Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 13:35:21 -0700
Subject: RE: AUT: science, technology and ecology


Hello,

This is a very interesting thread.  For my part, I think that any grand 
attempt to control the weather is probably a mis-laid plan, in that it would 
place too much power in the hands of a technocratic elite.  My vision of a 
post capitalist future would see much more autonomy devolved to a local level 
than is the case at present, albeit, a certain amount of coordination and 
would be necessary at a regional and global level.  In this, I think that the 
needs of humanity are closely parallel to the requirements of sustaining the 
environment.

The creation of a capitalist society meant the separation of producers from 
the land and other elements of nature, in order that the former be transformed 
into workers and the latter into capital.  Before this occurred, people's 
relations with each other and with the environment were not as purely 
instrumental as they are in a world in which they are surrounded by 
commodities.  The rebuilding of ethical relationships with each other and our 
environment seems to be one of the early challenges society would face in its 
transition to communism (or whatever you would call it).

In some respects this rebuilding is not as idealistic and impossible a task as 
it might seem.  Anthropocentrism is not a natural instinct anymore than 
individualism and the propensity to truck and barter are.  I think that the 
work of Autonomist Marxism reminds us that workers are never fully subordinate 
to capital and always continue to resist by building communities in spite of 
the individualism and competitiveness promoted by their dual existence as 
variable capital.  Similarly, we are never fully alienated from nature.  The 
articles in The Commoner journal posted earlier show that enclosure is an 
ongoing process.  Primitive accumulation is incomplete, both because of 
resistance and the reverse movements enclosure breeds, but also because we are 
always building new connections to the environments in which we live, polluted 
though they may be.  For example, consider the resistance developers face to 
gentrification projects.  Generally, I think that the self is too narrow a 
basis for our identification. We value other people and the environment not 
just because we can get something out of them, but because they are part of 
who we are.

I disagree then that catching a fish can only be a dominative relationship.  
If we consider examples from other cultures, we find that most foraging based 
cultures have spiritual relationships with the animals they catch.  The Inuit 
only catch those animals that let themselves be caught.  Hunting may well be 
an affirmation of the community and its relationship to nature.  Similarly, 
the planting and harvesting cycle was heavily ritualised in precapitalist 
European society.  The kinds of relationships we build with nature in the 
future are undetermined.

Josh


>ecology is "the branch of biology that deals with the relations
>between living organism and their environment," to use a
>standard dictionary definition. To me an "ethical relationship
>with ecology" makes as much sense as talking about such
>a relationship with mathematics. Even if you define ecology
>as the relations it describes, an etchical realtionship with
>relations still does not make much sense.
>
>Apart from this, what is wrong with anthropocentrism, I cannot
>understand. To argue that anthropocentrism is some kind of
>analogy of racism is a dangerous path to follow. It has been
>travelled before with disasterous results. This is precisely the
>kind of thinking that nourished racial theories.
>
>There is no such thing as a "non-dominative interaction [with
>non-human nature] that challenges the presumed identities of
>both parties". Nor could it ever exist.
>
>
>I might use words as respect for non-human nature. I can get
>a certain religious feeling, a feeling of being alive and part of
>something greater than me, in the mountains, woods or at sea.
>But no one shall tell me that when I catch a fish to fry this is or
>could ever be a "non-domintative, interactive relationship, no
>more than that between the cat and the mouse.
>
>Harald
>
>
>
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