Perspective

Hello! It's been four months since I posted my last short story so I must sadly be getting slower at writing these. Hopefully this will be one of the hardest ones to write though since it actually required me to write 33 tiny stories (aka perspectives). Now that I've finished this one though, I've completed my first mini-collection of stories for a virtue. In case you forgot, I'm writing these short stories of strength based on 24 character strengths that have been sorted by positive psychologists into 6 virtues. I'll be sending out more information soon about the collection I've completed on the virtue of wisdom, but until then, I hope you enjoy my perspective on gaining perspective.
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​Perspective

​Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people. Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.
    — Peterson & Seligman, Character Strengths and Virtues, 2004

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Introduction
In January of 20YY, the 99-year lease of the land known as Hoggs Fell will expire. The current lease was procured by the artist and activist Betty Carver who requested that her estate be used to purchase the rights to this land from the local government authority at the time of her death. She loved the shepherding way of life in the Lake District and sought to ensure that land would remain available for it despite enormous threats from outside developers. The open land in question (approximately 1,300 hectares) has since then acted as a de facto commons with grazing rights granted to a few dozen farmers, but it is not currently one of the 630 official commons registered in the county of Cumbria.

Although Ms. Carver’s arrangement has resulted in nearly one hundred years of use for traditional shepherding, this is still only a small part of Hoggs Fell’s long history. The current lease helped to extend a way of life that had already taken hold for several hundred years, if not perhaps for a few thousand. However, the question of how this land should continue to be used has once again been raised. Before the current lease comes to an end, the local council has commissioned the following report to gather views from the public and make recommendations on what the next phase of use of this land should look like.


Methodology
“A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.”
    — Michel de Montaigne

“Wisdom is having sufficient awareness, in various situations and contexts, to act in ways that enhance our common humanity.”
     — Caroline Bassett, founder of The Wisdom Institute

It is easy to know yourself as an individual, to know what you value, and argue for your interests in a passionate and rational manner. It is only slightly less easy for adults to see another perspective too, to have empathy for what others may want, even if you disagree with their values. What is truly difficult, however, is to see all perspectives. As far as that is possible, this is what is required to gain the wide awareness that was spoken of or implied in the quotes above. And gathering such awareness is the goal that guided the methods used for this report.

To begin, research was done on the possible uses of common land, and how such uses might be funded. This generated many possible courses of action, but it gives no means by which to choose any one of them. No facts about what an option is can tell us whether we ought to choose it. To find the best thing to do, we must know and consider the feelings and desires of all those who would be affected by the decision. We have to know what these stakeholders want in order for us to have any hope of generating consensus by satisfying their desires. As such, a wide variety of methods were undertaken to gather as many different views as possible—online surveys, telephone interviews, in-person conversations, and reviews of both formal and informal literature. Since each response has a value that is independent of the method used to obtain it though, all of the views were converted into statements quoted from a first-person perspective in order to place them all on an equal footing. Views expressed repeatedly were also consolidated into one single quote. These transformations have the effect of expressing each view in its most forceful manner, but do not allow any single idea to shout down the others due to sheer volume. The resulting quotes are presented below in the “Perspectives” section.

Beyond the gathering of these opinions, further research was conducted on how to make wise decisions in the face of competing interests. It must be said that a definition for wisdom itself is necessary for this and that is a contentious issue for philosophers from all schools of thought. Aspects of wisdom that seemed most appropriate to the current situation were identified, however, and the findings from this research will be discussed below in the section on “Considerations.”

Finally, we would like to stress that the judgments and recommendations in our “Conclusions” section below would have been impossible to arrive at without undertaking the full journey of grappling with the variety and depth of feelings that have been expressed on this issue. Hoggs Fell in the Lake District of England is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. It has a long and vibrant history of both struggle and celebration from the humans who have lived there or visited it. Because of this, it is vital to take the time to read through all of the responses about the future of Hoggs Fell before attempting to settle on a proposed use for it. It is our considered opinion, after having undertaken this project, that regardless of one’s initial position on the situation, this is such a complicated issue that your feelings will certainly be swayed by others as long as you do not try to jump straight to (this report’s) conclusions.


