingredients cannot be ignored, from scrap metals, to everything imported into a
community from the outside, utilitarian artifacts comprising alloys and plastics, pollutants, and other foreign bodies.
Bio-invasives on an island become overnight critical offenders of the indigenous
sustainability, with rare exceptions. As human population levels vary, and the model
of successful renewal is achieved, at what ethical price? When does rural sustainability necessitate a revisiting of basic moral preambles, most obviously in the case
of dietary and conservation shifts away from ever harming other animals? There are
plentiful examples of pseudomorphic transitional Faustian communities, as Oswald
Spengler characterized such windows on human cultures.
20
In the case of western
Scotland, a cursory glance at restaurants reveals a keen awareness of vegetarian and
vegan options, in addition to a great tradition of whiskey distilleries. But the majority of all food produced and served for the cadres of eco-tourists upon whom the
small island communities depend, continues a heavy reliance on killing, with cows,
sheep, chickens, salmon, halibut, and trout being six of the most martyred species.
21
8.4 Utopian Contradictions
When Sir Thomas More published his popular Utopia (1516) it is estimated that
members of one in four households in France and probably as many throughout the
Burgundian Empire, today’s Benelux, could read its Latin text exhorting and satirizing “the Best State of a Republic and the New Island Utopia” (in its sub-title). The
reading public had been spoiled with several million copies of hand-printed and
hand-illustrated Horae, the Christian devotional genre known as the Book of
Hours.
22
They could not have failed to grasp some of the basic contradictions
instated by More. For example, the size and extant of the theoretical island’s territory versus its having 54 cities, each of equal size and no closer than 24 miles apart,
yet not so distant that one could not hike from one city to another in a day. The math
doesn’t add up, and this Utopia is, if anything, a densely teeming human nightmare
20 See Spengler’s 2-volume Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918–1922, Oskar Beck, Munich,
1922.
21 See such studies as “Environmental Sustainability,” University of the West of Scotland, https://
www.uws.ac.uk/about-uws/uws-commitments/sustainability/Accessed January 27, 2019; and
“Western Highlands – Natural Heritage Futures Update,” Scottish Natural Heritage, https://www.
nature.scot/sites/default/files/2017-06/A306342%20-%20Natural%20Heritage%20Futures
%20-%20Western%20Highlands%20update.pdf, Accessed January 27, 2019; “Demographic
Change in Remote Areas,” the James Hutton Institute, https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/
demographic-change-remote-areas; See also, 1.3.7 Ecosystem Services, New Zealand Department
of Conservation, “Stewart Island/Rakiura Conservation Management Strategy and Rakiura
National Park Management Plan 2011-2021”Accessed, January 27, 2019.
22 See Medieval Must-Haves – The Book of Hours, by Sandra Hindman, Les Enluminures, Paris
and New York, 2018, p. 11.
8.4 Utopian Contradictions