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Death Cult Theory : Counter-Interpretation - _______________________________We get 3 Condtional Advocacites ______________________________________ 1. Key to neg flex conditionality beats 1ac and 2ac offense aff speaks first and last and chooses framing of debate 2. Key to strategic and efficient thinking tough 2ac choices force better speeches 3. Promotes better debate debate becomes harder as each team needs to make strategic decisions negative isnt denied a chance to win if the mess up the 1NC 4. Breath is better than depth allows teams to scan available options and learn about each of them debates are limited in size, best to increase the scope of all options 5. Best policy option when faced with two bad options, rational decision makers logically reject both 6. Key to ideological flexibility major theses of aff - policy and __different Kritikal arguments __ need to be tested in mutually exclusive manners, a debater from becoming solely policy or K oriented prevents community fragmentation and key to education ____AT: Strategy Skew
Strat skew is inevitable aff can always kick advantages and neg can double bind T with a DA Harder debate is good forces the aff to anticipate strategy and execute 2nr time outweighs needs to prevent any 2ar out while covering theory and substance while aff can go for either
Reject the argument, not the team make them prove in-round abuse to win
NOW SO WE DONT Contradict areselves we are kicking the CP and Neolib they were Condtional so
*** 2NC OV
The question of the debate is whether representing death in the simulation of debate represents a valuable or harmful practice- they cant access the case without justifying their conclusion that death simulations are important
We control the offense. Our impacts stem directly from being forced to debate death. Their impacts are missing the internal link between talking about death and fearing death.
Without the alts protest against militarization of the public sphere, continuously escalating spectacles of violence become desirable and necessary- all of their impact claims are produced to justify a constant state of domestic insecurity and the alt is the only way to solve any of them anyway. We are a pre-requisite to solve literally all of their offense, from fear of death good to political action good. Giroux 3/14
Henry A Giroux, Frequent author on pedagogy in the public sphere, Truthout, Youth in Revolt: The Plague of State-Sponsored Violence, March 14, 2012, http://truthout.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7249:youth-in-revolt-the-plague-of-statesponsoredviolence As the social is devalued along with rationality, ethics and any vestige of democracy, spectacles of war, violence and brutality now merge into forms of collective pleasure that constitute an important and new symbiosis among visual pleasure, violence and suffering. The control society is now the ultimate form of entertainment as the pain of others, especially those considered disposable and powerless, has become the subject not of compassion, but of ridicule and amusement in America. High-octane violence and human suffering are now considered another form of entertainment designed to raise the collective pleasure quotient . Reveling in the suffering of others should no longer be reduced to a matter of individual pathology, but now registers a larger economy of pleasure across the broader culture and social landscape. My emphasis here is on the sadistic impulse and how it merges spectacles of violence and brutality with forms of collective pleasure. No society can make a claim to being a democracy as long as it defines itself through shared fears rather than shared responsibilities. Widespread violence now functions as part of an anti-immune system that turns the economy of genuine pleasure into a mode of sadism that creates the foundation for sapping democracy of any political substance and moral vitality. The prevalence of institutionalized violence in American society and other parts of the world suggests the need for a new conversation and politics that addresses what a just and fair world looks like. The predominance of violence in all aspects of social life suggests that young people and others marginalized by class, race and ethnicity have been abandoned as American society's claim on democracy gives way to the forces of militarism, market fundamentalism and state terrorism. The prevalence of violence throughout American society suggests the need for a politics that not only negates the established order, but imagines a new one, one informed by a radical vision in which the future does not imitate the present.(27) In this discourse, critique merges with a sense of realistic hope and individual struggles merge into larger social movements. The challenge that young people are posing to American society is being met with a statesponsored violence that is about more than police brutality; it is more importantly about the transformation of the United States from a social state to a warfare state, from a state that embraced the social contract to one that no longer has a language for community - a state in which the bonds of fear and commodification have replaced the bonds of civic responsibility and democratic vision. Until we address how the metaphysics of war and violence have taken hold on American society (and in other parts of the world) and the savage social costs it has enacted, the forms of social, political and economic violence that young people are protesting against as well as the violence waged in response to their protests will become impossible to recognize and act on .
Firstly . Beres says we need to discuss policy, but has no warrants for including death impacts. Our K proves death debating decreases good policymaking.
2. Beres votes neg. The paragraphs above their card proves he thinks the suppression of death impacts is a pre-requisite to meaningful policy education.
