Re: AUT: science, technology and ecology

[Ben Hoh <jebni@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Harald,

> 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.

I guess I'm talking about the actual systems and their meanings, rather than
the disciplinary sense of the word. So relating to an ecology can indeed
involve relating to a set of material relationships, and I do think people
can collectively open their sociality to complex, material systems in
different ways.


> 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.

I think the biggest danger of anthropocentrism -- approaching "the world"
via an unchallenged, human-centric logic -- is its denial that humans are
part of wider systems, which results in all sorts of crap. I agree that most
fetishistic attempts to evade it, like "conservationism", vegetarianism,
etc, simply end up mired in covert forms of that logic. And as for racism, I
wasn't making a permanent analogy, just a passing one to illustrate the
structure of your thought, which seems to posit a certain "naturality" to
our apparent relationship to "nature". And as for racial theories, I think
it's pretty clear that Nazi ecological theories are the absolute fetishism
of "nature" as something to be protected from Jewish "vermin". And it's not
unsurprising that the Greens in Australia, and no doubt around the world,
have a dodgy history (which they've since expunged from policy) of calling
for racist immigration controls on the basis of an "ecologically sustainable
population". Again, this is *precisely* the kind of logic that needs to be
dislodged.


> 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.

If you think that my anti-anthropocentrism -- which really isn't such a big
issue for me, a McDonald's eating hater of ferals -- has anything to do with
ending predator-prey relationships, you've completely misread me. A "hands
off" approach to "conservation" is utterly anthropocentric, since it
reinscribes all the assumptions of the current order (i.e. nature =
commodity, whether pseudo-religious or economic). Christ, I even included
some sort of genetic engineering as possibly part of an ethical
relationship! Avoiding any kind of destruction is an extension of pacifism
-- it's silly. But what about systematic destruction? This has got nothing
to do with predator-prey. When do you get cats systematically threatening
the reproduction of life on this planet? *That's* what I call a dominative
relationship!


Ben



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