Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_yd3q1b in philosophy
I find arguments like these to be of very little value. Suggesting that the value of a river is more than the hydroelectric energy that can be extracted from it is certainly true, but that's hardly important if you are living in a home without electricity so that people can relate poetically to a river. There seems to be this romanticism about returning to a time where people lived closer to nature; but those types of lifestyles simply aren't sustainable with the population we have now. So we have a choice, we can embrace the fact that it was technology that allows us to support the lifestyle we have now, and that the greatest luxury we have afforded ourselves is each-other; or we can go back to living closer to nature and accept that many billions of people will have to die for us to get there.
One could look at some of the religious philosophy of shinto as being a way of connecting that sense of gratitude and a less human-centric veiw of nature. Shinto doesn't have an afterlife like heaven or hell, rather your spiritual stuff sort of breaks down and returns to the world because the world is all there is. There are hidden aspects of it but the afterlife is all around you so the idea of how one treats their environment becomes not something that you use and one day abandon for something else when you die but this is essentially all there is.
In a way that acknowledges the closed system we live in a lot more than a lot if western philosophy/religion does as the idea that we either live on in a separate disconnected realm or cease to be entirely after death doesn't capture that sense of responsibility one might have to previous generations to maintain the world as a living recycling system or to preserve it for future generations. How we conceptualize our connection and dependance on the Earth for our continuation is often subverted in our fantasy storytelling by the existence of other worlds or an eventual escape into space. In a way it feels akin to a denial of death as a very present danger but on a level of our species.
We are thematically made uncomfortable by both our complete dependance on these finite spaces and by extention the idea that we may be failing in a collective responsibility. "To hell with you I got mine" is a very common attitude of a very individualistic type that washes one hands of those anxieties by limiting one's care of something to their immediate personal use.
> the idea that we either live on in a separate disconnected realm or cease to be entirely doesn't capture that sense of responsibility one might have to previous generations
The part your missing is that whether or not the idea is TRUE is infinitely more important than how it can be contextualized with respect to some kind of responsibility to past or future generations, and it IS true. We are currently using all kinds of technology to support a population that's many orders of magnitude higher than would be possible if we all lived in hunter-gatherer tribes, or subsistence farming communities.
The technological adaptations for population inflation have precedent in a lot of our history. The application of the potato as a food crop boosted the population of a lot of European countries due to the amount of calories one could grow on relatively poor soil and in Ireland and Britain that population later collapsed when viruses wiped out the crop and aid in the form of utilizing stores of imported foods were witheld. Spirituality is fairly key in shaping how we perceive our place in the world and while Heidegger has his "hold on a minute the world is finite" moment it is good to acknowledge that that philosophy is a lot older than he is through the lens of certain religion.
The river's value in a prior example is not limited to human's rather narrow concept of use. It is also an ecosystem that benefits other species, is a channel for delivering water and nutrients to plants and evaporation for weather patterns and if abused can become a vector for poisons. One could look at ghe preservativion of natural resources as not in the terms of commodity but of intergenerational wealth. If a system of artificial population support collapses much like the humble potato, it takes a swath of humanity with it.
Those "types of lifestyles" were sustainable for hunter-gatherers and Indigenous peoples, so the amount that we have is not quite the point.
Also, there is no way we are going to survive if people keep thinking they can extract from nature indefinitely. Ecosystem collapse is going to happen and all those people you're talking about are going to die, so we'd better figure it out.
Yes, the amount we have is quite the point. Because if you want to go back to a world where everyone lives hunter gatherer lifestyles where they and a small kin groups control large areas of land in which to hunt and gather and otherwise live an indigenous lifestyle; the population of the world we can support is going to be a fraction of what it is today. How do you propose we get the population back down to hunter-gatherer levels?
I'm not proposing we do such a thing. We're going to have to figure it out, and part of that is getting better in touch with nature. We can't afford the kind of blunders that will lead to ecosystem collapse (I can just spray pesticides for years without any consequences!), so we'd better get keen at noticing and understanding what's happens in ecosystems -- and some "romanticism" would be damn helpful in that pursuit!
That's just completely wrong. The thing that will be helpful in avoiding ecosystem collapse isn't going to be romanticism, it's going to be technology. Take your example of pesticides: we don't spray them because we hate the poetry of nature, we spray them because we need to be able to make sure that the food we're growing is going to be eaten by humans and not insects. The solution isn't to be better in touch with nature, it's to understand the technologies that can prevent the crops from being lost without spraying them with chemicals. It's a classic case of enlightenment values versus romantic values; we're not going to romance our way out of this, we're going to enlighten our way out of this.