Louis Rene Beres, professor of international law at Purdue University, 6/5/03 (Journal and Courier, Anarchy and international law on an endangered planet) For us, other rude awakenings are unavoidable, some of which could easily overshadow the horrors of Sept. 11. There can be little doubt that, within a few short years, expanding tribalism will produce several new genocides and proliferating nuclear weapons will generate one or more regional nuclear wars. Paralyzed by fear and restrained by impotence, various governments will try, desperately, to deflect our attention, but it will be a vain effort. Caught up in a vast chaos from which no real escape is possible, we will learn too late that there is no durable safety in arms, no ultimate rescue by authority, no genuine remedy in science or technology. What shall we do? For a start, we must all begin to look carefully behind the news. Rejecting superficial analyses of day-today events in favor of penetrating assessments of world affairs, we must learn quickly to distinguish what is truly important from what is merely entertainment. With such learning, we Americans could prepare for growing worldwide anarchy not as immobilized objects of false contentment, but as authentic citizens of an endangered planet. Nowhere is it written that we people of Earth are forever, that humankind must thwart the long-prevailing trend among all planetary life-forms (more than 99 percent) of ending in extinction. Aware of this, we may yet survive, at least for a while, but only if our collective suppression of purposeful fear is augmented by a complementary wisdom; that is, that our personal mortality is undeniable and that the harms done by one tribal state or terror group against "others" will never confer immortality. This is, admittedly, a difficult concept to understand, but the longer we humans are shielded from such difficult concepts the shorter will be our time remaining. We must also look closely at higher education in the United States, not from the shortsighted stance of improving test scores, but from the urgent perspective of confronting extraordinary threats to human survival. For the moment, some college students are exposed to an occasional course in what is fashionably described as "global awareness," but such exposure usually sidesteps the overriding issues: We now face a deteriorating world system that cannot be mended through sensitivity alone; our leaders are dangerously unprepared to deal with catastrophic deterioration; our schools are altogether incapable of transmitting the indispensable visions of planetary restructuring. To institute productive student confrontations with survival imperatives, colleges and universities must soon take great risks, detaching themselves from a time-dishonored preoccupation with "facts" in favor of grappling with true life-or-death questions. In raising these questions, it will not be enough to send some students to study in Paris or Madrid or Amsterdam ("study abroad" is not what is meant by serious global awareness). Rather, all students must be made aware - as a primary objective of the curriculum - of where we are heading, as a species, and where our limited survival alternatives may yet be discovered. There are, of course, many particular ways in which colleges and universities could operationalize real global awareness, but one way, long-neglected, would be best. I refer to the study of international law. For a country that celebrates the rule of law at all levels, and which explicitly makes international law part of the law of the United States - the "supreme law of the land" according to the Constitution and certain Supreme Court decisions - this should be easy enough to understand. Anarchy, after all, is the absence of law, and knowledge of international law is necessarily prior to adequate measures of world order reform. Before international law can be taken seriously, and before "the blood-dimmed tide" can be halted, America's future leaders must at least have some informed acquaintance with pertinent rules and procedures. Otherwise we shall surely witness the birth of a fully ungovernable world order, an unheralded and sinister arrival in which only a shadowy legion of gravediggers would wield the forceps.
a. V2L is decreased when we race to extend the timeline of are exction and how we die . Then are deaths are just like in the world of Hunger Games Death is oversenstionalized then are deaths are just good because why live in the world where death is being oversenstionalized . That connects to the debate
debaters know that making a racist or sexist comment in a debate is one of the easiest ways to lose a ballot, as the opposing team is likely to make that the only issue in the debate,
concern. Almost all American and the judge will make an example of you. There is no time in debate history when falsification and fabrication of evidence has been better monitored or when the behavior of debaters as regards evidence has been better. This may be more due to the ability to check the evidence used by others, but it still is the case. This sort of ethical dimension of argument and presentation has been made an issue in the decision. Winning at all costs could cost you the win.
1. Double-Bind. Either the perm severs its death impacts or doesnt solve. Severance makes the aff a moving target. We base our strategy on the 1ACs choices, so stick them to it.
2. Severance fails:
Because sorry as regret carries no acceptance of responsibility or accountability, the offence becomes an implicit part of the explanation, even a justification for an incredibly difficult decision. Reparation, forbearance, absolution are not appropriate in such circumstances. Moreover, Ms Hewitt
which followed Hewitts apology makes explicit.
concludes her apology with a statement (but I dont think we were wrong to go in) which contradicts the demand made by th e questioner, i.e. that the Prime Minister should apologize for taking the British nation to war in Iraq. However, though nearly all forms of media who report the Question Time encounter refer to Hewitts statement as an
apology, thus at least implicitly categorizing it as such, most of them do call into question in various ways its nature an d substance. The many viewers who responded to BBC News are even more critical and also, perhaps surprisingly, more discerning, despite the fact that the invitation was headlined: Ms Hewitt is the first senior mem ber of the government to make a direct apology for the int elligence failings and the question worded as Was Patricia Hewitt right to apologise? Does the apology draw a line under the debate over WMD?, all of which acc ept as a presupposition that an apology has been made. The most frequent question raised by both the press and viewers has to do with accountability, i.e. that a proper apology involves the acceptance of personal resp onsibility for the offence by the apologizer. Hence, Patricia Hewitts apology is faulty both because shes apologizing for something for which she bears no responsibility (What does Patricia Hewitt have to do with the security services?, as one viewer asks) and for the wrong offence, i.e. that it was the Prime Ministers misrepresentation of the intelligence reports, not the intelligence reports in themselves, which was wrong (I asked him [the Prime Minister] very specifically about the way in which he misrepresented the intelligence that he received to the country. Why can he not bring himself to say sorry for that? Michael Howard in the House of Commons, 13 October 2004). Both the press and large numbers of viewers, like Michael Howard, question the acceptability of Hewitts remarks on