En relación a [CrashList] screwed, blued, and tattooed,
el 31 Jan 01, a las 8:05, Tom Warren dijo:
> Let's take an example from one of the principle crashlist members for whom I
> have GREAT respect:
>
[At Tom's own risk...]
> >>>Nestor: I still believe that your point, which is indeed an important
> >>>one, must be grounded in the SOCIAL, not in the PHYSICAL, working of
> >>>Nature. Hope I am not too cryptic here.
>
> Tom: You must use the instruments appropriate to the task, Nestor, and
> realize that all of a sudden ... in a very broad and very intense
> consequence, the PHYSICAL is trumping and rendering moot all the cards the
> SOCIAL thinks it can play. You were correct to deal with "social" workings of
> nature as long as they were powerful and relevant. Now they are not so much.
I feel I have been too cryptic, in the end. That "the PHYSICAL is trumping and
rendering moot all the cards the SOCIAL thinks it can play" is exactly the kind
of argument I intended to avoid. What I mean is that if this is so (and I admit
that this may most probably be so, though I will never be as apocalyptic as
Mark and you), it is because the _social_ organization of production has made
it possible, nay (as you would retort), unescapable.
Look, Tom, when you are saying that the manifold manifestations of ecological
disaster aren't
> any longer influenced by "social" workings of nature
and you immediately add that
> Certainly not any longer by manipulation of economic systems, _except in
> negative ways_ [my emphasis, not Tom's]
you are contradicting yourself. It is _precisely because the economic systems
influence in what you call "negative" ways_ (BTW, against which possible
"positive" way?) that I stress the SOCIAL and not the PHYSICAL. Resource
depletion, species annihilation, atmospheric disruption, are all PHYSICAL
consequences of a SOCIAL order. Maybe it is too late to change our fate.
Perhaps this is what you are trying to hammer through my stony skull (a Basque
friend of mine has told me that I am the only case of a Jewish Basque he ever
met, so stubborn I can be -- and Basque are known for their obstination all
over the Iberian world). OK, and so what? Shall I stop struggling against the
ONLY side of the equation I can influence? One does not need to resort to
Marxism to find the answer. Mine, at least, is "No, I shall not stop".
Perhaps you have understood me, however, because you immediately say:
> Indeed, there is as yet no discussion of the iceberg, or of
> lifeboats. In ONE sense you are certainly correct, dear friend:
> SOCIAL workings of nature might mitigate some of the consequences,
> if we act quickly. But one must understand what "workings of nature" are
> and for that one needs to read -- not economic imperatives and philosophy --
> but the green gloom and doom stuff you all are avoiding.
I'll try to put it in simpler words. If it is too late already to stop the
engine, at least we can make the results of its action less damaging. And if we
try to do that, we must not look at the insides of the engine, but at the
outsides, that is at the variegated consequences the perusal of which Tom says
"we" are avoiding. As for me, I am not. I simply take them for granted. But I
concentrate myself in getting to a position where I can stop the machine or, at
least, mitigate the results of its functioning until we call it to complete
stop. Concrete action to be taken does not belong to my everyday realm of
activity, which does not mean I do not care about it.
>
> Start with Mark's "why we are fucked" .. and pay particular attention to the
> passage that begins: "There is a popular belief that somehow technology can
> indefinitely rescue the human race from whatever predicament it may get itself
> into--solve all problems. Pimentel and Giampietro (1994) have warned:" etc etc
Well, maybe. I however and somehow still cling to that old fashioned vision.
Not in the technocratic ways it is usually exposed however, but in the sense
that optimism is an act of will, and that it influences what will happen. If we
substitute "human activity" for "technology", I find the sentence relatively
sane. Of course, there have been ecologic disasters in the past (the Maya, for
instance) and nothing is telling us that we are not ALREADY into the worst of
all them, a disaster encompassing the whole of our species. But, again, me
stubborn "doer", what can I do in this respect, but to recognize that behind
every ecological disaster in the past there was a society which did not know
how to manage the resources at its disposal, and that the same is happening
now? So that, prescription: struggle to change society, even though it may be
too late.
>
> The tools of understanding that you require -- the microscopes on reality
> you must trust are: why the "physical" trumps the "social" at this point in
> time, and why it hasn't come up before in history so vehemently and why it could
> be viewed as almost a new thing which shatters the bubble of comfortable, neat
> economic theories, ... theories which after all live just about completely in
> the "social".
