The following is a rough draft of ideas maybe related to the link to an LA Times article my nephew shared on Facebook. Thanks . —————There are probably more rigorous defenses of the ‘techno-fix’ perspective than what we find in this article. But the philosophical or ‘spiritual’ issue here might be the attitude humans have about how we fit into, and relate to the rest of nature. —–For example, (1) do we think of nature as an object for us to tinker with or try to conquer, as if we humans were the center of, and perhaps inventors of the natural order ? —–Or (2) do we strive to create civilization (if there can be such) in harmony with nature, seeing ourselves as part of a complex web of life that predates and might outlast our species?—-The former mentality, (1) calls to mind a quote from Einstein : “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”——–Despite the at least slightly misleading LA Times headline, a big portion of the article cites the problems of geo-engineering. ——Changing our collective human attitude toward nature doesn’t have to be anti-technology or anti-science, as some critics of the ecology movement depict it , and as maybe some nature-cult-minded folk might believe. —-Human ingenuity isn’t the problem, per se. To think that it is would be to believe that humankind should not have existed at all and that we should pursue intentional extinction as soon as possible, seeing ourselves as a sort of cancer killing Earth. ——Some folk, such as anarcho-primitivists, might claim that humankind should still exist but in the mode of meeting our needs found within ‘primitive’ societies. —–But how would humankind remain in that state, and not sooner or later, re-develop various types of complex and technologically advanced societies ? For that to be guaranteed, maybe the actual structure and function of human brains would have to change ——-So, to me, our problem isn’t humans per se or technology, per se. Our problem is our distorted view of reality, whereby we’ve often over-estimated human ingenuity, and also seen humankind as the center of nature, or we within modern societies have seen nature as something external to us, or as something secondary or tertiary to ‘the economy.’ LOL —-Perhaps part of the solution is a deep sense of collective human understanding (aka spirituality) whereby we no longer have a wall ( or what Stephan Jay Guild erroneously referred to as “non-overlapping magisteria) between (1) our sense of the sacred, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, (2) what we refer to as ‘science.’ —–Perhaps with a sense of purpose based in a scientific understanding of nature, humans can, in our application of science and technology, be less destructive (toward each other and lifekind in general). —–But it’s probably useful to distinguish ‘science’ from ‘scientism,’ the latter involving examples of people believing in highly theoretical claims without adequate evidence (such as what we might see in some aspects of cosmology, or, in the example of the LA Times article, remedies for climate change that may be possible, though not probable.)
Leave a Reply