Quote of the day--on man, and nature

On the world seeming to fall apart (guest post)

Technology and the Intelligence of Nature - The Ecologist

(Bolding and italics added for emphasis)

Environmentalists and concerned citizens are increasingly beginning to recognize the delusion of the 'technological fix' – the use of technology to remedy problems caused by previous technology. 

 

It is increasingly obvious that a new pesticide won't finally eliminate the superweeds that evolved to resist the previous pesticide, that new and more powerful antibiotics won't bring final victory over the superbugs that evolved to resist previous antibiotics, and that massive geoengineering projects like seeding the stratosphere with sulphuric acid or the oceans with iron (to combat climate change) will likely cause horrific unanticipated consequences.

 

What is less obvious is how pervasive the mentality behind the technological fix is. In the United States, we respond to the failure of metal detectors, lockdowns, and other forms of control in our schools by calling for even more control. European countries unable to pay their debts are lent even more money, with the proviso that they try even harder to pay their debts. Imperialist powers apply military violence to fight the terrorism that is a response to previous imperialism and violence. Doctors prescribe drugs to address the side-effects caused by other drugs. Urban planners address traffic congestion by building more roads (which leads to more development and more traffic). And millions of people manage the emptiness of a life of material acquisition by buying more material possessions. 

 

Underneath the technological fix is a way of perceiving ourselves and the world. More than a mere mentality of separation and of control, it comes from a disconnected state of being that is blind to the indwelling purpose and intelligence of nature.

 

For example, a skilled organic farmer might see weeds or bugs not as interlopers but as a symptom of imbalance in soil ecology. To address them holistically, she must believe there even is such a thing as soil ecology. In other words, she must believe in the wholeness and interconnectedness of all beings that make up soil. She must see soil as a collective, emergent entity in its own right, and not an inert, generic substrate that plants grow in.

 

Conventional agriculture, on the other hand, sees weeds as kind of an outbreak of badness, similar to the way we have seen terrorism, or violence in schools, or disease. To see it otherwise, as a symptom of a deeper disharmony, presupposes that there is such a harmony, an integrity, a beingness, and not just a senseless jumble. The technological fix addresses the symptom while ignoring the illness, because it cannot see an integral entity that can become ill.

 

I don't want to gloss over the profundity of the paradigm shift we are accepting if we are to see nature as intelligent and purposive. To do so is to abdicate the exclusive domain to which we have appointed ourselves: the sole intelligence of the world. It is to humble ourselves to something greater, and seek our place not as Cartesian lords and possessors of nature, but as contributors to an unfolding process beyond our selves. This inescapable conclusion is, perhaps, the reason why teleology is anathema to orthodox science. Purpose was supposed to be our domain! And the king of that domain was the scientist, wielding technology to enact its dominion. 

 

The idea of an inherently purposeful universe is far more radical than religious notions of intelligent design, which agree with mechanistic science about matter and cede intelligence to an external, supernatural being. Such a narrative offers no compunctions to limit the despoliation of nature. It asks us to humble ourselves to nothing of this world. 

 

To be so humbled, we must see that the soul of nature – its purpose, intelligence, and beingness – comes not from without but from within. It is an emergent property borne of non-linear complexity. In non-linear systems, small actions can have enormous consequences. The technological fix is based on linear thinking. The alternative is to develop sensitivity to the emergent order and intelligence that wants to unfold, so that we might bow into its service.

 

What might that look like? Technology in service to Earth includes things like regenerative agriculture and permaculture to heal the soil, replenish the aquifers, and sequester carbon. It includes green energy technologies, conservation technologies, bioremediation, wetlands restoration, zero-waste manufacturing, anything that contributes to the health of the planet and its ecosystems.

 

Today, painfully, we are becoming aware of the folly of the delusion that we can, with clever enough technological solutions, avoid the consequences of what we do to the world. We are learning that we are not separate from nature, and that it bears a wholeness that we ignore at our peril. Our techno-utopian dreams and basic scientific paradigms are unraveling in tandem with many of our social institutions, because the underlying narrative of separation is unraveling as well.