these grounds. Perhaps partly because Hewitts apology co mes to exemplify what is seen as the failure of a number of leading politicians to accept accountability, viewers, like the press, also question the ultimate significance of political apologies which appear to be unconnected with meaningful action, both in terms of rectifying the damage caused by the offence (An apology wont bring back the lives of the servicemen lost, nor the civilians, nor rectify the damage, nor pay back the 5bn cost, nor call off the insurgents and terrorists, nor free Ken Bigley BBC News, World Edition 09/10/04) and as an indication of the (lack of) seriousness of the politicians sense of remorse (The only apology that I would accept is the apology of resignation BBC News, World Edition 09/10/04). Examining the controversy which followed Ms Hewitts Que stion Time statement has highlighted the complexity of political apologies in relationship to the interpersonal types usually explored in the apology literature or at least has demonstrated that different types of complexity are involved. First of all, i t is clear that the use of one of the two explicit Ifids (sorry and apologize) appear to be crucial according to the judgements/evaluations of both the press and viewers in order to categorize what a politician says as an apology. The widespread categorization of Patricia Hewitts statement by the press as the first direct apology by a senior minister appears to relate to her use of these Ifids. Tony Blairs conference statement, on the other hand (I can ap ologize for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I cant, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam) is ambiguous in its use of can as to whether that speech act is actually being performed, and the cle ar emphasis is, in any case, on his refusal to apologize for the act cited in the latter half of the sentence. Indirection in a political apology is likely to be perceived negatively as evasion and shiftiness. Second, there ar e clearly disputes over who should apologize; hence, the reaction of much of the press and many viewers who write in online that Patricia Hewitt is not the appropriate person to apologize for something for which she had minimal or no responsibility. There is also the question of the offence itself, which in the Question Time challenge by the studio audience is related to the decision to go to war in Iraq, but in the apology becomes that the information provided by the intelligence services was wrong. And, perhaps most significant, to whom is the apology being made? Who are the victim/s? Unlike Mr Blairs apology for the injustice to those wrongly convicted for the IRA pub bombings, where the victims are named, there are no victims indicated in Ms Hewitts apology. The implication in the studio audience challenge is that it is the British people t o whom an apology for the decision to go to war in Iraq should be addressed, for having been misled, but the implications are probably even wider than that. (If there is an implicit meaning in the apology statement its elf, it is that the Government itself has been victimized by having been provided with faulty intelligence, especially since Ms Hewitt clearly states that the act of going to war itself was not wrong.) In addition, Ms Hewitts statement is made in the immediate context in answer to a question raised by a member of the studio audience, but the reaction of that audience certainly demonstrates that they regard the apology as directed a t the entire audience rather than at the specific individual. Ms Hewitt knew that her statement was also being heard by the unseen wider audience who are watching the programme and must have anticipated that it would be taken up by the press, re peated and published for a wider public yet. Who the victim/s are and the nature of the offence are clearly disputed territory which the apology does little to clarify. Clearly, the political stakes for the Prime Minister are incredibly high, and wha tever his current beliefs about Iraq or the demands of a substantial number of the British public for an apology for taking the country to war on the basis of faulty (or misrepresented) intelligence, Tony Blair is unlikely ever to issue a political apology which would satisfy the basic conditions of those demands according to viewer judgements (an Ifid token + an expression which indicates acceptance of responsibility and/or blame for wrongdoing) or to resign (absolution).1
We would agree with Luke (1997) that the apology has become a form of political speech with increasing significance and power (p. 344), and across the political spectrum on a global scale has, arguably, become one of the most prominent of public speech acts. Even though it may not as yet be the age of the apology, the
Conclusions
relative lack of interest in the political apology as a generic type of discourse by sociolinguistics and pragmatics is both surprising and unwarranted, since they demonstrate some revealing differences as well as significant areas of overlap with the type of interpersonal and individual apologies which have been the primary focus of the now considerable amount of apology research. For example, much of the existing literature on apologies, following Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), adopts a face-needs perspective, seeing the apology as basically a negative politeness strategy which is aimed mainly at the redress of Face Threatening Acts (see Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987; Goffman, 1971; Holmes, 1995, 1998). It is certainly the case that many types of political apologies do represent a potentially
serious loss of face for politicians, which may be why they are frequently so eager to apologize for things for which they cannot be held accountable. But to approach political apologies by means of face-oriented definitions is often not particularly helpful and highlights some of the important differences with the interpersonal data on which such definitions are most often based. Holmes (1998), for instance, defines apologies as follows: An apology is a speech act addressed to Bs face needs and intended to remedy an offense for which A takes responsibility, and thus to restore equilibrium between A and B (where A is the apologizer, and B is the person offended). (p. 204) Clearly, this is a definition which assumes that it is two individuals who are involved in the process of apologizing and that addressing the face-needs of the person offended is the primary motive for the speech act, with the restoring of equilibrium its main goal. Such definitions do not take us very far in understanding the significance and issues raised by political apologies. Given the magnitude of some of the offences we have considered, describing what the apology addresses as the face-needs of the person offended seems neither accurate nor enlightening. To claim that it is the face -needs of Samantha Roberts which are in some way damaged or that she is the person offended seems somehow to trivialize events which are of a very serious nature. Nor would these terms be very helpful in describing the motives held by the various persons and groups who call on the British Prime Minister to apologize for taking the country to war in Iraq or for allegedly misrepresenting the intelligence reports to members of Parliament. Moreover, the process of restoring equilibrium is again likely to be a much more complex process if it can be achieved at all than is the case when apologies are negotiated between individuals acting in a private capacity. Indeed, its hard to imagine how Robinsons (2004) notion of a preferred response (one which