Joel, I agree with you that arriving at a shared understanding of
what materialism is can be important for our conception of
ecofeminism. In this regard, I am re-posting one of my last posts
on the Idealism/Materialism thread, that may have gotten buried in
the e-mail blizzard. I am still trying to understand what a
"respectful materialism" instead of an "instrumental materialism"
would look like: obviously, it exists.
I guess my questions are along the lines of, what is the shift
from one to the other? For many people, the shift is from
instrumental (matter is dead) to animist (matter is alive and
therefore to be respected.) Of course there are other routes --
also, I am interested in whether there is indeed a fundamental
contradiction between "respectful materialism" (my own term for
something I don't fully understand) and a sort of animism; I do
know that there is one when it comes to "instrumental
materialism". What follows is my earlier post which elaborated on
these issues...
Greetings all. Just returned from a brief journey north, fresh air
and trees, short respite from the densely populated sfbay. Many
provocative thoughts on line, still have not sorted them all
out...
i guess i'd like to begin by clarifying that I don't believe that
"spiritual" or "material" has any edge when it comes to positive
relationship to the natural world. BOTH have been used
destructively. There is a kind of spirituality that negates the
value of the material world, i.e. has an "otherwordly" emphasis,
and that is obviously not positive for the natural world. Likewise
I believe that the kind of "materiality" that believes that the
natural world is "resources" to be "consumed" for our convenience
or gain is also destructive.
Since I see the spirituality that I relate to as being different
than the destructive spirituality mentioned above-- not at all
negating the material world, but rather regarding all of nature as
"alive/sacred/mysterious/numinous/an unseen whirl of electrical
charges and force fields and empty space and quantum realities", I
also assume that the folks on this list who espouse "materialism"
are proposing something quite different from the negative view of
it mentioned above.
Maybe something we might all agree on has to do with relationship.
Someone spoke of her connection with the natural world, though she
does not relate at all to the word "spiritual". For me a "deep
ecofeminism" would highlight the parallel struggle for ontological
status of women in patriarchy, and nature in "civilization"; just
as feminism has to do with women's struggle to be treated as fully
human instead of as an object or commodity (as well as to have our
experience inform the definition of what "being human" is), a
radical ecological perspective could be seen as the effort to have
a relationship with the natural world that is fully respectful of
nature's "being-ness", rather than regarding nature as
instrumental. (In some spiritual traditions this would be spoken
as an "I-Thou" instead of an "I-it" relationship, but I am trying
to find common ground here... also, the parallel is limited, as
women are active agents in feminist movements, whereas to see the
natural world as an active agent in ecological struggles would be
a position way into the "unseen forces" camp.)
I guess I don't really understand the distinction between
"animist" and "scientific" as between seen and unseen, given all
of the unseen forces, particles, etc. posited by science as
existing within any "seen" object; as well as the unseen (yet
commonly experiened) elements that exist within human beings, such
as emotions, will, memory, etc. (I'll use "animist" instead of
spiritualist to distinguish earth-centered spiritualities from
patriarchal ones, and "scientific" instead of materialist to
emphazise the "matter as dead resource" orientation.) It seems
more a distintion between the attitudes we take towards the
material world, rather than whether we acknowledge or not an
"unseen" dimension; an animist attitude would be that the
"mystery", or unseen, evokes from us a respect for all that is
both seen and unseen, whereas the "scientific" view would regard
that mystery as a challenge to further control. (Of course I don't
believe all scientists are like that, nor that science in itself
requires that attitude; it is rather the secular religion of
'scientism' that I am referring to. ..and what an ecological
materialist position might be in regards to all this I'll leave
for others to expound...)
In terms of the "how do we change things", I'm all for both/and;
it seems to me that material conditions not only affect people's
lives but also influence their beliefs; while people's beliefs
influence their actions which in turn help
create/shape/change/transform material conditions... so we need
all of our combined efforts, wherever we may be. My apologies for
the long post, and best wishes to all, on all of our various
endeavors...
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Mar 31 12:02:37 MST 1995
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 95 10:56:32 PST
From: Engineering System Support 522-2437 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Apparently-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Question regarding the Earth's magnetic field
Good afternoon all!
I am getting ready to do some research on Biomagnetics.
I have recently found information regarding the two magnetic
poles ( north and south), and the potential effect on health.
So far what I know is that there is a positive charge
below the crust of the Earth and a negative charge at the
Earth's surface. This gives us a negative magnetic field on
the surface of where we live..
The presumption is that we would be extremely sick if we
continuously lived in a positive magenetic field.
If anyone has any information about this subject please
share. And if anyone is interested, I will send more information
as I get further into the research.
Thanks in advance, and have a safe negatively charged weekend!
TinA
