May 21, 1992

Other Feature

to question them too. I’m not sure.

I see this as a situation that hasn’t set at all
yet,and I’m only beginning myself toseecertain
aspects ofit. And evenasI speaktopeople, I see
moment by moment, is it possible to speak
about this or not? Does it strike a spark or not?
Does this person get what I’m saying. It’s that
tentative with me. But I am reasonably
convinced that global responsibility is a pretty
maddening concept. But the questions, there’s
question underneath question underneath
question in here. Boxes within boxes. And
some of them, I think, ultimately are religious
questions on which-there is a very powerful
taboo. I’ve heard it said that what sex was tothe
19th century, religion is to the 20th century.
You don’t bring it up anymore. It’s just not
polite.

SS. I was at a poetry reading last night and a
fellow was going to read a three-part poem about
Christ but he had to apologize before he read it. I
don't mean to piss all you people off, he said, but I'm
going to read this anyway.

DC. Well that’s themood alright. Synthetic
forms of what's called spirituality seem to be
fine. The goddessis very popular, but I think to
raise deeper religious issues, it seems to me, is
difficult. Yet obviously ecology is becoming a
new, still man-headed, civic religion. It has
many religious aspects and obviously Gaia in
many ways is. It isn’t just that Jim Lovelock
invented a scientific theory and then chose this
funny name for it, and then all the crazies lept
on the bandwagon.

I think there is something in this new form
of science, whichis acybernetic systemsscience,
which obviously includes the observer within
thesystem and thereforeeliminatesa privileged
point of view, unlike classical science. In a
certain sense nothing is being observed. And
what is being discovered in a certain way is a
profound commonplace, such as that there is
life on earth. This is a new kind of science and
it has overtones of religion. So this is just one
morearea in which very precisediscriminations,-
I think, should be made and can be made. I
could answerthat more fully. I’malittlenervous
about that one still.

SS. The Gaia conceptt.

DC. Yes, well I’m going to say moreabout
this. But I’m not sure. And this isan area where
you can really offend people at the moment.

SS. Is it because it's loaded with political...

DC. Yes, because a lot of people want to
accept the whole earthness ina certain way, the
image from the satellite or from the moon. It’s
thecosmosinthehandsofman. It’stheinversion
of medieval Christianity, which said that the
existence of the world was a contingent
existence. God held the world in his hands and
now clearly we hold the world in our hands, or
this is what's being said. But this seems to be
a ble to some, and terri to others. I
think it would be on the side of humility to be
terrified, and on the side of hubris to say, well,
we must take the earth in our hands.

I quote an author called William Clark in
the book, who was featured in the 1989,
September issue of Scientific American, an issue
called “Managing Planet Earth.” And he says,
“Itisasa global species that wearetransforming
the planet. It is only as a global species, pooling
our knowledge, coordinating our actions, and
sharing what the planet has to offer,.that we
have any prospect for managing the planet’s
transformation along pathways of
sustainablility.” I could not get my mouth
around a statement like that. In the first place,
human beings have never considered
themselves to bea species. Biologists speak this
way, and properly I think. It’s part of their
science to speak that way. Weare undoubtedly
animals, and undoubtedly, it’s quite proper for
biologists to study us as animals. It’s not
necessarily, therefore, good that our political
concepts should be formed by biologists or
eco! :
It’s very well that we should consult
ecologists and biologists but politics,
traditionally, is about the good. It’s how a
society decides, in the light ofits cultural ideals,
whatit would be good todo. Now obviously in
reality, it’s very much less perfect than that, but
nevertheless, when Aristotle says that politics
isabout the good life, heis saying morethan just
hotair. Andeven though hemadethe statement
about a slave-holding society and all the rest of
it, there was still the ideal there of citizens

together deciding whatis good. If wemanaged
the planet as the global species, then clearly we

the Other Press

will be managing as a species in the interests of
the species. What are the interests of a species?
The only interests of a species that I ever heard
of are to survive. So then the name of our
politics becomes survival. But this is a concept
that can give us no light or hope or sustenance,
no moral or spiritual sustenance. There’s
nothing in it. It’s just holding on to the branch
by your fingernails.

So I think it’s unworthy of human beings,
and even if we find that our existence is
threatened and it can be proved that our
existence is threatened, and I think that there’s
quite a,substantial amount of proof out there
that that’s the case, I still will insist that we have
to live as human beings have lived and make
our decisions in the light of questions about
what is good, and not deliver ourselves into the
hands of ecocrats. Because I think that’s the
end. That’s the end. Then we step across what
one writer calls the anthill threshold.