offers absolution to the apologi zer rather than merely accepting the apology) could possibly be applicable in the case of most political apologies. Even in t he instance of fairly low level offences such as the British diplomat who described Nottingham as a more dangerous place than Saudi Arabia, city officials agreed to accept the apology rather than to offer absolution to the offender. However, Holmes emphasis on the apologizers accepting responsibility for the offence and Robinsons argument that Apologizing is an essential component of the maintenance of social harmony because it communicates awareness and acceptance of moral responsibility for offensive behavior (2004: 292) both foreground the essential sense of m orality which generates the need for such apologies and which goes well beyond face-needs. What Samantha Roberts demands is an apology from the Minister for Defence which explicitly accepts his own moral responsibili ty for the actions which led to her husbands death. From both the press and viewers, Ms Hewitts political apology produces responses which are concerned essentially with morality, i.e. what is right or wrong, what the politician/s should or should not do; and these responses most often centre on the question of accepting personal responsibility. Eelen (2001: 249) argues in conjunction with new directions in politeness theory that morality is no longer regarded as a fixed higher -order set of rules that determine the individuals behaviour, but as something that people do to or with each other. This seems to us an arguable point but one which is overstated. Though what constitutes an acceptable political apology may not be based on a fixed higher-order set of rules, there does seem to exist a cultural consensus that is morally grounded and goes beyond t he merely individual response, i.e. it is right for a politician to offer an apology in which s/he explicitly accepts responsibility for his/her own acts and wrong to attempt to evade that responsibility. This is not to deny that the political apology is a contested concept or that it not only arises out of discourse struggle but generates further struggle and controversy. It is that very discourse struggle which is, indeed, part of their interest for linguists and which is reflected in the substantial amount of media coverage and public debate that political apologies often provoke. However, once again, we would argue that apologies, nearly always r egarded in apology research as a quintessential politeness strategy, are more than an argumentative social tool with which the individual can accomplish things (Eelen, 2001: 249) and also that political apologies are perceived as m ore than a politeness strategy. It is interesting that the British data on political apologies which we have examined contains no references at all to the question of (im)politeness, though that too frequently evokes impassioned public debate. Like Eelen, Mills (2003) also regards
apologies as a contested concept and stresses the importance of evaluation. Apologies are often compos ed of elements which cannot be recognised easily by either interactants or analysts as unequivocal apologies (p. 111). Hence, apologies cannot be considered to be a formal linguistic entity (p. 222) but rather a judgement made about someones linguistic performance (p. 112). This, again, is probably true in a general sense, and as we maintained earlier, apologies are unlikely ever to be defined precisely as a fixed set of semantic components. However, once again, though the evaluative component is highly significant, the responses (from both media and public) to the political apologies in our data are more than merely individuals making dispara te judgements about someones linguistic performance. They do instead, we would argue, reflect a set of cultur al expectations as to what constitutes a valid apology as a formal speech act, and, as
listeners and viewers do have a sense of what constitutes an unequivocal apology that perpetuates the discourse struggle. In contrast to many apologies between individuals, which may take a wide variety of forms and often contain a high degree of implicitness, it seems to be crucial if political apologies are to be regarded as valid by those to whom they are addressed that they are not implicit or ambiguous, i.e. that they contain an explicit Ifid (sorry and/or apologize) and that there is an (explicit) acceptance of personal responsibility for a stated act which has been committed by the apologizer. The widely expressed cynicism with regard to political apologies which are made by major politicians long after the events concerned have occurred and for which they cannot be accountable reflects these cultural expectations, along with the clear sense that apologies are morally grounded.
such, contain also a quite considerable degree of predictability. Indeed, it is in large measure the fact that
even the words associated with it, and made them naughty -- something we don't speak aloud in public. Children are shushed or quickly diverted if they bring up the topic. Our society is "death-aphobic" and it's time this is changed. By becoming comfortable with the words and concepts, when the magic moment arrives and you discover that you are dead, you won't be so shocked. Many people have a difficult time accepting their own death simply because of the shock value of the word. Ignoring and suppressing the idea of death throughout your life actually empowers the word. So take the power away from the words and concept of death by verbalizing and getting comfortable with them. Make the words "death" and "dead" as familiar as the word "birth" and "life". Birth and death are both times of transition. They imply a change from one dimensional form to another. You don't see people going to pieces because someone gave birth like you do when people (especially themselves) die. Yet birth is much more traumatic and generally unpleasant to the one experiencing it. Death is a much easier transition. A WORKING REALITY OF
DEATH Take a minute to imagine the following scene. You find yourself inside a large cube or box. It can be of any material you choose. You are completely enclosed in this box. There are no doors or windows, no way to get in or out. You do not know how you got in or how to get out. As you imagine yourself in this box, what are your reactions? What thoughts or feelings do you have? Remain in this imaginary state for a minute or so to fully experience your feelings. STOP! DON'T READ ANY FURTHER UNTIL YOU HAVE TAKEN A MINUTE TO EXPERIENCE THIS SENSATION! Good. Did you feel panic? How about curiosity? There are a multitude of reactions, and yours are perfectly normal regardless of what they were. Your reactions to this exercise are similar to those you might experience as you pass into death. Now reexamine your reactions to the box, only apply these to death. How do you feel about death? Don't judge yourself, simply examine. You now have a starting point from which to examine your current death beliefs. For our second exercise, imagine yourself walking down a path. Create your path; notice the details. Is it wide, narrow, smooth, rough, beautiful, not-so-beautiful, straight, or winding? You decide. After you walk for awhile you come to a wall. The wall can be any form you like, but it must run across your path and stretch so far that you cannot walk around it. Create the wall now! Now move beyond the wall. What do you see? Take a minute to experience this vision. Relax and play with the images. Don't read on until you have experienced this! No fudging! This path represents your view of your life. Was your life easy or rough?
