"Optimism is a political act." Alex Steffen of Worldchanging.com (in The Sun, April 2010)
I've been talking and thinking for some time about what I call the ecology of everyday life. People who hear this phrase often wonder what I mean. In some ways, my ecology of everyday life chimes with what Chaia Heller advocates in her book of the same name, Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature (1999). Heller suggests that the environmentalist movement since the 70s has been driven not just - and perhaps not even principally - by the desire for social justice, but by the desire for a new way of living everyday life, especially with regard to our relationships with "nature". In other ways, I'm also riffing on David Abram's excellent book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (1996), which emphasizes the role of the shaman or sorceror in articulating human communities' relationships with "nature". And in another way, as my scare quotes on "nature" suggest, I'm also thinking of a different kind of ecology, a technecology that does away with the very distinctions that the word "nature" implies, that is, the distinction between culture and nature or between humans and nature. For me, this way of thinking starts in Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985) and continues throughout her work, in the work of other science studies scholars - people like Karen Barad and Bruno Latour - and in the writings of assorted science-fictional oddballs like Marshall McLuhan, Manuel Delanda, and Gwyneth Jones. The cyborg insight I'm evoking here brings together deep ecology - with its Luddite yearnings for a mythical primitive state - with deep technology, that is, with the recognition that the best widgets function with and not against the flow of a livable world. This way of thinking allies me with pro-technology greens like Bruce Sterling and Alex Steffen ((c.f. the Viridian design movement and Worldchanging.com). As the Love & Rockets song "No New Tale to Tell" puts it: "You cannot go against Nature / Because when you do / Go against Nature / It's part of Nature too." I personally prefer to abandon the very notion of nature as some enfolding all-encompassing and often feminized figure from which humans are somehow separate and turn instead to discussing relations between all the various critters and widgets that make up this incredible ensemble I've codenamed the "world". The ecology of everyday life, then, articulates for me a desire to bring ecological thinking - a way of thinking that always references vast networks of often invisible relations between different ways of being in the world - to bear on whatever and whoever we personally come into contact with in our day-to-day lives, including not only other critters - humans and other animals, plants, microbes, and all the beautiful mutants that don't fit these categories - but also other things, that is, tools, trinkets, materials and machines. What does this look like? I don't know, except that it definitely entails a heightened attention to the texture and tenor of everyday experience, an attention oriented towards feeling a sense of wonder in the complex webs that we are woven into, a sense which fuels the political act Steffen calls "optimism". This optimism is not naive, nor is it an excuse not to act. The optimism inherent, I think, in any ecology of everyday life actually calls on us to experiment with new and better ways of being in the world. This might mean really listening and getting someone's point of view - giving up resisting it - which (from personal experience) can fundamentally change a friendship, marriage, or any relationship. It might mean spending some time with the critters you see outside your window - climbing a tree, spending your work break staring into the heart of a flower or listening to insects rustling in the grass - and getting curious about how they live. Or it might mean turning that curiosity to the foods you eat and the drinks you drink, tracing both where this stuff comes from, how it's made, and where it's going when you're done with it. Turning the focus away from far off scenarios - the classic material of the environmental activist - and turning it to our everyday lives is I think the best if not the only way to turn our ecological crisis around. And the point is of course and always not to look for more and more ways that we humans are not part of the world - the classic pastime of humanist philosophies and religions in the Western world - but instead to look for all those ways that we are totally one with, totally implicated in, totally invested in this world right here and now. Amen.
