Writes Mark:
>Tom:
> >I come out of the Daniel Quinn/Ishmaelian end of things
>
>Care to elaborate?
Nah, not yet. Quinn avoids the spirituality crap of DE, and has a profound
overview of where things went wrong (and lots less about naive programs to
solve them). Anybody interested can start with "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn.
More reading lists and URLs available upon request. <g>
>Well, I'd like to hear why. That's what I read in Naess's somewhat
>misnathropic
>pessimism.
>In this case, deep ecos don't need
>to be political at all, they can just sit at home and do whatever.
Yeah, as the word "political" in understood on this list, ecos look to be
political only insofar as we need to keep greed from eating our
grandchildren, .... and the last whale.
>I think this is where you give the game away, because you DO privilege
>human
>intentionality/capability and make it somehow supra or extenral to
>'nature'. I don't
>buy that. 'Nature' is one seamless thing and we are inextricably part of it
>and
>what's more, our 'anthropocentrism' is the quintessential expression of our
>own
>status as an evolved species.
Our quibble is over a smaller part of the argument. It is not ALL
intentionality/capability that is supra or external, just that part which
expresses lethality to Nature as one seamless thing. I privilege part of
intentionality/capability, you privilige something of "anthrocentrism". I
suspect we're both correct.
>
>I'm not arguing for a kind of Rush Limbaugh insouciance here. On the
>contrary, I'm
>saying we have to take over, but to do that we have to use the tools we
>ourselves
>have developed ...we have to have planning, not the market, to make
>allocations and to achieve that while retaining human freedom, we ourselves
>have to
>take an evolutionary step. We have to create new institutions of accord,
>which
>become inscribed in our behaviour as individuals and groups and which are
>as
>important, as the social and biological evolutionary steps associated with
>the very
>first emergence of hom. sap.sap. .... The emergence of
>agriculture. What we are living thru now, and it's a bit like stop-motion,
>so we are
>only dimly aware of it (our existential, individual life is too brief), is
>a huge
>social evolutionary step, bigger by far even than the Neolithic revolution,
>bigger
>even than the evolution of erect hominids with enlarged brains and opposed
>thumbs.
>We may fail, we may not. What happens to a large extent DOES depend on us
>as
>individuals. We have to organise, to be socially conscious, to succeed.
>That is
>called SOCIAL-ism.
I wouldn't disagree with this as a plan of action if it would WORK! But it's
a bit like dismantling Chernobyl III with a pair of pliers and a
screwdriver. Meantime, a simple adjustment of attitudes and priorities and
a recognition that there is a "natural" plan of action that DOES work seems
more effective and closer at hand. YOU are very close to Dan Quinn's vision
of the direction Man should be headed, however, when you require us to "take
an evolutionary step."
>Exactly, that's what deep-ecos believe and and this explains the despair
>and
>pessimism of eg Arne Naess:
Well, again I say that you got this wrong and falsely attribute these
beliefs to him (them.) Sorta the same cry Marxists have about being
misunderstood and mischaracterized. I'll leave it to time and further
examination by the list to settle the issue of Naess' pessimism and abstract
despair.
>but we should avoid apocalyptic alternation between
>catastrophism and a desire for extinction of our species (to 'save' the
>planet --
>but why? What for?) on one hand, and a belief in our own divinity and
>messianism on
>the other. We shoudl avoid teleology. We are not divine. We must not be
>paralysed.
>We have to act, and NOW, to save the situation: which still can be saved
>(ie the
>ecosphere).
Yep. agreed.
>>This is where I seriously disagree, and what's more, I deplore what I see
>>as the
>disengagement and complacency of Wilson. Not for nothing is 'Wise Use' also
>the
>slogan of the coal and oil lobby. When Wilson talks about 'wise use' the
>people he
>wants to give one more degree of freedom to, are precisly the corporate
>giants which
>scavenge the ecosphere. He wnats to preserve the 'freedom' which means only
>the
>freedom to exploit people and 'natural resources'. No surprise that this
>idea goes
>hand in hand with deep political conservatism and even a glorification of
>what might
>be called tribal mystifications of organised religion, also characteristic
>Wilsonian
>themes.
Hmmm. well I never looked at him that way. But in the strictest narrow
sense, can't we both agree that micromanaging the environment is beyond us?
I mean, like Churchill said, "A favorable mention of the devil."
>There you go again, moralising and all. This is where I think you are
>contradictory:
>in adjacent paragraphs you (a) rubbish the idea that we have to 'take
>charge' of
>evolution as a whole (there is no other way) and then (b) blame us for NOT
>taking
>charge.
Nah; is that what it seems I said? rewrite b) to say: blame us for not
curtailing our misguided efforts of arrogantly TRYING to take charge.
I'm calling for adjustments in man's behavior, not man taking charge over
"nature". If you argue that trying to convince H Sap to go down a different
road is tinkering with evolution and therefore taking charge of nature, I
don't think that says very much. (Maybe I could hedge and say "take charge
only a little bit" as if it wre like being a little bit pregnant? <G>)
>Oy, oy. So what's wrong with nature red in tooth and claw?
Because nature is NOT "red in tooth and claw" ... just a little part of it
where the leopard eats you.
Once more you privilege
>hom. sap. sap. All species which ingest other organism commit murder, even
>deer
>grazing grass.
Nah. Most all other species except primates follow some rules about it that
make it okay. We violate those rules and fuck up the planet. I am holding up
distinctions between eating one's neighbor and murder as being significant,
and I am arguing for some kinds of killing by primates to be designated as
"wrong" ... a "violation of the rules" and ... "murder." Sue me. <g>
> >> Cant you see that "we have both the duty and the necessity to take
>charge, and
>to be the custodians and then the inventors of future evolution and future
>biodiversity, [for] evolution and
>life [to] continue at all." has EXACTLY THE SAME FLAWS??? Trying to CONTROL
>all
>change is as impossible as trying to STOP all change.<<
>
>This is what we have to discuss and decide.
Amen. That's why we're here and typing our fingers bloody.
>This sounds like a cop-out, but as part of the ongoing simplification of my
>own
>evolutionary process I just unarchived my Naess files and can't be bothered
>to
>locate them now. If you press me more I might get round to it. But since
>this is
>what Naess mostly goes on about, I'm surprised you even asks where he says
>it. He
>says it everywhere, all the time.
'Kay; I certainly am aware now of how you view him. ... and I feel I've had
a fair hearing about the outlines of the discussion. We can talk about what
WE believe rather than some old Northern-Euro coots?
>Well, that's the issue we are talking about, because it's a live issue
>which is
>right there before our faces, every day in the papers.
>
>best to you, Tom.
>
Yep. And to you too, Mark.
Onward.
Tom
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