Was your path well worn, or are you blazing new trails? Was your path straight or winding? If you did not like your path, know that you have full power to change it any time you choose. You can add plants, flowers -- in short, create any path you choose whenever you choose. Examine the wall. Was it high and solid or low and insubstantial? What kind was it? How did you move beyond the wall? Was it hard? What were your reactions to moving beyond the wall? What did you find on the other side? The wall represents the separation of life and death. Beyond the wall is your symbolic subconscious view of the afterlife. Now reexamine your images. If you do not like what you experienced, simply choose a new creation and construct new images. There are no right answers, yet, at the
same time, all answers are right. Your answers represent a combination of what you have been conditioned to believe about death and your personal reality of death. If you are happy with your subconscious death reality, that's great. If you are uncomfortable with your symbolic representation of death, then create a new one as you read on. Death need not be scary. In fact, in many ways death can be compared to going away to college. It may cause a little apprehension at first. The change may even produce some stress. But after awhile you can actually become excited about the prospect of going away to your great new adventure. There are many who would even say you are lucky to be going. Death is even easier than college because there is no packing to do, no tuition to pay, nor written exams to take. As you get comfortable with the concept of death, then you can begin to let go of any fearful notions of death. Allow yourself to have a variety of death options, all pleasant. This allows you to stay open and receptive to your own unique death adventure when it occurs, which may be different from the one you have created. If, however, the concept of death still makes you tremble with fear, and you can't leave it in such an unformed and unpleasant condition, then take a few moments to create your own picture of what death will be like for you. Play this image over and over until it becomes your new reality of death. Thus, when you die you will automatically create this familiar reality. Eventually the actual reality will pierce your awareness, but this created reality will be a pleasant first encounter, certainly much better than fear or panic.
Only voting neg to actively avoid death impacts causes fear of death.
Leora Kuttner, Clinical Pyschologist / Professor, Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, 1 (http://www.familypractice.ubc.ca/forum/talk_FacingFear.html) Death is something we all have in common. Yet our culture - western culture - actively avoids the consideration of death, and anything that may prepare us for death. How then, can we learn to face our fear of death, and what, exactly are those fears? Facing death means challenging our beliefs and our definition of life. Facing death means facing loss, gradual or sudden. The loss of abilities. The loss of body control. Becoming dependent - or perhaps being alone. Facing death means facing a change in our way of being as we know it, and like it, and facing losses that we don't want to know about. Facing death not only means facing the unknown but also changes in what we did know. For some people, the fear of death is about the unknown of death. For many people it's the fear of suffering as one approaches death. "Suffering is one of the greatest fears of all. But the pain can be controlled, managed, eased. Even big pain," Dr. Kuttner said. This is where health care professionals truly make a huge difference - in easing pain and providing the close contact, comfort, support, human understanding, and relief of body aches and discomfort.
The K flips all their cede the political arguments- continuous refusal to subject militarization to scrutiny is the ultimate cessation of the public sphere- makes politics impossible and proves our framework is a prior question to any of their offense. Giroux 11
Henry A Giroux, Truthout, Occupy Colleges Now: Students as the New Public Intellectuals, 21 November 2011, http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=5046:occupy-colleges-now-students-as-the-new-public-intellectuals Of course, such a position is at odds with those intellectuals who have retreated into arcane discourses that offer the cloistered protection of the professional recluse. Making few connections with audiences outside of the academy or to the myriad issues that bear down on everyday lives, many academics became increasingly irrelevant, while humanistic inquiry suffers the aftershocks of flagging public support. The Occupy Wall Street protesters have refused this notion of the deracinated, if not increasingly irrelevant, notion of academics and students as disinterested intellectuals. They are not alone. Refusing the rewards of apolitical professionalism or obscure specialization so rampant on university campuses, Roy has pointed out that intellectuals need to ask themselves some very "uncomfortable questions about our values and traditions, our vision for the future, our responsibilities as citizens, the legitimacy of our 'democratic institutions,' the role of the state, the police, the army, the judiciary, and the intellectual community."[1] Similarly, Scarry points to the difficulty of seeing an injury and injustice, the sense of futility of one's own small efforts, and the special difficulty of lifting complex ideas into the public sphere.[2] Derrida has raised important questions about the relationship between critique and the very nature of the university and the humanities, as when he writes: The university without condition does not, in fact, exist, as we know only too well. Nevertheless, in principle and in conformity with its declared vocation, its professed essence, it should remain an ultimate place of critical resistance - and more than critical - to all the power of dogmatic and unjust appropriation.[3]
And, their form of engagement with policymaking only leads to endless pain and suffering - the cultural of violent imagery the aff promotes crystalizes militaristic power relationships that cede the political to a war machine, which fuels its furnace with human misery at home, in order to fund the destruction of civilians abroad Giroux 12