SS. And the good then...isthat what we find for
ourselves?

DC. Well I think it’s not what we find for
ourselves, because it’s also what is given to us,
but ifsomebody saystomethatthey’rerecycling
their newspapers because they have a sense of
global responsibility, then I wouldn’t say to
them ‘don’t recycle your newspapers’ but I
would say maybe there would be other ways of
thinking about recycling your newspapers, or
why you would do that. Much older ideas.
Becauseit’s frugal. Therefore, it’s a form of civic
virtue not to abuse the place that you intend to
stay. Not to use more than would be your
share. Those would be forms of virtue. Those
would be forms of prudence, whichis oneofthe
old virtues. They wouldn’t have to be tied, you
wouldn’t have to tie yourself into a global...

SS. Something beyond your experience...

DC. When you announce responsibility
for the planet, then you're hooked. I think
you're really hooked and something as vague
as ‘global responsibility’ is wide open to
manipulation. And Ithink weoperate in politics
with vagueconcepts, soina way that’s whyI’m
not happy about that concept.

SS. In the work you've done over the last, since
1986, do you get a sense of, is there a sense of
optimism, a sense that there is a way, I mean people
seem to be working for a way out, is there?

DC. I have no optimism whatsoever.
Optimism means thinking...

SS. Hope?

DC. Ihavehopeabundantly. But Ihaveto
make some kind of distinction either between
hope and optimism, or hope and expectation,
because if you look at the path that this society
is on insofar as it is on a single path, which of
course it isn’t, I mean that’s a horrible
generalization, but the ability to actually, as a
society, get to grips with fundamental questions,
itseemstobe pretty limited. The way of lifethat
we've inherited, which is as old, certainly, as
thescientific revolution of the 17th century, and
perhaps even older than that. I mean a
civilization creates a powerful inertia by whatit
has thought. So now we're in the strange
position of whizzing around the world in cars,
which is, in a way, part of what the West has
thought. We're going at a speed that the whole
scientific impulse moves us towards, [and this
is seen] as good, and at the same time, we're
trying to think our way out of it. It’s a very
difficult situation to live in. It’s obvious that the
inertia is very, very powerful and it’s very
difficult to change, and it’s easy to make
technological refinements, to invent catalytic
converters, but it seems quite impossible to put
the speed limit down to bicycle speed...

SS. ...or to the car...

DC...or to put a bicycle speed limit on life
in cities, or do any of these more radical things
that would make sense to do. But high-tech
things, and managerial things, and things that

 

in the Age of Ecology

talk about the way the world looks, even when
it looks very, very bleak and it seems as if
everyone is going to consent to speak and toact
in a way that seems to me destructive of social
morale and social cohesion, when everybody is
going to try to insert themselves into some
global economy, global responsibility, global
religious concepts. I don’t know. Maybe ina
couple years, it’ll all look different.

You know, in students, or in anyoneelse, I
would hope that when addressing certainties,
those concepts that are completely rooted in us
and in our way of life, like the assumption of
scarcity, that as you pursue an education, you
obviously are pursuing something thatis scarce.
Knowledge is scarce and the means to attain it
are scarce, and you're in competition. Maybe
you're not at the best college, and there would
be a better college where there would be more
knowledge, you know, the whole hierarchy
that’s created by scarcity, and which makes
knowledge something other than a condition
of life.

I would think the incentives is that life
becomes more beautiful as you get beyond
concepts like that. My wife said once in a
conversation, this was in conversation with
Ivan Illich, she said as the world grows darker,
grace will grow more lustrous. I just thought it
was so beautiful.

 

..[f you look at what
happened in Germany,
that was an ecological
society... There were
organic gardens on the
boundaries of Dachow.
That was a society that
became obsessively
concerned about health.

 

involve increasing surveillance, these things

seem to be easier to do. So, I’m not optimistic.
But, on the other hand, and I think Wolfgang
Sachs also says this in the book, history is, I
wouldn’t even say full of surprises, I’d say it’s
nothing but surprises, and the most wonderful
and interesting thing is that people never know
what's going to happen next. And it’s not just
the end of communism. It’s wonderful, when
you look at it in retrospect, it looks totally
obvious. Why? Why couldn’t we see that was
goin gto happen? Right? Nobody expected the
of the Shah in Iran, and nobody seemingly
expected the end of communism. So, in that
perspective, I think one just goes on trying to