Ah, but I have a very simple answer to this: because the aggregate power of
humankind to intervene the environment has grown far ahead of its ability to
manage it. This is a metaphor, of course. But capitalism has become much like a
system where a greedy madman with a machete in the hand treads on the planet
for a slice of profit. The problem with all this is that the machete, which was
microscopic only a couple of centuries ago, has grown to the size of the Moon.
You see, Tom, I am absolutely convinced that "value" is simply a very
particular form of "energy", that the labor theory of value is in fact the link
between the social sciences and the natural sciences. So that the following
does not make too much sense against me:
>
> Why? Take a look at the circular incomprehension that prevents clear vision in
> the eyepieces of the microscopes:
>
> P: "Agreed. What do you want, that we go back to the labour theory of
> value? Ok, no hassle. What's the energy addition, though? Is it like Steven
> Bunker's energy theory of value?"
>From my own point of view (and there is a ream of quotations of Marx and
Engels, particularly of Engels, where "value" and "human energy" are used as
synonims), there is no "energy addition". Value _is_ energy. If you don't grasp
this, then you have not grasped the material basis of Marxism. As you see, the
following
>
> You are witnessing the "physical" trumping a perceived social "law" which
> was mistakenly supposed to be inviolate by economics, by ANYbody's "theory of
> value." ... Deal with it.
Does not apply to humbly yours. And I honestly do not need
>
> impetus to explore outside the well-manicured garden of
> economics into the forest reality of "nature",
Since I have always hated that garden (BTW, you are displaying an English
chauvinism for "natural" gardens against rationalist, French, "jardins", aren't
you, Tom? --a joke, a joke!), which in fact has increasingly become a lifeless
parking lot, I have seldom strolled along it. In fact, I am a geographer and I
love the "forest reality of 'nature'", Tom. Anyway, I will follow your advice
> start with this:
>
> http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/7/galbraith-j.html
>
And will certainly
> Study whether you, too, have fallen into the trap of looking at the physical
> problems (crises) with economics-tinted spectacles, regardless of whose
> economics you accept.
But keep in mind that the kind of "economics" I accept (in fact I accept none's
economics at all, I believe in the unity of all knowledge, but this is an
entirely different story) has a strong natural kernel, is the attempt to
understand that which is natural in society. So that my glasses may result less
tinted than you imagine, Tom.
>
> Then go read Garett Hardin, E.O Wilson (I know, ... pardon me Mark, he *does*
> illustrate the environmental problem accurately, whatever you think of his
> solutions and loyalties.) and in the end go back to Lenin and understand the
> nature of the physical environment in which ANY justice must be played out.
Sorry, will just go back to Lenin once again. Don't think I can find books by
the authors you quote, or most probably I would not be able to afford to pay
for them. I live in Buenos Aires, and I am not precisely well-to-do. Even these
conversations are some kind of a luxury and a duty.
>
> Old joke:
>
> Three scientists arguing about their prowess come to the conclusion that
> they no longer need God. What with DNA manipulation, cloning and a host of other
> technologies they could create everything in the universe even BETTER than God!
>
> The Angel Gabriel appears in their laboratory and informs them that God
> accepts the challenge and will appear on the football field of their
> university in the morning to begin a contest to see who can build a better homo
> sapiens.
>
> Arriving in the morning at the appointed yardline, the scientists are
> gratified to see God standing there on the cinder track.
>
> "Okay," says God, "I heard your remarks, and I am ready to compete with you to
> build a homo sapiens."
>
> "Ready, Set, Go." says the Angel Gabriel.
>
> God stoops to the track and grabs a handful of dirt, just as the receipe in
> Genesis calls for ....
>
> One scientist stoops to grasp a handful of dirt too.
>
> "oh NO!" laughs God, as Gabriel tosses a yellow flag. "Get your OWN DIRT!"
A good one. But there is a better one,
A theologician and an economist debate over the profession of God.
The first one states that according to the Bible (the economist had already
accepted to be a good Christian) God made the world from Chaos, so that God had
to preexist the world and existed before any profession had been defined.
"Yes, but before God did that, someone made Chaos. And who if not an
economist?"
do YOU begin to see?
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