Perspectives
This section represents the heart of the report and was the most difficult to communicate in a coherent manner. The views gathered below were not all positive, or negative, or always even sure of which side they were on. And although the views were expressed by single individuals, they were not generally concerned with individual needs alone. This array of concerns, however, is precisely the most important factor that explains the way we have chosen to present the information and thereby understand it.

In his book The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, the philosopher Peter Singer described how a person can logically widen their moral considerations from the self, to their family, to segments of society, and beyond. While one circle of concern is not necessarily better or more compelling than another, this concept from Singer was an inspiration for how we organized all of the perspectives we collected. They are presented below in ever widening circles, but the circles that were chosen were also influenced by a template from noted scientist E.O. Wilson, which he created for the purposes of consolidating all of the various fields of biology (i.e. the study of all life). So after starting with the immediate self, we widened our circles as far as they can possibly go, all the way to the consideration of life over evolutionarily long timeframes. Our hope is that the journey through these circles will widen any reader’s views, while also allowing them to feel the importance of every view that has been expressed along the way.

Self

“I grew up here. I live here year round. And generations of family members have passed local knowledge on to me. Because of all this, I have a deep love and intimate relationship with this land that just cannot be matched by any outsiders. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but my opinion should count for more than the vote of some tourist or recently retired pensioner who hasn’t been here for very long. And I say the land should continue to be used as it has always been used.”

“There’s a feeling I get on a warm autumn night, when I’m walking the sheep back from the fell, with my dogs acting as long-distance extensions of my own will. It’s just indescribably fulfilling. The sense of purpose I have and the confidence I get from playing my part in shaping this land is something few people will ever know. You cannot know what a loss it would be to take that away from me.”

“I personally gave up farming on this land because it was just too much work for less and less of a reward. No one wants wool or meat for the prices I would have had to charge. I felt trapped. And I saw first hand how destructive farming is to people and the environment. It’s an old-fashioned way of life that just doesn’t make sense to me anymore.”

“I moved to the Lake District after my husband died and it has brought me back to life. I walk in the hills every day and feel that there is a spirituality or magic here that ought to be preserved. The less development the better as far as I am concerned.”

Family

“A few years ago, our dog got away from us while we were walking in this area. She’d never seen sheep before and she started chasing them around, trying to get them to play. A farmer came out and shot her and then yelled at me for endangering his livelihood. It was absolutely devastating and our whole family remains heartbroken over it to this day. A few months later, I’m sure many of those farmer’s sheep were butchered and sold for meat. I would pay dearly to have my little family member back with me, but that was of no concern to the farmer. If they are allowed to keep using this land they should at least be better at sharing it. But if it were up to me, I would prefer to see them gone.”

“My son is only four years old and already he hangs on the fence outside of our sheep pens and yells advice to me about what he thinks I’m doing wrong. My own father watches his grandson and chuckles at this. He says I was exactly the same at his age. How can you put a price on this kind of family bond? And what is the cost of breaking it? Please let my family keep their traditions alive.”

Present Community

“I run an outdoor adventure company located here in the Lake District and we rely on having safe, beautiful, and accessible mountain areas to run our business. We are part of a tourism industry that brings in millions of pounds and provides hundreds if not thousands of jobs in the region. I really believe that we would thrive even more if the common land on Hoggs Fell was returned to the wild and kept open for visitors rather than being controlled by a few old-fashioned sheep farmers who would just as soon chuck us all out if they could.”

“My store in Cockermouth has been flooded three times in the last decade because the land in the watersheds above us hasn’t been managed properly. The farmers who think they own this land for themselves have cleared the hillsides of almost every single tree just to make their lives a little easier. This means water runoff has increased significantly. I’ve read that rain soaks into the ground 67 times more effectively under trees than on sheep pasture. That’s an unbelievable difference! Those of us downstream from Hoggs Fell need to see more trees and less sheep up there.”