Henry A Giroux, Frequent author on pedagogy in the public sphere, Truthout, Youth in Revolt: The Plague of State-Sponsored Violence, March 14, 2012, http://truthout.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7249:youth-in-revolt-the-plague-of-statesponsoredviolence Marked by a virulent notion of hardness and aggressive masculinity, a culture of violence has become commonplace in a society in which pain, humiliation and abuse are condensed into digestible spectacles endlessly circulated through extreme sports, reality TV, video games, YouTube postings and proliferating forms of the new and old media. But the ideology of hardness and the economy of pleasure it justifies are also present in the material relations of power that have intensified since the Reagan presidency, when a shift in government policies first took place, and set the stage for the emergence of unchecked torture and state violence under the BushCheney regime. Conservative and liberal politicians alike now spend millions waging wars around the globe, funding the largest military state in the world, providing huge tax benefits to the ultra-
rich and major corporations and all the while draining public coffers, increasing the scale of human poverty and misery and eliminating all viable public spheres - whether they be the social state, public schools, public transportation, or any other aspect of a formative culture that addresses the needs of the common good . State violence, particularly the use of torture, abductions and targeted assassinations, are now justified as part of a state of exception that has become normalized . A "political culture of hyper punitiveness"(24) has become normalized and accelerates throughout the social order like a highly charged electric current. Democracy no longer leaves open the importance of an experience of the common good. As a mode of "failed sociality," the current version of market fundamentalism has turned the principles of democracy against itself, deforming both the language of freedom and justice that made equality a viable idea and political goal. State violence operating under the guise of personal safety and security , while parading species of democracy, cancels out democracy "as the incommensurable sharing of existence that makes the political possible ."(25) Symptoms of ethical, political and economic impoverishment are all around us. Ok so now also
On Apoc Rhetoric args firstly cross-apply all offense that we used on Fear of Death these arguments should be warranted before they even be considered group are answers together
Now quick Case :Agroecology Industrial ag key to prevent soil erosion extinction Avery, Director of & Senior Fellow @ Center for Global Food Issues, former agriculture analyst for the State Department, and former staff member of the President's National Advisory Commission on Food and Fiber, 95 (Dennis, SAVING THE PLANET WITH NO-TILL, HIGH-YIELD FARMING," before the Manitoba/North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmer's Association, January 24, http://www.mandakzerotill.org/books/proceedings/Proceedings%201995/highyield.html) The true long-term threat to human existence is soil erosion. Doubling the yields on the best and safest farmland cuts soil erosion by more than half. And now herbicides and conservation tillage are letting us cut those low rates of soil erosion by 65 to 98 percent. It should now be possible to build topsoil and soil tilth on much of the world's best farmland -- while carrying on intensive high-yield farming. For 10,000 years, man has accepted soil erosion as the long-term price for having a dependable food supply in the short run. In the U.S. alone, the Conservation 'Technology Information Center reports roughly 100 million acres using conservation tillage systems. The systems are continuing their rapid spread through such widely-differing agricultures as Western Europe, Brazil, Australia and Kenya. We are doing this with chemicals. Herbicides are the first alternative mankind has ever developed to "bare-earth" farming. These herbicide-based farming systems are the most sustainable farming Systems ever devised. They save more soil, even as they encourage more earthworms, more soil microbes and more soil tilth than plowing. Nor do the herbicides present any significant threat to wildlife or people from runoff or residues. (Atrazine, the most widely-used "suspicious" herbicide in the world has just had its safety rating raised seven-fold by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.) In addition, high-yield farmers are in the midst of developing "no-leach" farming. Tractors and applicator trucks for farm chemicals now
can be guided by global positioning satellites and radar within inches of their true positions across the field, while microprocessors vary the application rates of chemicals and seed seven times a second based on intensive soil sampling, soil hydrology, slope, plant population and nearness to waterways. It is now practical to manage our farms by the square yard, rather than in chunks of 10 or 100 hectares. High-yield farming must now claim environmental credit for both the acres not plowed. and for the soil erosion not suffered.
Further concessions of the embargo put Cuba organic ag at risk Barclay 03 [Eliza Barclay, Cuba's security in fresh produce, Food First, September 12th, 2003, pg. http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1208
Faced with the possibility of widespread starvation, the Cuban government foresaw that a full-scale mobilization of domestic resources, both human and natural, would be required in order to increase production to meet the demands of a hungry populace. And with few options to import food given the stringency of the U.S. embargo, Cuba turned over a new leaf by converting almost entirely to an organic production system within 10 years. Cuba's nationwide commitment to food self-sufficiency without reliance on chemical or mechanical technologies has borne some startlingly successful results, not only in terms of food production but also in the development of a more personalized food culture, woven deeply into patterns of food consumption, nutrition, and community. These trends, which many sustainable agriculture experts enthusiastically champion, also appear to be on the brink of a major confrontation with the powerful forces of the global market, from which Cuba was virtually exempt until 2001, when U.S. policy toward agricultural exports to Cuba began to shift slightly. The strength of Cubas food security, with all its growing bureaucratic and market support, will inevitably be put to the test as small but increasing concessions are made to expand trade between Cuba and its closest potential trading partner, the United States.
