“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris
Sunday, November 22, 2009
ReThink
Some interesting essays on global warming, culture and philosophy have been published in the Danish journal ReThink (this takes you to the online version). There's an essay by me there on global warming and ideology.
As a chemical engineer working in the number crunching of climate change mitigation work, I am often frustrated at my lack of linguistic or conceptual ability to describe my overarching thoughts about the scale of this issue, and the resultant inaction. Your article is so astute, succinct and brilliantly written that it moved me.
I think your observation of the fracture between 'real' and 'reality' is especially on the nail. We are gaining the ability to understand the cycles we inhabit. As an extra level of self-referential 'fortune telling' we can even factor ourselves, our behaviour and even our social and economic structures as variables into models, and then generate predictions about these cycles. However, the predictions come from the epitome of all black boxes - a computer. We are asking people to reconnect with and relate to our planetary ecology, to understand the importance of 'nature' as the fundamental reality that underpins everything we consume and survive on. But at the same time we are going on computer assumptions and nebulous 21st century science and technology to prove that this cultural shift back to living within the limits imposed by natural cycles is necessary.
However, this computer generated meta-knowledge is our modern phenomenon, and actually I think something that our 'digital' generation may be able to relate to. I'm going to think about this!
Thanks again. I will use your concepts in future discussions (with credit to you of course..)
1 comment:
Thank you for this article.
As a chemical engineer working in the number crunching of climate change mitigation work, I am often frustrated at my lack of linguistic or conceptual ability to describe my overarching thoughts about the scale of this issue, and the resultant inaction. Your article is so astute, succinct and brilliantly written that it moved me.
I think your observation of the fracture between 'real' and 'reality' is especially on the nail. We are gaining the ability to understand the cycles we inhabit. As an extra level of self-referential 'fortune telling' we can even factor ourselves, our behaviour and even our social and economic structures as variables into models, and then generate predictions about these cycles. However, the predictions come from the epitome of all black boxes - a computer. We are asking people to reconnect with and relate to our planetary ecology, to understand the importance of 'nature' as the fundamental reality that underpins everything we consume and survive on. But at the same time we are going on computer assumptions and nebulous 21st century science and technology to prove that this cultural shift back to living within the limits imposed by natural cycles is necessary.
However, this computer generated meta-knowledge is our modern phenomenon, and actually I think something that our 'digital' generation may be able to relate to. I'm going to think about this!
Thanks again. I will use your concepts in future discussions (with credit to you of course..)
Olivia. London.
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