Societies apply courtesy norms to people but not to the natural world

Evidence

At the level of human interactions, we already do this. It’s what we teach our kids. If you’re visiting your sweet grandma and she offers you homemade cookies on her favorite china plate, you know what to do. You accept them with many “thank yous” and cherish the relationship reinforced by cinnamon and sugar. You gratefully take what has been given. But you wouldn’t dream of breaking into her pantry and just taking all the cookies without invitation, grabbing her china plate for good measure. That would be at a minimum a breach of good manners, a betrayal of the loving relationship. What’s more, your grandma would be heartbroken, and not inclined to bake more cookies for you any time soon. … As a culture, though, we seem unable to extend these good manners to the natural world. The dishonorable harvest has become a way of life—we take what doesn’t belong to us and destroy it beyond repair: Onondaga Lake, the Alberta tar sands, the rainforests of Malaysia, the list is endless. They are gifts from our sweet Grandmother Earth, which we take without asking. How do we find the Honorable Harvest again? — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 668

Categorization

• XREF: The grandma-and-cookies analogy is precisely the kind of accessible pedagogical translation the reader’s eco-justice teaching would reuse. — connects to: Manners function as instruments of social control, not mere decorum. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 63

Broader Connections

• Manners function as instruments of social control, not mere decorum. #expands (0.85) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 63