>The thing that will be helpful in avoiding ecosystem collapse isn't going to be romanticism, it's going to be technology.
Technology, in addition to the good it has done humans, has done plenty of bad; it 100% created these problems. It is not going to solve them unless it is thoughtfully and mindfully designed, with a multivalent view of natural forces that does not reduce nature's enormous complexity to "problem->technosolution."
This is just mind-bogglingly naive thinking in 2022.
Tech is not our lord and savior. Tech people now understand that the ethics of tech involve mindful design and that the way that tech has been designed has frankly screwed us over.
>Take your example of pesticides: we don't spray them because we hate thepoetry of nature, we spray them because we need to be able to make surethat the food we're growing is going to be eaten by humans and notinsects.
And yet, if we'd had a more capacious and accurate and appreciative view of the complexity of nature's ecology, maybe we would have realized that dumping some of these very simple pesticides onto the land was going to have far-reaching consequences way into the future, like oh reducing insect biomass by orders of magnitude and destroying the pollinators we need to grow crops.
We do need better technology for our survival - technology guided by a love of nature, and that uses a desire for better human-nature relations as a point of inspiration.
>. It's a classic case of enlightenment values versus romantic values;we're not going to romance our way out of this, we're going to enlightenour way out of this.
If you actually knew what the Enlightenment actually thought about this -- and full disclosure, I do, I study the transition between the Enlightenment and Romanticism and have read hundreds of source texts from both eras -- you'd understand that the two movements were not binary but that the people who understood the limits of reason and technology best were often the Enlightenment thinkers themselves. Within their own time period, the most sophisticated thinkers among them were starting to understand that thinking of rationality and technology in salvationary terms was unbelievably simpleminded. They had their own version of a very laudatory view of Nature, having to do with natural harmony and natural law, and were (by the way!) very prone to glorifying Native Americans and using their lack of money, low tech, and closeness to nature as a means by which to self-critique European culture itself, but Romanticism actually sprung right out of their own critiques of reason and tech and the direction our relationship with nature was going, with the added layer of urgency the clear and present downsides of the Industrial Revolution provided. So yeah. Sorry. The Enlightenment provided the very critiques that the Romantic movement used as a launching point.
Its also by no means a modern phenomenon or related to technology. I remember learning about the pilgrims and other early American Settlers and how they believed that nature was chaotic and immoral and how they could bring order and Christian values to it by planting farms and settling their families. Medieval zoological texts make similar assertions and generally characterize any animal that is dangerous as immoral and useless and any animal that can be exploited as a gift from God.
This is not Jean Jacques Rousseau, it's an argument against being possessed by the spirit of technology, possessed meaning we see the world only through its eyes and we're not even aware of the framing.
Can you give me any reason to believe that there is ANYONE on Earth who sees things the way you are describing them? Do you see the world that way? Do you know anyone who has told you they see the world that way? Or are you just projecting that world view onto people you disagree with?
I'm not disagreeing overall except on the point that going back to nature is not Heidegger's point. Sorry.
Having a more poetic instead of technological relationship with nature absolutely IS Heidegger's point. Sorry.
Heidegger's (imo ofc) is poetic, but not going back to nature. It tries to integrate the opposites (nature vs tech) rather than pick one.
Nature and technology are not 'opposites.' You are trying to obfuscate with semantics, but my underlying point remains clear. A poetic relationship with nature doesn't allow more people the privilege of getting to be born and getting to live to adulthood; technology does. I don't see how you can argue around that but clearly you're going to keep trying.
You're partly right but that's not Heidegger's point I believe. He wants to merge nature and technology poetically and psychologically more than arguing for nature against technology.
First off, I disagree that his point wasn't to have a more poetic relationship with nature IN LIEU of a more technological one instead of having a a more poetic relationship with nature IN ADDITION to having a more technological relationship with nature.
Second off, even if his point was to merge nature and technology 'poetically' that's an argument that's so subjective as to be useless. What I consider a poetic merger, others wouldn't consider poetic at all. You might as well be arguing that our relationship with nature should just be 'better' because that's as subjectively valid as 'poetic' and also as devoid of specificity.
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