 

These converging crises – social, ecological, and intellectual – are expelling us from our old story. As that happens, none of our fixes, technological or otherwise, are working anymore to control the pain: the grief, the rage, the loneliness we feel as we gaze out upon what we have wrought. Thus begins the healing journey into a new narrative of cocreative participation in the unfolding destiny of our planet.

 

Charles Eisenstein is an author and public speaker and self-described "degrowth activist". He is the author of the 2011 book Sacred Economics. charles@panenthea.com

Links: Charles Eisenstein

Charles Eisenstein's blog | Reality Sandwich

Author - Ascent of Humanity

Charles Eisenstein - Wikipedia

Top 10 Stories on the World's Ecology from 2012

Because it needs to be both said and remembered so hopefully we learn:

10 Most Popular Stories of 2012 – EcoWatch

10. Fracking—A Bad Bet for the Environment and Economy

 9. Tests Find Toxics in Broad Array of Consumer Products

 8. Cincinnati Passes Resolution Requiring GE Food Labeling

 7. BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill

 6. Tell Congress to Expedite Renewable Energy

 5. Ohio Governor Halts Four More Fracking Wastewater Injection Wells After Yesterday’s Quake

 4. Hawaii Becomes First State in the U.S. to Ban Plastic Bags

 3. Analysts Conclude Fracking Wastewater Poses Substantial Risk to Drinking Water

 2. Mining Companies Invade Wisconsin for Frac-Sand

 1. Stomach Contents of Seabirds Show that Marine Plastic Pollution Is out of Control

The fact is, we humans, across the planet, need to recognize that the ways we live now are absolutely not sustainable.  We need to change and change big and as soon as possible, all of us.

On John Muir and nature

This week I saw a special on PBS, again, on the naturalist and "environmentalist"--before there was such a thing--John Muir. 

Wow.

If you've not seen it before, by all means, do.

What a life.  What a guy.  What revelations.  What observations.

The guy was brilliant, at leat.

A couple of the things I appreciate most of him and his life--what I know of them, anyway--is his appreciation of nature, of course, but also his tying any Creator--God, if you must--to nature and this beautiful world we have.

Again, wow.

I love that he took it--the natural world--as God's "church".

If there's a God, I could most easily and quickly easily see him/her there, in nature, before anything else.

It's too bad we've gotten so far from it all.

So few of us know of the sunrises.  And sunsets.  And truly fresh air.  And smell of skunk or whatever.

We're too plugged in.

And disconnected.

If you can see this special--one of the "American Experience" series--do.  I think you'll enjoy it greatly.

To close, a few John Muir quotes:

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

"The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."


Links:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/1900/peopleevents/pande14.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_muir.html
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=john+muir+quotes

On nature

What a shame about nature.

We ignore it.  We run on.  We don't stop to see it.  Smell it.  Feel it.  Experience it.  To take it in, in all the ways we can.

We disconnect ourselves from nature and the natural at our own loss.  Our great loss.

Is it any wonder so many of us are lost?  Is it any wonder so many of us are disconnected from some possible Creator when we don't experience the Creation?

Now, there's a thought

Put Oil Firm Chiefs on Trial, Says Leading Climate Change Scientist
Monday 23 June 2008

by: Ed Pilkington, The Guardian UK

Testimony to US Congress will also criticize lobbyists. "Revolutionary" policies needed to tackle crisis.

New York - James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated. Hansen's speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public's attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding "it is time to stop waffling".

He will tell the House select committee on energy independence and global warming this afternoon that he is now 99% certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already risen beyond the safe level.

The current concentration is 385 parts per million and is rising by 2ppm a year. Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, says 2009 will be a crucial year, with a new US president and talks on how to follow the Kyoto agreement.

He wants to see a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, coupled with the creation of a huge grid of low-loss electric power lines buried under ground and spread across America, in order to give wind and solar power a chance of competing. "The new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy's decision to go to the moon."

His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. "The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work."

A group seeking to increase pressure on international leaders is launching a campaign today called 350.org. It is taking out full-page adverts in papers such as the New York Times and the Swedish Falukuriren calling for the target level of CO2 to be lowered to 350ppm. The advert has been backed by 150 signatories, including Hansen.