>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/18/00 04:41PM >>>
>From: bon moun >
>Historical materialists are not being dismissive of ecological concerns
>when we point out--at this juncture--that being cognizant of the damage is
>not enough. A doctor that identifies the symptoms has taken an important
>step, but the treatment can not be effectively assessed wihtout
>understanding the etiology of the disease. If human activity is
>responsible for the problem, and if human activity is socially and
>historically conditioned, then we need to understand how to intervene in
>that social and historical conditioning to "treat."
I despair of getting historical materialists to recognize the flaw
represented by the word "intervene" in your statement, but that's all that I
object to above. Part of the baggage of the "control" issue is this illusion
that we can always intervene - use our control - to fix things. From the
"eco" side of this, what has been set in motion by human activity has
effects that have "drifted over" into issues and areas within the biosphere
that are not amenable to intervention nor treatment. One assumes that we
have a kind of control to do this, and wake up to find this is an illusion
propagated 10000 years ago.
(((((((((((
CB: However, in this case the intervention is in human society, so it is not a notion
of intervening in nature. Your argument starts to "drift" when you have to bring in
that previous human interventions have drifted over into areas where human
intervention is "powerless". That is not convincing. An intervention which was
originally human seems amenable to human intervention now. And it is not controlling
"nature" , but humanity that this intervention is. Human counterintervening in a human
intervention.
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