3/25/10
Discovery
Well, with Farfetchings (my dissertation) done and sent off, I'm returning to this blog, and will soon be creating a new one, Axiomatix. While Axiomatix (first posting slated for March 29th, with a posting thereafter on every other prime day of the month) is to be devoted to investigating the axioms by which we live our lives, think our thoughts, and do our doings, this Sense of Wonder blog basically revolves around ecological ethics and everyday magic. Right now I've got something to say about discovery and sense of wonder, essentially inspired by a petition circulated on Facebook to boycott the Discovery Channel because of a proposal to create a show about discovering Alaska hosted by Sarah Palin. Now, I definitely approve of boycotts, for they are one of the few ways in a capitalist and consumerist society like ours that common people can have some say in what corporations get up to; I also approve of rejecting a nature show hosted by Sarah Palin, given her record of betraying just about every value any committed environmentalist stands for. At the same time, however, there is a deep irony in having Sarah Palin host such a show, and I'm a big fan of irony. I wonder if there isn't, in fact, something quite positive about this form of hypocrisy? It seems to me, for example, that without the deep exploitative practices represented by George W. Bush and his cronies we would not now have the articulate and hopeful leadership of Barack Obama, we would not now have a new health-care system, and we would not now have a leadership committed to developing alternative energy sources. In some ways, by hiding the yucky, selfish, exploitative axioms of our society, we only make them stronger. Isn't having Sarah Palin host her own nature show just about the best way to render those axioms explicit? To put it otherwise, a society which frames "nature" and "wildlife" as far away phenomena best experienced through a TV screen has very deep problems, and what better way to call attention to those problems than through explicit acts of hypocrisy like "Sarah Palin's Alaska"? What better way to call attention to global warming and the short-sighted politics of war for oil than George W. Bush?
On my view, anyone interested in discovering the wild world of ecological relations should turn off the TV and step outside. Whether you live in the city, in the country, or in that bizarre mix of the two known as suburbia, there is an amazing web of interactions between different beings happening all around you! What the Discovery Channel does is reinforce the modern division between "nature" and "culture", shoring up a perspective that turns the "city" into "culture", that ignores rats, pigeons, raccoons and cockroaches in favor of far-away charismatic megafauna like wolves and grizzlies. What the Discovery Channel does is help maintain the illusion that ecological relations are somewhere out there, somewhere over there, when in fact they are right here and now in every single widget and critter we buy, eat, see, smell and touch. Boycott the Discovery Channel? I say yes! Too bad it takes the explicit hypocrisy of hiring Sarah Palin to host nature shows to get well-meaning liberal humans to make this move in the first place. Indeed, too bad it takes polar bears going extinct to get humans to start paying attention to the ecological destruction - and ecological wonder - happening all around them.
On my view, anyone interested in discovering the wild world of ecological relations should turn off the TV and step outside. Whether you live in the city, in the country, or in that bizarre mix of the two known as suburbia, there is an amazing web of interactions between different beings happening all around you! What the Discovery Channel does is reinforce the modern division between "nature" and "culture", shoring up a perspective that turns the "city" into "culture", that ignores rats, pigeons, raccoons and cockroaches in favor of far-away charismatic megafauna like wolves and grizzlies. What the Discovery Channel does is help maintain the illusion that ecological relations are somewhere out there, somewhere over there, when in fact they are right here and now in every single widget and critter we buy, eat, see, smell and touch. Boycott the Discovery Channel? I say yes! Too bad it takes the explicit hypocrisy of hiring Sarah Palin to host nature shows to get well-meaning liberal humans to make this move in the first place. Indeed, too bad it takes polar bears going extinct to get humans to start paying attention to the ecological destruction - and ecological wonder - happening all around them.
9/24/07
About Time
"Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, 'What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?' We have to hear that question, from them, now."
Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth"
What is the future – or, as I prefer to put it, what are the futures? Throughout the twentieth century, the cultures we like to call “modern” have been obsessed with the futures. Indeed, our contemporary culture is littered with futures past, cluttered with the flying cars, the superhighways, the robots and food pills of early science fiction. Once upon a time, the futures seemed so bright – but with the coming of the atom bomb, and, now, global warming, the futures just aren’t what they used to be. While the fading of bright futures affects us all, it is, as Al Gore suggests in my epigraph above, of particular relevance to our children and their children. What, if any, legacy are we leaving them?
