Re: It's the metonymy, stupid! (was Re: [Pen-l] Re: De-Growth Conference Declaration)

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

A "lit critter" named Kenneth Burke made the following footnote remark in a 1937 book:

"Among the sciences, there is one little fellow
named Ecology, and in time we shall pay him more attention. He teaches us that
the total economy of this planet cannot be guided by an efficient rationale of
exploitation alone, but that the exploiting part must itself eventually suffer
if it too greatly disturbs the balance of the whole (as big beasts would
starve, if they succeeded in catching all the little beasts that are their prey
their very lack of efficiency in the exploitation of their ability as hunters
thus acting as efficiency on a higher level, where considerations of balance
count for more than consideration of one tracked purposiveness)."

How many economists were building "good" economic models in 1937 that incorporated ecological balance as part of their perceived reality? To what extent do mainstream economists do so today? The same lit critter Burke also said the following in a 1935 speech to the American Writers Congress:

"'Myths'
may be wrong, or they may be used to bad ends but they cannot be dispensed
with. In the last analysis, they are our basic psychological tools for working
together. A hammer is a carpenter's tool-, a wrench is a mechanic's tool; and a
"myth" is the social tool for welding the sense of interrelationship
by which the carpenter and the mechanic, though differently occupied, can work
together for common social ends. In this sense a myth that works well is as
real as food, tools, and shelter are. As compared with the reality of material
objects, however, we might say that the myth deals with a secondary order of
reality: Totem, race, godhead, nationality, class, lodge, guild all such are
the "myths" that have made various ranges and kinds of social
cooperation possible. They are not "illusions," since they perform a
very real and necessary social function in the organizing of the mind. But they
may look illusory when they survive as fossils from the situations for which
they were adapted into changed situations for which they are not adapted."

I want to call attention especially to the last sentence in which Burke talks about what happens when the myths "survive as fossils" in changed circumstances. When Tim Jackson refers to the "myth of economic growth" in the Sustainable Development Commission report, "Prosperity without Growth?", he mainly is calling attention to the failure of growth to deliver the goods in terms of social equity, economic stability and environmental sustainability. 

All I'm trying to do is call attention to a deeper analysis of myth in which it can be seen that the status of the constituent terms (economy, growth, measurement) themselves is in question. Even Burke concedes that myths can function as social tools. The point is, however, that just because they did once serve as tools doesn't mean they still do or that they are necessarily the best social tools under the circumstances. If new social tools are required, there is nothing in the constitution of reality that requires those new tools to necessarily be designed in some one-to-one correspondence with an analogy of the old tools. 

-- 
Sandwichman
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