Twice a month, The duty challenges enthusiasts of philosophy and the history of ideas to decipher a topical issue based on the theses of a prominent thinker.
On November 18, COP27 ended, this conference on global warming in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. From December 7 to 19, it is the turn of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, COP15. That these two UN conferences are so close to each other highlights the fact that we can no longer address their respective issues separately.
The first lecture tells us that no one today can deny the climatic disturbances with which the world is afflicted. The second event shows us that the destruction and degradation of ecosystems, although less spectacular, is no less real and catastrophic. If we were more aware that this destruction can affect us directly, in particular through what are called zoonoses, these infectious diseases that have passed from animals to humans, of which pandemics are a part, we would give it as much importance than this global warming that is on everyone’s lips.
While it is true that humans are not the initial carriers of COVID-19, this disease is nevertheless linked to our behavior in relation to nature. Like the increase in the number and strength of tornadoes and hurricanes, floods and droughts are the consequences of what is now called theanthropocene : this era marked by an inadequate relationship between human reality and planetary reality.
Since the end of the Paleolithic, this relationship with the natural world has become more abstract and lost its harmony. Heavy technologies, monotheisms, tyrannical political powers, savage capitalism, and so on, are just a few human inventions that have consecrated our dominance and, in the same breath, have distanced us from a natural reality. Without wanting or being able to return to the Stone Age, the fact remains that this link, which has become abstract, needs to be rewoven.
deep ecology
What does Arne Naess, Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer and resistance fighter tell us? That we have suffered an uprooting and that we must review how an organic and spiritual link can once again connect us to our natural environment. “If the ecological question hasn’t become firmly anchored in the human brain, it’s because we haven’t given it the spiritual dimension it deserves. »
This thinker of deep ecology (deep ecology) posed ecology “as an intellectual and cultural issue, like a Copernican revolution”, capable of changing the civilizational paradigm in our relationship to nature.
But the road is likely to be long and difficult, because our economy is based on capitalization and on externalities: these hidden costs, these negative externalities, which consist in not counting the harm done to nature and to humans in the process business so as not to increase the cost of consumption and make an easy profit. business as usual thus becomes the watchword of the consumer society.
However, considering these costs and reintroducing them into the causal chain leading to profit would automatically trigger a process of harmonization with environmental and social realities. However, this will require a profound change in our lifestyles. It will no longer only be a question of seeing in corrective terms the harmful effects of industrialization, overconsumption and the financialization of the economy, it will be necessary to review our patterns of thought and approach the problem in a more fundamental, even philosophical way. .
Civilizational dysfunction
Arne Naess speaks of ecosophy to distinguish it from a strictly environmental ecology, superficial in short, which would only treat the symptoms of the ecological crisis, without wishing in any way to modify the cultural structures which led to this crisis. The ecological idea is that we are fully and irreducibly part of this world, and ecological philosophy takes into account that this crisis is in fact only “the shadow cast by a civilizational dysfunction. »
Not the least of these dysfunctions is infinite economic growth in a finite world. Driven by its corollary, the globalization of markets, it allows the worst abuses of mining, the destruction of ecosystems, the domestication of everything, human alienation, the ugliness of the world, overconsumption and the human excesses that follow. And one of these drifts is the perverted view that we have on our natural world. We see nature as a set of resources to be exploited, which leads us to this prejudice which is to perceive the things of our world in terms of utilities.
This way of seeing has been ingrained in us for so long that we end up wondering what it’s for, the birds, the insects, the clouds and the stars. A tree, for example, is not just a ligneous resource, and we should stop using reductive managerial and utilitarian terms in order to be able to find an ethics in our relationship with nature. The way of naming beings is the first step towards their alienation and their unscrupulous exploitation. Arne Naess suggests “a broadening of individual concern, of the need to extract oneself from the social constraints that weigh on thinking and doing. A pragmatic approach to ecological problems today requires convincing or touching the individual before being able to discuss the behavior of social groups”. Naess, who was influenced as much by Heidegger, Gandhi and Rachel Carson, speaks in terms of “self-realization” to express that nature is not in conflict with us. For him, ecological action represents more than wanting to avoid catastrophes: it means demanding, deep within ourselves, the richness and diversity of life, and, why not, wanting the beauty of the world, wanting see and love it.
In 1963, at the Bronx Zoo in New York, there was a special cage among those of the great apes. It was empty, but had a mirror in the back and a sign saying, “You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world. The only one of all the animals that have existed capable of completely exterminating other animal species and having the power to eliminate all life on Earth. »
For the first time in the history of humanity, a judgment is made on our ways of life, not by political or religious ideologies, but by scientific observation. It may thus be that ecology engenders the first planetary paradigm shift, science making — or being supposed to make — universal consensus. Ecology is therefore first and foremost a science, whose holistic qualities can be explained by contributions from other sciences such as physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics and geology. Moreover, through the study methods that underlie this new science, it is also the first to be able to align itself with disciplines, in the register of human sciences, as varied as philosophy, psychology, geography, sociology and economics. It is ultimately about a global look, based on the scientific method, capable of becoming a new way of thinking about the world and of reaching all of humanity.
The future will therefore be ecological or it will not be, despite the claims of the market to adapt to it and these injunctions to “save the planet, one small gesture at a time”. We must have a critical look at the green paint that we apply to things as an encouragement, freed from guilt that we will be, to finally consume as much as before. If small gestures are important, redefining our way of life according to the real costs it entails, for ecosystems and societies, should come at the top of the list.
Thinking within nature
Recently, our planet has shown us its own limits to bear our excesses. Our response must go beyond ideological, political and religious dogma: we must rally behind this ecological imperative and try to live in symbiosis with the planet we inhabit. If we maintain our way of being in this world, we will continue to get bogged down in the quicksand we create before us. And it’s not even a metaphor anymore.
Arne Naess saw these issues as “symptoms of our culture’s fundamental failure to take a stand on the vital importance of the natural world to human achievement.” Contrary to strictly quantitative methods and language, the ecosophical approach is to consider the ecological problem as a crisis of sensitivity, an impoverished view of the world. This vision “in terms of gestalt, of the place of humanity within nature will contribute to the reinforcement of a profoundly ecological mentality”.
But we have more and more difficulty thinking of ourselves within nature; we have strayed too far from her. A form of ultra-humanism has led, in people’s minds, to the nature/culture division, just like to that of body/spirit. The consequence is an impoverishment of our vision of the world and a dependence on objects that have become more and more captivating and addictive, it is the belief that this way of life is an absolute progress for the being. human.
Our wonder at nature and our trust in it have withered in a culture obsessed with consumerism, artifice and entertainment. It is therefore first of all our outlook that must be changed, well before wanting to change the world. Contemplating the beauty of nature, this personal power, and wanting to see its beauty would inspire us to love it, protect it and stop destroying it.
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