“Modern farming is capital intensive and very variable from season to season and year to year. It could not survive without the significant technical and financial help that we in the banking industry give it. This is a partnership that we are very proud to be a part of. My own bank has made significant investments in the form of loans to farmers that take many years to pay off. If you start taking places like Hoggs Fell away from the farmers, they will not be able to repay us. Even if the government decides to pay off the few loans affected by the loss of Hoggs Fell, the fear that this type of ‘rewilding’ will continue to occur will cause many banks to just give up on farmers. I can see why some people may want to make small changes, but you have to understand that Hoggs Fell could be the first domino to fall that takes down an entire industry.”

“As one of the 20,000 or so farmers that live and work full time in the Lake District, I’m very worried about this whole consultation process. How are we going to compete with the voices of over 20 MILLION people who visit here every year? I’m very worried that the tyranny of this majority will take my livelihood away from me, even though these people only come here for a few days or weeks. Just because they have more people and more money doesn’t make them right.”

“I don’t have any faith that the government can step in here and make any kind of wise decision. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Better to just let things continue as is. That’s what I say.”

Intergenerational Community

“My family has worked this land for centuries. It took thousands of years of trial and error for my ancestors to learn how to live in tough environments like this one. It would be foolish to throw all thatknowledge away. Who knows what’s going to happen with changing climates and a reduction in fossil fuels? Future generations may need our farming skills. More than we might think. And sooner too.”

“I run a folk museum in the Highlands of Scotland, which has a very similar landscape and history tothe Lake District. I love coming here to see how the old crofting ways have survived and adapted to modern times, but sometimes I can’t help but think that today’s farmers are doomed. I worry they will soon be nothing more than folklore for future museums. We should at least gather their stories while we can.”

“I know I’m just another tourist who has fallen in love with the Lake District, but I went to Norway on holiday recently and saw that they were trying to encourage people to farm in their remote valleys again. Those places in Norway are beautiful, but they’re empty. They just don’t have the magic that the Lake District has. Future tourists to England should get to see this difference too. Hold on to what you’ve got.”

“Every time I see sheep in the hills I get angry thinking about my ancestors who were kicked off their small farms by wealthy landowners during the Clearances. A lot of families suffered and died so these stupid animals could have all the grass they want and their masters could get richer. It’s time to turn the tables and clear the sheep!”

Extended Society

“With all due respect to the local farmers, I feel like we taxpayers have already bought and paid for this land. I don’t know the figures for the Lake District, but in Wales the average farmer earns £33,000 even though they get £53,000 in subsidies. So we’re not propping up struggling farmers — we’re giving money to people who are losing it! That doesn’t even count the millions that are spent fixing roads due to the landslides caused by overgrazing on sheep pastures.”

“I’m worried this project is deeply flawed. You can’t look at Hoggs Fell just on its own. The whole UK sheep industry depends on a ‘stratified’ system with different breeds in different locations contributing to a diversity of characteristics for the whole group. If you take one element away, the whole thing could collapse. Do you want to leave the UK with just a few massive monoculture industrial farms? No! Keep the sheep.”

“I just want to leave a note to make sure that we think about all the antibiotics that farmers use. Their animals are kept in unhealthy conditions so they have to use lots of pills to make up for that. The problem is that this creates superbugs that could wipe out the rest of society. Why are we letting farmers do this just for the sake of a few more sheep on a few less acres?”

“Sheep only make up about 1% of all the calories we eat in the UK, but they take up the same amount of land as all other crops combined! That’s more than twice the amount we use for the built environment. Why do they need so much? Why give them every scrap of available land? We should take some back when we can, and use it for other things.”

“Tourists may talk about coming to the Lake District to ‘see the landscape,’ but there’s a cultural landscape here too. Visitors may not know it, but the cleared hilltops like Hoggs Fell are managed by a cooperative of local farmers, which is an important example of sharing resources that the world needs to hang onto. Without us, the Lakes would turn into a fake Disney ride. Something like ‘The Wilderness Adventure Land’ or even worse!”

