Comments on: Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene – Economy as Ecological Livelihood

By: bob

bob — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 18:36:39 +0000

I was initially intrigued by this. Who doesn’t love a good manifesto: at once a compelling critique of the “is” and vision of how things “ought” to be. The central critique of the manifesto is focused on the limits of current or dominant thinking that has since the Enlightenment, in the view of the authors, created “traditional separations” (p16) or “hyper-separation” between the human and “more than human” worlds. The solution and the task of the “social scientists and creative scholars”, is to “conjoin nature and culture, economy and ecology, and natural and social sciences. To tackle this task of removing the separations and effecting the conjoining of seemingly hitherto differentiated and discrete categories the manifesto proposes a praxis based on Thinking differently, telling new Stories and using new Research practices. Through this new approach humanity in the Anthropocene period might just be able to repair the damage and achieve a kind of stasis or balance within the ecosphere.

The fundamental problem with the thesis, that there is “separation” or “Western division”, whether philosophical or practical between human history and natural history and that this is traceable to the Enlightenment is not supported with evidence. Perhaps because the evidence is not there and/or is misunderstood. Even a cursory reading of the categories on wikipedia shows that humanity has been wrestling with its relationships with the world it inhabits since classical times. If the Enlightenment did anything it challenge the received teachings of the Judeo-Christian (ideological) paradigm and replaced them with scientific enquiry and rational thinking – things are not as they are because of God (intelligent design) but have purpose and can be explained in their own terms. Dominion over the natural world is to be found in the bible

“Can we overcome our hyper-separation from the more-than-human world and take up membership in a thoroughly ecological community of life?”

By: bob

bob — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 10:35:53 +0000

I was initially intrigued by this. Who doesn’t love a good manifesto: at once a compelling critique of the “is” and a vision of how things “ought” to be. The destruction of one paradigm and the creation of a new more fitting set of concepts. Unfortunately, for the new reader in this area, the foundation, the central premise, on which this new thinking rests: the replacement of what is variously referred to as the “Western division”, “traditional separation” or “hyper-separation” between the human and more than human worlds and the creation of a new thinking that conjoins the conceptualisation of the two worlds is inadequately set out and probably misconceived. The “separation” is, in my view somewhat loosely attributed to the “Enlightenment tale of progress” as “human control over a passive and ‘dead’ nature that justifies both colonial conquest and commodity economics” (Plumwood 2007). Now is the time according to Plumwood for “Homo reflectus, the self-critical and self revising one” to replace our current selves : “Homo faber, the thoughtless tinkerer”.

Whatever shortcomings there may be with Western philosophy a lack of reflection is surely not one of them and neither has it failed since classical times to wrestle with the relationship between man and nature or the “more than human world” as any cursory exploration will show! The idea that somehow there has been a “settlement” in philosophical thought around this enlightenment tale is to misread the history and misconstrue philosophy with ideology, with bourgeois hegemony. Homo reflectus and Homo faber have walked hand in hand since our ancestors began using technology (sticks and stones) to exploit and change the environment to improve the species’ prospects of survival. Homo faber and Homo reflectus are one and the same interdependency. If the Enlightenment did anything it began the conjoining process by overthrowing the prevailing judo-christian world view. Here the theology has it that man is created in Gods image and holds God’s sovereignty on earth and “dominion” over the natural world. This is an idea of “man” set outside of and above the natural world. Materialism challenged the word of god as delivered in the bible and through the authority of the church and the divine right of kings. The Enlightenment places man in nature, a part of nature a natural thing, yet capable through observation and rational thought of changing the environment and understanding human agency in the change process. The Enlightenment created both climate change and our ability to understand how and why and the prospect of doing something about it.

What would be more useful to the idea of new thinking for the Anthropocene would be an appreciation of Counter-Enlightment ideas and the harnessing of some enlightenment ideas to the task of justifying and supporting the new capitalist reordering of society.

For further insights in to this area “separation” its worth reading Z A Jordan on Marxian Naturalism.

Ultimately, the question is not whether we are “tinkerers” or thinkers – human’s are technologists a species that makes tools and adapts the environment and then seeks to improve on the process. The question is not one of whether we can control or influence the environment at any scale but can we become any good at it, in the sense of not destroying ourselves as a species by living beyond the carrying capacity of the blue blob that gave birth to humanity. Can we achieve fulfilment of human potential through the creation of a new homeostasis. At this point in the game I’d suggest we need the one element of thinking that is absent from the manifesto: rationality. More and better science! This is a manifesto for the future that fails to reference the most amazing piece of technology so far created – the internet, world wide web, information technology. we’ve just built a world accessible repository for knowledge and global communication and it is absent.

By: Bob Haugen

Bob Haugen — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 21:46:15 +0000

Downloaded, donated, read the whole essay. It is really good. Thanks for the tip.