Children nowadays, for their part, are pretty sure that we’re not leaving them anything. When I was nine I remember sitting in the car with my mom in rural North Carolina. I was depressed. When she asked me what was wrong, I outlined my dream: an enormous garden where everyone could come and play together. The problem, I feared, was that it would never happen because there was going to be a nuclear war. Indeed, a few years later Sting came out with one of his first solo hits, “Russians”, that recast this fear for parents instead of children: “How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy? / There is no monopoly in common sense / On either side of the political fence / We share the same biology / Regardless of ideology / Believe me when I say to you / I hope the Russians love their children too.”
For those of us who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century, the absent future could clearly be blamed on nuclear weapons. Since then, though, a whole bevy of new futuricidal technologies and situations have arisen, from genetically-engineered viral plagues to nanotechnological “grey goo”. In Michael Chabon’s excellent article on the Long Now Foundation, he tells how his own son takes the extinction of humanity for a given: to this kid, the future means this afternoon, tomorrow, or next week, because the likelihood of humans making it past another hundred years seem slim indeed.
What ever is to be done about this creeping pessimism infecting our world’s children? While it’s too late to undo the damage modern human societies have done, too late to uninvent nuclear weapons, internal combustion engines, and the thousand and one other modern ills, we can set ourselves, now, to the task of inventing new futures and, in the present, to making those futures viable. Ecology, in this light, is essentially children’s issue, and livable futures an essential children’s right. What can we give our children, right now, what can we show them to inspire a new hope for the future of life on our planet? Our love, yes – and also love for all beings, love for the wide green world that one day they, too, will be able to pass on to our grandchildren.
Do the humans love their children, too? Yes, we do! It’s about time to show them.
Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth"
What is the future – or, as I prefer to put it, what are the futures? Throughout the twentieth century, the cultures we like to call “modern” have been obsessed with the futures. Indeed, our contemporary culture is littered with futures past, cluttered with the flying cars, the superhighways, the robots and food pills of early science fiction. Once upon a time, the futures seemed so bright – but with the coming of the atom bomb, and, now, global warming, the futures just aren’t what they used to be. While the fading of bright futures affects us all, it is, as Al Gore suggests in my epigraph above, of particular relevance to our children and their children. What, if any, legacy are we leaving them?
Children nowadays, for their part, are pretty sure that we’re not leaving them anything. When I was nine I remember sitting in the car with my mom in rural North Carolina. I was depressed. When she asked me what was wrong, I outlined my dream: an enormous garden where everyone could come and play together. The problem, I feared, was that it would never happen because there was going to be a nuclear war. Indeed, a few years later Sting came out with one of his first solo hits, “Russians”, that recast this fear for parents instead of children: “How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy? / There is no monopoly in common sense / On either side of the political fence / We share the same biology / Regardless of ideology / Believe me when I say to you / I hope the Russians love their children too.”
For those of us who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century, the absent future could clearly be blamed on nuclear weapons. Since then, though, a whole bevy of new futuricidal technologies and situations have arisen, from genetically-engineered viral plagues to nanotechnological “grey goo”. In Michael Chabon’s excellent article on the Long Now Foundation, he tells how his own son takes the extinction of humanity for a given: to this kid, the future means this afternoon, tomorrow, or next week, because the likelihood of humans making it past another hundred years seem slim indeed.
What ever is to be done about this creeping pessimism infecting our world’s children? While it’s too late to undo the damage modern human societies have done, too late to uninvent nuclear weapons, internal combustion engines, and the thousand and one other modern ills, we can set ourselves, now, to the task of inventing new futures and, in the present, to making those futures viable. Ecology, in this light, is essentially children’s issue, and livable futures an essential children’s right. What can we give our children, right now, what can we show them to inspire a new hope for the future of life on our planet? Our love, yes – and also love for all beings, love for the wide green world that one day they, too, will be able to pass on to our grandchildren.
Do the humans love their children, too? Yes, we do! It’s about time to show them.
9/5/07
Embracing Diversity in Global Society
Generally when we say "global society", we think of humans all around the world joined together regardless of nationality, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or sexual preference. But global society is even bigger than that, and even more infinitely diverse! A truly global society embraces every creature on this Earth. Think about it: your day-to-day social interactions happen not just with other human people, but with a thousand-and-one other living beings as well. On the purely local level: when a bee buzzes around your head, mistaking your floral perfume for a real flower; when a raccoon plunders your trash can or a cat cuddles on your lap; when a plant in your backyard makes some extra electrons to fuel its photosynthesis, emitting waste oxygen for you to breathe - all these and more are social interactions.