“We all know upland grazing steals water from more productive places downhill. And then it floods those places when it rains heavily. So all in all, this sheep farming probably destroys more food than it creates. It’s not the farmers’ fault though. The EU subsidy rules require them to keep their land in ‘agricultural condition’ or they won’t get paid. Something needs to change.”

“I come from a family of coal miners who were devastated when that industry was shut down, but there’s something I finally got my head around after all that. Just because a thing has been done one way for a long time doesn’t automatically make it right. Farming is dependent on fossil fuels and government subsidies, just like the miners were. But we shouldn’t use fossil fuels anymore. I don’t want my tax dollars or my lungs to pay for these out-of-date activities any more. The government didn’t help my family then, and that was wrong, but they need to figure out how to help these farmers make a change now.”

“It makes me sick to think that the ‘common’ land on Hoggs Fell could be taken away from us simply because it’s managed by ‘common’ people who have no political power. Every other nice bit of land in this country has been bought up and enclosed by wealthy lords or their modern day equivalents. The local farmers here have worked this land for centuries and have therefore earned it as our share of the commonwealth of England. Just because it’s beautiful doesn’t mean outsiders should get to come in and kick us off. I don’t go to London and demand that the Thames should flow wild.”

“I have fallen in love with the Lake District. My direct ancestors may not have gotten here first, but that shouldn’t mean I have no say in what goes on there. Those farmers’ families didn’t build up the Royal Navy, explore the world, dig coal, develop financial markets, invent the steam locomotive, or any of the other millions of things—good and bad—that have made our country what it is today. We all live here now and benefit from a rich and complicated history, so we all have an obligation to share the riches that have accrued here.”

Ecology / Animal Welfare

“Here’s a fact for your study. There are 36 million sheep in the UK and just about half of them are lambs under one year of age. People think that ‘grass-fed, free-range sheep’ are all living these happy lives on beautiful hills, but we’re killing 17 million baby sheep every year. That’s not right.”

“The herdwick sheep we keep on Hoggs Fell are a unique and ancient breed. Did you know that when we sell them, there’s a tradition of ‘redding’ their fleeces, even though no one knows why we do that anymore? One theory is that Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago worshiped their flocks in some sort of animism ritual, and that’s why they painted their sheep. This is a perfect example of just how sacred these animals are to us. You have to respect that.”

“Tourists will tell you that this landscape is ‘romantic’, but anyone who works here knows its not. Let me tell you some real stories of what goes on here. Cute lambs get their legs broken by panicking mothers and I have to put simple splints on them because there’s no time or money to do anything more. When lambs are stillborn, I skin their bodies and put them on other orphaned lambs like new coats so that the mothers who lost their own babies will adopt them as their own. Anyone who wants to eat a lamb chop or walk in a grassy pasture has to face up to this. We farmers need to be here to remind city folk of what’s real. Life in the countryside isn’t all poetry and paintings.”

“I grew up here, but I’ve come to realize that there’s something wrong with the men in this valley. Every spring, when I was a child, my brothers would go out with my dad and the other farmers and just shoot every black bird they could find. Ravens, rooks, magpies, jackdaws, … you name it, they killed it. They said they were just trying to protect their sheep from birds that might peck an eye out or eat a dead lamb, but I think they just wanted to kill things for fun. I think they get a taste for it because of all the sheep they have to kill. It really worries me.”

“Hoggs Fell should not only be kept for sheep farming, but tourists should be banned from the area as well. Too many times, people come here from their sheltered city lives and they let their dogs loose who then terrorise our sheep. I’ve seen a dog tear the jawbone off one of my sheep before happily running back to its owner. And my 10-year-old daughter had to watch two dogs playing tug of war with another of our sheep. Both times our animals had to be put down and my family members have been traumatised.”

