I had the honor to have Martin Bunzl on the podcast this past week. He taught Philosophy for 40 years at Rutgers University. We discussed his new book, “Thinking While Walking: Reflections on the Pacific Crest Trail” along with several other topics extending from the subject of litter to the social forces that influence our relationship with nature. We touched on subjects such as removing CO2 from the environment, genetically engineered foods, energy consumption and climate change that is the result of these contributing factors.

About Martin Bunzl:

I taught Philosophy at Rutgers for 40 years before retiring. Philosophy is a hard task master – you can spend a lifetime thinking about a problem and hope to make incremental progress in clarifying what is going on, even if you can’t solve it. Frustrating as that may seem, to me, it has been a privilege to be paid to spend my days just thinking. My recent work lies at the intersection of philosophy and the environment, with a special interest in climate change. I’m interested in both questions of risk and questions of responsibility. Risk, when it comes to uncertainty about how what we do may produce catastrophic outcomes. Responsibility, when it comes to understanding our duty to do no harm without it being clear to whom, or to what, we have that duty. I blog about these, and other issues of pressing concern, at www.mbunzl.com which also provides information about other areas of my research. My just published book, Thinking while Walking: Reflections on the Pacific Crest Trail, is an invitation for the reader to walk sections of the trail from the Mexican border to the Canadian border with me and think about everything from the mundane (what makes litter litter) to the profound (how to make sense of our duty to nature). Throughout the book, I come back to one theme in one way or another - the “constructed” idea of ‘nature’ as a romantic ideal that blinds us to our role in shaping the world since we established settled agriculture thousands of years ago. I’m especially interested in the way that creates a false binary in responding to the climate crisis between the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’. I’m also interested in the way our romantic conception of nature constitutes a rich society’s privilege that ignores what we need to do to insure the wellbeing of all people in the world.

Martin Bunzl also has a blog at www.mbunzl.com and you can find his other works available on Amazon by going to https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001HCU8KC which I think you will find to be very interesting reads.

Is the rapture about to happen? Media and news outlet use Fear, uncertainty, and doubt in their reporting? Censorship in a Pagan Facebook community? Say it isn’t so! I talk about these things in today’s episode. Hope everyone is doing well, the fish pond is going to well so far. Feel free to leave a comment below (visit the website at www.spiritualgardening.net) or reach out on the Spiritual Gardening Facebook Page. You can also reach out to me via email at spiritualgardening@fastmail.comand Instagram.

Check out these links:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/if-you-grew-up-51276813

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578692937

Music Credits:

Whiskey on the Mississippi by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4624-whiskey-on-the-mississippi

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I’m relatively new to podcasting and one of the things I am especially new to is having guests. My first guest was The Existential Ginger, which went very well. If anything, my lack of preparation was apparent. I never gave much thought about screening guests beforehand, which would fall under common sense. So, in this episode I talk about the interview that went badly, all the things I have been busy with, I touch on other things such as existential crisis’s, Bob Ross, and the right to repair movement. This is mostly just an update and will be back to the drawing board for future episodes. I do have some stuff coming up later this month, so stay tuned for that.

I had someone reach out who at first I thought they wanted to interview me, but wanted to come on my podcast for an interview. In short, the interview was a hot mess and is not something I will publish. Of course, you’re probably wondering how bad it could possibly be and perhaps that peaks your interest in regard to listening to the interview. Here’s what happened…

This person inquired about an interview on my personal social media under a fake name. I initially thought it was some sort of scam and was inclined to ignore it but I messaged this person back and began asking him questions and I got back that he wanted to discuss spirituality, history of religion and so forth. My mistake is going back to my bad habit of skimming over messages that are very long and the red flag was buried in his response in regards the “the truth” that he’s found and the lies and deception. Do you see where this is going? This person is a flat-earther. Now, the fact that he’s a flat-earther isn’t as much of a problem for me as that the interview turned into 2 hours and 30 minutes of incomplete thoughts, lack of understanding and rambling. He also cut me off or talked over me almost every time I spoke as if he had answers.

Here’s the thing, I could spend plenty of time explaining why flat earth is a bunch of nonsense, but that would be futile. He only provided other YouTube videos for me to watch as supposedly proof. That’s just not good enough for quality content. There was also a lot of wind noise as he was out hiking, not a good setup for a good recording. My problem is not so much with what a flat earther believes but the accompanying lack of critical thinking that seems to go along with it. I don’t claim to be an expert in any particular field, but I am not going to allow my podcast to become an echo chamber for things I do not value.

You can read more by going to my website at www.spiritualgardening.net

Links:

Flat Earthers Explain Philosophy - https://flatearth.ws/contextualism#more-1222

Existential Crisis - https://www.healthline.com/health/existential-crisis

Bob Ross - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxcnsr1R5Ge_fbTu5ajt8DQ

Louis Rossmann - https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup

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Website: www.spiritualgardening.net

Email: spiritualgardening@fastmail.com