Of course, these are only your local experiences of global society. You are also in social relationships, both direct and indirect, with creatures far beyond your local environment. Indeed, the Earth itself is a massive homeostatic society - some call this Gaia - where incredibly diverse kinds of different living creatures both create and maintain an environment for themselves and each other. Since its humble monomeric or crystalline beginnings, life has radically changed the look and feel of the Earth. Our planet is and has always been in the process of terraforming - and without the global society of life, our planet would be simply unlivable.
Aye - there's the rub. As the current mass extinction on Earth indicates, our planet is currently becoming less and less livable for a lot of fellow members in this global society. While extinction - like death - has always been a fact of life, our era will go down in history as the latest of only six historical extinction-events. Nowadays living creatures are dying off at an alarming rate, that is, entire kinds of living creatures are disappearing. By some estimates, as much as 30% of the species on Earth will go extinct within the next century. Polar bears, if you'll forgive the pun, are merely the tip of the iceberg: most of these species you'll never see or hear of, and indeed, many haven't even been discovered yet! (By humans, I mean.)
So - what can we do? I say, Embrace Diversity! Create it, nurture it, live it. We all understand the importance of diversity in our human communities. Even racists know that different people should be different - if only different in certain ways - and our human social tendency to specialize in certain jobs, styles, and languages is one way human global society creates diversity. Just as diversity of opinion and ability are a good measure of the health of any human society, so too, is biodiversity generally recognized as a measure of health in ecosystem. As I've shown here, global society is incredibly diverse. I say we embrace diversity in every social interaction we have - be it with bees or human beings - and at every scale, from local to global! I say we leave behind those biodiversity catastrophes we call lawns and welcome a diverse assortment of plants into yards! I say we give up cutting down trees and build around them, between them, through them instead! I say we truly start to listen to every living creature around us - and yes, that means human beings, too.
So: what do you say?
Of course, these are only your local experiences of global society. You are also in social relationships, both direct and indirect, with creatures far beyond your local environment. Indeed, the Earth itself is a massive homeostatic society - some call this Gaia - where incredibly diverse kinds of different living creatures both create and maintain an environment for themselves and each other. Since its humble monomeric or crystalline beginnings, life has radically changed the look and feel of the Earth. Our planet is and has always been in the process of terraforming - and without the global society of life, our planet would be simply unlivable.
Aye - there's the rub. As the current mass extinction on Earth indicates, our planet is currently becoming less and less livable for a lot of fellow members in this global society. While extinction - like death - has always been a fact of life, our era will go down in history as the latest of only six historical extinction-events. Nowadays living creatures are dying off at an alarming rate, that is, entire kinds of living creatures are disappearing. By some estimates, as much as 30% of the species on Earth will go extinct within the next century. Polar bears, if you'll forgive the pun, are merely the tip of the iceberg: most of these species you'll never see or hear of, and indeed, many haven't even been discovered yet! (By humans, I mean.)
So - what can we do? I say, Embrace Diversity! Create it, nurture it, live it. We all understand the importance of diversity in our human communities. Even racists know that different people should be different - if only different in certain ways - and our human social tendency to specialize in certain jobs, styles, and languages is one way human global society creates diversity. Just as diversity of opinion and ability are a good measure of the health of any human society, so too, is biodiversity generally recognized as a measure of health in ecosystem. As I've shown here, global society is incredibly diverse. I say we embrace diversity in every social interaction we have - be it with bees or human beings - and at every scale, from local to global! I say we leave behind those biodiversity catastrophes we call lawns and welcome a diverse assortment of plants into yards! I say we give up cutting down trees and build around them, between them, through them instead! I say we truly start to listen to every living creature around us - and yes, that means human beings, too.
So: what do you say?
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