“I know you can only interview people for this decision about Hoggs Fell, but someone needs to speak up for the other animals too. I’m a wildlife biologist so let me give you some facts that tell the story of our nonhuman animal relatives. 97% of bee habitat in the UK has been destroyed since WWII. Because of sheep, grouse, and deer farming, there are hardly any trees in the UK above 200 meters in elevation. The average forest cover across Europe is 37%, but in Britain it is only 13%. After thousands of years of stripping this upland of its nutrients, it’s so infertile that it only takes 5 or 10 sheep per square kilometer to make sure no trees will ever grow there. You’ll see more birds and other species of animals in a suburban garden than you will in five miles of walking across our Lake District hills. It may seem like the Lakes has been this way forever and could just continue to go on that way, but highly managed and simplified systems are often susceptible to profound disruption from invasive species or climate change. Diverse systems where ecological niches are fully occupied are much stronger. British activists are happy to campaign against the cutting, grazing, and burning of natural habitats in other parts of the world, but they shy away from doing so here. Our national parks produce brochures, display boards, and websites that give the impression these areas harbor thriving ecosystems, but these wastelands are in fact little more than sheep ranches. They are a disgrace and a shame upon the nation.”

Evolutionary Biology

“Since I’m a shepherd and I make changes to the bloodlines of my sheep, I’ve been reading a lot about evolution lately. One of the things that stuck with me is that evolution creates robustness in nature by conducting small-scale experiments that aren’t linked to one another. (Mother Nature does this blindly of course.) Well the Lake District is an excellent example of this. We’re one of the last experiments left in communal mountain shepherding so we ought to be left to do our thing. The world will be a better, more diverse, and more robust place because of it.”

“I always laugh (and then cry) when I read about farmers putting in ‘all this work’ for breeding ten to twenty generations of sheep. What about the work that nature has put in for MILLIONS of generations for all the insects, birds, and mammals that have been wiped out for the sake of these sheep? Don’t forget about them when you are making the decision of what to do with Hoggs Fell.”

“Not only should the sheep be taken off Hoggs Fell, but we should ‘rewild’ the whole area too. National parks like the Lake District shouldn’t be managed towards some arbitrary ecosystem fixed in time. That’s always a losing battle, and it’s done for no good reason. We need to help bring back some of the key elements of the mountain forests that we removed — like trees, beavers, lynx, bears, and wolves — and then get out of the way to let evolution run its course. That’s the best way to get back to truly sustainable practices.”


Considerations
The brute facts of the preceding sections have done very little to create a clear solution to the problem of what to do with Hoggs Fell. Moral urges often behave like gravity— stronger forces are felt from bigger objects nearby than those that come from abstract ideas at a distance. And in the case at hand, we have encountered a large variety of moral urges from individuals who are focused on different objects that loom large to them. This has resulted in conflicts within and between every circle of concern, and larger circles do not necessarily imply larger importance. Therefore, there cannot logically be one single answer that will give every individual person what he or she currently wants. The following four ideas, however, compiled from a variety of sources on wisdom, may help the wider community modify their desires in order to reach a carefully deliberated consensus.

1. As a general principle, wisdom seeks the following changes: 

• from self-interest to empathy
• from greed to compassion
• from fear to well-being for all
• from hate to the good of the whole
• from expediency to concern for the future

2. As a general process, wise decision-making uses four steps:

• Thinking—striving to be objective by seeking to understand patterns and relationships.
• Feeling—asking whose point of view is being taken and how someone else understands reality.
• Acting—asking what values guide our actions and what ends we are seeking.
• Reflecting—seeing interdependence with others and knowing what you are a part of, then making sure values can be shared and everyone can live with the actions.

3. Competing interests always have different goals in mind. They are focused on different areas of concern and/or different time horizons. As a simple example, someone may have a goal of carrying their groceries home in a cheap and easy manner, so they want a plastic carrier bag. Others, however, recognize that plastic carrier bags hurt the environment so they want to get rid of them. In this case, in many communities, the needs of the environment have been found to be higher than those of a small personal convenience, so plastic carrier bags have been banned. The difficulty in deciding what to do with Hoggs Fell is finding which, if any, of the many interests described above is higher or more fundamental than all of the others. Which goals that seem paramount to some people are actually only proximate goals in service of another ultimate goal? Does a single highest goal even exist? This is something that philosophers call the summum bonum, and they have searched for it for millennia.

