Proposals: Readings

Chapter Opener

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Proposals: Readings

See also Chapter 6:

TRIAL BALLOON

Barrett Seaman, How Bingeing Became the New College Sport

MANIFESTO

Katelyn Vincent, Technology Time-Out

VISUAL PROPOSAL

Jen Sorensen, Loan Bone

GENRE MOVES: PROPOSAL

Rachel Carson, From The Obligation to Endure

PROPOSAL FOR CHANGE

Michael Todd, Is That Plastic in Your Trash a Hazard?

PROPOSAL FOR CHANGE

Jane McGonigal, Video Games: An Hour a Day Is Key to Success in Life

PROPOSAL

Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Cosmic Perspective

SATIRICAL PROPOSAL

Kembrew McLeod, A Modest Free Market Proposal for Education Reform

PROPOSAL FOR CHANGE

Peter Singer, “One Person, One Share” of the Atmosphere

GENRE MOVES Proposal

GENRE MOVES Proposal

RACHEL CARSON

From “The Obligation to Endure”

The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.

During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. . . .

It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth — eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. Given time — time not in years but in millennia — life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time.

The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.

Zoom out.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson does in his proposal essay, Rachel Carson urges her readers to take a much wider, broader perspective on human life. What both authors understand is that proposals very often focus on the way a new course of action can create change. Proposal essays often ask their audience to stop behaving or acting in one way and instead take a different path. For Tyson, this means taking a “cosmic” perspective. For Carson, this means looking at time ecologically — “time not in years but in millennia.” Both perspectives urge humans to take a more humble stance and then to act as though they don’t own this place.

In many proposals, the trick is to convince readers to put someone else’s, or something else’s, interests before their own. Writers can accomplish this by showing readers the broader impact of their actions or by changing perspective — by zooming out. In your own proposal, examine what the wider impact of your proposed actions might be — or the broader implications of not acting. For instance, if you are proposing something like mandatory voting laws, think about how this will affect the next two or three generations, not just your own. If you are proposing higher taxes on petroleum, investigate what this will mean to nonhuman animals or the environment, or imagine how this will change the world by 2100. Such imagining might not be the central focus of an evidence-based proposal, but it could make for a compelling introduction or conclusion.