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-------Original Message-------
Date: 05/09/05 07:40:58
Subject: [euratom] A new ecological credo
A new ecological credo
Prof Khwaja Masud
The writer is a former principal,
Gordon College, Rawalpind
Ecological philosophy sets out to find new solutions to the
fundamental problem of the modern world and contemporary man.
Generally speaking, the most urgent problem is survival; the survival
of our planet and the survival of humanity. The next problem is
arriving at a new Weltanschauung -- i.e., a new worldview -and,
finally, the question of endowing human life with new meaning.
We are talking about the reconstruction of individual life, but in
isolation from general concerns, ecological ones in particular, as a
threat to the environment, in our immediate surroundings and on a
world scale, endangering the meaning of our existence and our values.
The reconstruction must be carried out at the individual and social
level, and in both its existential and ecological dimensions. These
days ecological problems are at par with social and political ones.
Ecological philosophy is one way of searching for solutions to these
problems. It seeks, in the first place, to comprehend what and why,
and only then takes up the question of how.
The stuff of my dreams is the wisdom of Plato enriched and fertilised
by my Islamic heritage. I model my paradigm on the Hellenic
philosophy for which the road to the truth about ecology is a sign
posted by goodness and beauty, in other words, by the ethics and
aesthetics incorporated in the harmony of the universe.
When I began to delve deeper into the history and philosophical
ancestry of ecology, I saw that its roots lay in "love of wisdom" --
i.e., philosophy. The essence of such wisdom is summed up in the
Latin maxim: plus ratio quam vis which translates into "wisdom is
mightier than force."
When ecology loses touch with philosophy, it suffers the fate of a
plant severed from its roots: it withers. It was then that I grasped
the dynamics of contemporary crisis in ecology and many other crises
in which our world is floundering. The crisis stems from the
Cartesian paradigm of dualism between mind and body that reigns
supreme in contemporary science and which is largely responsible for
enveloping humanity in an annihilating fear of a repetition of
Hiroshima, and Chernobyl, or an ecological disaster.
We have to traverse the road of Cartesian dualism to a holistic
approach: i.e., wholes are greater than the sum of its parts. Many
people who are aware of the grave ecological problems that confront
humanity believe that Cartesian reductionism is no longer a fully
adequate means of comprehending phenomena in progress in the
universe. The great, magnificent discoveries of contemporary science
indicate that the majority of phenomena cannot be described, much
less understood, in isolation from others.
How can the poverty of the Third World be separated from
environmental pollution or deforestation? Is it not linked with the
affluence of the First World? The First World gives loans to the
Third World on the one hand and takes away more in debt-serving. Some
50 million people face death by starvation, 500 million are under-
nourished and one billion live below the poverty line. We cannot
expect people with empty stomachs to take care of their environment.
The essence of ecologism is the fusion of the biological world with
the world of values. The interdisciplinary approach is centred on the
concept of an ecological conscience which is motivated by universal
human values and which looks at the whole world as interdependent and
interconnected, and as one indivisible entity: i.e., the holistic
approach.
It visualises the planet as a boat with a number of holes in it. For
survival, each one of us must do his bit to plug these holes: the
hole of the Third World poverty, the hole of deforestation, the hole
of pollution leading to thinning of the ozone layer, the hole of
rapid extinction of endangered species (one dying every second).
The soil of the earth is the mother of wealth. This is an oft-quoted
maxim of Karl Marx. It has received a new import now, when it has
become clear that all human efforts aimed at betterment of life and
accumulation of material and spiritual wealth may go down the drain.
For, should Mother Nature lose her reproductive forces, she will not
be able to bear children any longer.
Humanity has been engaged in a fight against nature. Now it is going
to celebrate its victory. But history has posed its overriding
question: will not this celebration be a pyrrhic victory?
The eco-system which took millennia to take the present-day form
continues to undergo change, which makes it too vulnerable to
external impacts both at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. The
indiscriminate environmental abuse is a direct consequence of the
socio-economic system whose only motivating force is maximum profit
and still more profit.
Marx singled out four basic spheres of maternal production:
extracting industry, agriculture, manufacturing and transport. Now,
it is essential to talk about the fifth production sphere:
reproduction of natural resources.
Today, environmental-protection spending are assuming a faster growth
rate than overall capital investment. It is inevitable payment to
nature for the damage caused to it. Hence, the importance of long-
term strategy of bringing ecology into the national economy in order
to drastically reduce the extravagant consumption of natural
resources and radically improve the quality of the environment.
There is no reason to believe that we are not capable of bringing
about a breakthrough and giving a befitting response to the challenge
posed by the ecological crisis. The world is in the throes of a new
birth. The transitional period is a time of chaos, and intellectual
and moral confusion. What is required is the sharpness of vision and
the courage to think in new ways, to give one's life a new direction.
Courage is needed to say that the guardians of the old paradigm are
no more than the lackeys of the status quo. It is time to replace
Julius Caesar's dictum, Si vis pacem para bellum (if you want peace,
prepare for war), which has been current in the Indo-Pakistani
Subcontinent for 57 years, with Si vis salutem para pacem (if you
want salvation, prepare for peace.)
What is true about the Subcontinent is true about most of the
countries of the world, which even after the end of the cold war are
spending billions of dollars on defence, which could better be
utilised in the elimination of illiteracy, hunger and disease.
When the first atom bomb exploded, Einstein exclaimed: "Everything
has changed, except the thinking of man." Now that humanity is
confronted with an ecological apocalypse, what we need is a new
vision, a new way of thinking, recognising the supremacy of universal
human values, each one making a contribution to make Mother Earth
more beautiful. Let us remember: Beauty cannot be possessed. Beauty
can only be shared.
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