Cuba has managed to conserve its environment because of seclusion from economic development repealing the embargo would destroy its environment
Dean 7 (Cornelia Dean, NYTimes, Conserving Cuba, After the Embargo December 25, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/science/25cuba.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) Through accidents of geography and history, Cuba is a priceless ecological resource. That is why many scientists are so worried about what will become of it after Fidel Castro and his associates leave power and, as is widely anticipated, the American government relaxes or ends its trade embargo. Cuba has avoided much environmental degradation in recent decades, but now hotel developments are seen extending into the water in Cayo Coco. More Photos >
Cuba, by far the regions largest island, sits at the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Its mountains, forests, swamps, coasts and marine areas are rich in plants and animals, some seen nowhere else.
And since the imposition of the embargo in 1962, and especially with the collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union, its major economic patron, Cubas economy has stagnated. Cuba has not been free of development, including Soviet-style top-down agricultural and mining operations and, in recent years, an expansion of tourism. But it also has an abundance of landscapes that elsewhere in the region have been ripped up, paved over, poisoned or otherwise destroyed in the decades since the Cuban revolution, when development has been most intense. Once the embargo ends, the island could face a flood of
investors from the United States and elsewhere, eager to exploit those landscapes.
Conservationists, environmental lawyers and other experts, from Cuba and elsewhere, met last month in Cancn, Mexico, to discuss the islands resources and how to continue to protect them.
Cuba has done what we should have done identify your hot spots of biodiversity and set them aside, said Oliver Houck, a professor of environmental law at Tulane University Law School who attended the
conference. In the late 1990s, Mr. Houck was involved in an effort, financed in part by the MacArthur Foundation, to advise Cuban officials writing new environmental laws. But, he said in an interview, an invasion of U.S. consumerism, a U.S.-dominated future, could roll over it like a bulldozer when the embargo ends.
Cuba has one of the Caribbean's most diverse marine environments, with massive reefs that exceed the Florida Keys and serve as spawning grounds for many species of fish. Environmental Defense
scientists and attorneys and their Cuban colleagues are working to protect these marine treasures by reducing overfishing and helping design protected areas for marine life. In addition to publishing marine research and building education programs with Cuban scientists, Environmental Defense will co-sponsor the Fifth Cuban Marine Science Congress, December 4-8 in Havana. "Cuba is the Caribbean's biological crown jewel," said Environmental Defense scientist Dr. Ken Lindeman. "With over 3,000 miles of coastline and 4,200 islets
and keys ? Cuba is literally teeming with marine and terrestrial treasures. Cuba is also at a historic crossroads: coastal development and overfishing have begun to damage these resources. Environmental Defense and our Cuban colleagues are working to ensure Cuba's resources are preserved for future generations." In December, 500 managers and scientists from Cuba and the rest of
Latin America, North America and Europe will gather in Havana for the Fifth Cuban Marine Science Congress to present the latest research on marine conservation. Environmental Defense scientists and Cuban colleagues will present research on innovative designs for marine protected areas that can benefit local fishers. Environmental Defense experts also will present lessons learned in coastal protection along the US Atlantic coast, where water pollution, habitat destruction and overfishing also threaten marine life. "Cuba is the environmental keystone of the Caribbean. This conference is a crucial gathering of knowledge that can help preserve the marine treasures of the greater Caribbean for years to come," said Environmental Defense scientist Dr. Doug Rader.
Bio-D loss triggers every impact; famine, nuclear war, econ collapse, disease, climate change.