4. The ethical position of evolutionary philosophy offers one candidate for the summum bonum that emerges from data uncovered by the biological sciences. It is this: the long-term survival of life in general is a goal that is objectively necessary as well as sufficiently all encompassing in order to be considered the greatest natural good. Extensive literature can be read about this, but it can be grasped from the following brief argument. There are no moral goods for inanimate objects like rocks, moons, water, or stars. They just exist. So before there was life, there was no summum bonum. If life were to go extinct, there would once again be no summum bonum. Additionally, all life on Earth is related and highly interdependent, so no one form of life gets to own the summum bonum. We all share it. We all must strive for the continued existence of life in general, and we want to achieve that in the most robust manner possible. Anything short of that is selfish in some way and could lead to the collapse of life in the long term. This does not mean that all choices are now obvious ones, but the final goal is clear, and many principles (e.g. adaptability, biodiversity, wide cooperation, constrained competition, progress, redundancy, and limited trial and error) have been derived to help guide the way.


Conclusions
At the beginning of this process, the issue of what to do with Hoggs Fell was a thorny problem with a bewildering array of preferences expressed by various individuals. This report carefully gathered testimonies from all of the stakeholders, organized them into a structure that was designed to give us the biggest picture possible, and then considered research on wise decision-making. From this process, patterns and context have hopefully emerged that feel as real and as strong to readers of this report as the individual examples did to the people that were immersed in one narrow perspective or another. Bending to wider abstractions may seem unimaginable to those who are unable or unwilling to see them, but that is what is required in order to rise above and adjudicate between competing interests. Having done so, we are now prepared to render some judgments, make a few recommendations, and conclude with a brief analysis of these suggestions.

Judgments

1. Due to the collapse of the worldwide wool market, the sheep industry has shrunk to a tiny minority portion of the agricultural economy. Further shrinkage would greatly impact a few participants in this market, but its impact on wider society would be small.

2. As wilderness has shrunk around the globe, wild areas are being used by greater and greater portions of society that seek these places out. In other words, more sharing and cooperation is required for the use of these precious landscapes.

3. Rural ways of life are important components of human history, and the knowledge and skills developed in these communities are worth preserving and supporting. While farmers are the primary actors on Hoggs Fell, they do not exist here alone. Farmers are part of a community that must be healthy and supportive. They cannot be the lone local workers in a sea of tourists and temporary visitors.

4. Because they sell commodities, farmers have traditionally been paid very little above subsistence wages. However, society needs farmers to produce food, preserve their knowledge, and protect the considerable part of the environment that they manage. A market failure exists here because society pays farmers a small amount for their goods, but ecosystems cannot pay anyone for their own maintenance. Society must agree to collectively bear the costs for healthy and supportive ecosystems.

Recommendations

1. Hoggs Fell ought to be reapportioned to create some wild spaces that allow unmanaged forests to return to the landscape. Some portion may remain for shepherding.

2. The subsidy system ought to be reformed to make up for any loss of income-generating land for farmers, while also providing them with incentives to help manage the land for the benefit of all life.

3. Housing market rules ought to be reformed to enable more local residents to remain and support the local community. Those who earn a living elsewhere should be limited in their abilities to purchase land in such economically unproductive rural environments.

4. Progressive taxes ought to be levied on tourists who come to the Lake District in order to help support this new subsidy system for the local residents who maintain the landscape. The planning permission department must ensure that a mix of differently pricedtourist options be maintained in order to enable equal access to this common land of beauty.

5. The specific details for these recommendations will have to beworked out by representatives of the various stakeholders once agreement has been reached about the final goals and principles.

Analysis

These judgments and recommendations will not please everyone by meeting all of their current concerns. That, however, is impossible. Every circle of concern would feel gains and losses compared to the present situation if these recommendations are implemented. But this just shows that tradeoffs are required and have indeed been suggested.

​In closing, the authors of this report would like to thank everyone who shared their thoughts and feelings about the precious resource of Hoggs Fell. We found it invaluable to hear from each and every one of you, and we hope you will find it just as valuable to hear from one other.