Takacs 96 Professor in Earth Systems Science & Policy at CSU Monterey Bay and consultant for Conservation International
and USAID (David, The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise, 1996, < http://www.dhushara....s.htm>)//Beddow
More recently, Jane Lubchenco feels very strongly that people are in fact much more dependent on
ecosystem services that are provided by both managed and unmanaged ecosystems than is generally perceived to be the case. So I think it's sheer folly for us to act in ways that are undermining the ability of
both managed and unmanaged ecosystems to provide these services that we're dependent on . And that
we're doing that more and more as we pollute and destroy habitats, or alter habitats in one fashion or another. And I guess the bottom line is that we're changing the environment faster than our ability to understand the consequences of how we're changing it." Most predictions of eco-doom are predicated on this argument, and many are stated in much more
dramatic terms than those Lubchenco employs. As the argument runs, amyriad of organisms, especially "little things," comprise ecosystems that provide countless services that keep the Earth's biotic and abiotic processes up and running.' According to Souls, "Many, if not all, ecological processes have thresholds below and above which they become discontinuous, chaotic, or suspended." Biodiversity may regulate these processes; among its many talents, biodiversity is said to create soil and maintain
its fertility, control global climate, inhibit agricultural pests, maintain atmospheric gas balances, process organic wastes, pollinate crops and flowers, and recycle nutrients.' Confusion in this line of argumentation ties back into why the concept of biodiversity has risen to prominence. Remember that biologists have scant understanding of the roles that species or populations play in maintaining ecosystems. In interviews, Lovejoy, Falk, and Ray confessed that you can strip away many species from an ecosystem without loss of ecosystem function. Ehrlich points out that by the time a species is endangered, it has probably stopped playing an important role in keeping the system functioning anyway." Furthermore, it is not clear whether we should focus on species as functional cogs in the ecosystem wheel, or whether ecological services are emergent properties of ecosystems themselves. With the biodiversity concept, these dilemmas become nearly moot. Biodiversity embraces lists of species, lists of ecosystems, the interactions of species within ecosystems, and the processes that species may maintain or control. When arguing on behalf of bio-diversity, one need not focus on the specifics-specifically, the specifics of what we don't know. It is enough to explicate some of the functions that keep ecosystems running, or that ecosystems provide for us, and then extrapolate to the dangers associated with declining biodiversity. Peter Raven bases his thinking on Leopold's observation "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering": "In every sense, in the sense of communities that will preserve soil, promote local climate, keep the atmosphere, preserve water, and everything else, the first rule of being able to put together communities well or have the world go on functioning well, or to keep climates as they are, or to retard disease, to produce products we want sustainably, be cause, after all, plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria are the only device we have to capture energy from the sun effectively-in all those senses, and in the sense
I consider the loss of biological diversity to be the most serious problem that we have-far more serious than global climate change or stratospheric ozone depletion, or
that we're losing the parts so rapidly,
anything else." "Habitat destruction and conversion are eliminating species at such a frightening pace that extinction of many contemporary species and the systems they live in and support ... may lead to ecological disaster and severe alteration of the evolutionary process ," Terry Erwin writes." And E. 0. Wilson notes: "The question I am asked most frequently about the diversity of life: if enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystem collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment."" So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value in and for itself, as well as for us. Raven, Erwin,
and Wilson oblige us to think about the value of biodiversity for our own lives. The Ehrlichs' rivet-popper trope makes this same point; by eliminating rivets, we play Russian roulette with global ecology and human futures: "It is likely that destruction of the rich complex of species in the Amazon basin could trigger rapid changes in global climate patterns. Agriculture remains heavily dependent on stable climate, and human beings remain heavily dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of perhaps a million species in the Amazon basin could have entrained famines in which a billion human beings perished. And if our species is very unlucky, the famines could lead to a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish civilization."" Elsewhere, Ehrlich uses different particulars with no less drama: What then will happen if
Crop yields will be more difficult to maintain in the face of climatic change, soil erosion, loss of dependable water supplies, decline of pollinators, and ever more serious assaults by pests. Conversion of productive land to wasteland will accelerate; deserts will continue their seemingly inexorable expansion. Air pollution will increase, and local climates will become harsher. Humanity will have to forgo many of the direct economic benefits it might have withdrawn from Earth's well stocked genetic library. It might, for example, miss out on a cure for cancer; but that will make little difference. As ecosystem services falter, mortality from respiratory and epidemic disease, natural disasters, and especially famine will lower life expectancies to the point where can cer (largely a disease of the elderly) will be unimportant. Humanity will bring upon itself consequences depressingly similar to those expected
the current decimation of organic diversity continues? from a nuclear winter. Barring a nuclear conflict, it appears that civili zation will disappear some time before the end of the next century not with a bang but a whimper. 14 Stephen jay Gould presents an equally chilling picture. It is in our "enlightened self interest" to treat Mother Nature nicely: "We had better sign while she is still willing to make a deal. If we treat her nicely, she will keep us going for a while. If we scratch her, she will bleed, kick us out, bandage up, and go about her business at her planetary scale."" Nature is personified as a woman who cares not a whit about us; we, however, must value her supremely, as her biotic processes hold the key to our future. David Pimentel expresses this somewhat more soberly: "We can't have agriculture
without these species, we can't have forestry without these species, we can't live without these species, and that's the essential part." Walter Rosen, Jane Lubchenco, and Gordon Orians offer similar arguments as in
Orians's statement, "I'm very much concerned about preserving the capacity of living systems to provide the resources upon which a quality human life depends." Bryan Norton points out that since humans reside at the end of food chains, we surpass most other organisms in our vulnerability to extinction." Not only does biodiversity sustain us; it provides an "early warning system" that alerts us when it-and therefore humanity-may be in peril. Similarly, biodiversity is a "barometer of environmental health." According to Falk, endangered species are "meaningful primarily because they tell us where there is trouble. And not just geographically. They are excellent ways of spotting problems." Raven calls biodiversity "the key to the world's stability, in terms of the fact that rich biodiversity provides an index, a canary in the coal mine kind of thing, to the stability and healthiness of the world." Ehrlich ties his study organism to this way of thinking: "Butterflies are key indicator organisms for the health of ecosystems, systems that provide Homo sapiens with indispensable services without which civilization cannot persist."" These ecological-value arguments for biodiversity attempt to convey values much bigger than their spokespersons' individualistic preferences. Biodiversity keeps the world's ecology running, which in turn keeps human civilization running; or biodiversity is the ecological world in its entirety, which not only has immense value in itself, but also sustains humanity. Biodiversity's ecological value, therefore, looms inexpressibly large, virtually unknown, but incalculably important.