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the TRUMPETER

Journal of Ecosophy

http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet

The Trumpeter is an environmental journal dedicated to the development of an ecosophy, or wisdom, born of ecological understanding and insight. As such, it serves the deep ecology movement’s commitment to explore and analyze philosophically relevant environmental concerns in light of ecological developments at every relevant level: metaphysics, science, history, politics. Gaining a deeper understanding involves a comprehensive set of criteria that includes analytical rigour, spiritual insight, ethical integrity, and aesthetic appreciation.

A Review of Angela Blardony Ureta’s A PILGRIM'S DIARY, PASSAGES AND INNER LANDSCAPES

A Pilgrim’s Diary, Passages and Inner Landscapes mirrors the highly evolved soul of its author, Angela Blardony Ureta. The language, which at times is magical and at others philosophical, is generally spiritual in its obviously effortless fluency and spontaneity expressive of a synthesis: the honed experience of a journalist and the fantastic talent of a born litterateur. The wide ranging appeal of this small volume carries the reader right to the light-hearted person of the author by way of her infectious sense of humor that brings warmth to one’s feeling. It likewise projects the cerebral depth of her penetrating insights that challenge the equal depth of one’s understanding.

A Pilgrim’s Diary uncovers and outpours postmodern spirituality which Charlene Spretnak in her State of grace: the recovery of meaning in postmodern age (1991. San Francisco: HarperCollins) calls ecological postmodernism—“a passage beyond the failed assumptions of modernity and a radical reorientation that preserves the positive advances of the liberal tradition and technological capabilities but is rooted in ecological sanity and meaningful human participation in the unfolding story of the Earth community and the universe.” It is likewise a strong affirmation of what David Ray Griffin calls constructive or revisionary postmodernism [“Introduction to SUNY series in constructive postmodern thought” in D. R. Griffin (ed.) Spirituality and society (Albany NY: SUNY Press)] which synthesizes modern and premodern truths and values including the latter’s notions of divine reality, cosmic signification and the enchantment of nature. It is a construction of a postmodern weltanschauung through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts uniting scientific, ethical, aesthetic and religious intuitions.

The author has in a sense “circumnavigated the globe” and the book gives us the rare chance to feel the exhilaration that goes with serendipity and the awe-inspiring mystery of life in a tapestry of varied cultures and peoples, environs and emotions, idealities and realities. Her encounters with “celestial” personalities were golden moments that no material riches in “all possible worlds” (Leibniz) could ever match. Just like Paulo Coelho, Angela Ureta is an “adventurer of the spirit” who has allowed herself to be swallowed by the mystery of the unknown which is the essence of honest-to-goodness adventure—someone who’d rather pass the time in bars rather than patiently march with typical tourists in a procession to museums. Ben Okri of The Famished Road fame agrees: “The bar saw its most unusual congregation of the weird, the drunk, the mad, the wounded and the wonderful.”

But the seemingly indefatigable globetrotter has deeper impressions of and a more poignant attachment to her geographical roots. Her stories of local engagements allow us to discover things that are supposed to be known to us but unfortunately not quite and hence bring us to near-embarrassment and humble acceptance. Her Batanes sojourn transports us to “Shangri-la” so that we now know in that picturesque locale “[c]rime is practically unheard of and homes are left wide open at all hours of the day because theft is a strange word to the Ivatan.” On second thought, however, an anxiety pervades the soul for “reality is in constant flux” (Heraclitus) and in that light, Michel Foucault had long realized such anxiety: “At the end of the 18th century, people dreamed of society without crime. And then the dream evaporated. Crime was too useful for them to dream of anything as crazy—or ultimately as dangerous—as a society without crime. No crime means no police.” (Power/Knowledge)

Romanticizing is almost certainly a weakness of a writer enthralled—paradoxically, a weakness that strengthens one’s power to express in vivid terms the passion of a mystical encounter. But too much transcendence can also be disorienting to the point of amnesiac forgetfulness. So that in Nietzsche’s reminder, too much celebration in monumental history and excessive romanticizing in the antiquarian could blind us of the gains of liberation in the heart of the critical. The author’s paean to the “Heavenly Treasures of Laguna” is so captivating it almost unresistingly pulled me to the apeiron and numbed the critical in me. But at the point of recovering my senses, lessons of history had rehearsed itself before me the blood, sweat and tears of cruelty and oppression—the inhumanity of the human being to another of the same species—upon which most if not all of these “houses of God” had been erected by the colonial power of a dark era.

However, by and large, A Pilgrim’s Diary is truly a “journaling” of a traveler’s search for her Self. Thank you so much, Angela, for the “tiny sparks” of your journey in this lifetime have exceedingly inspired an incorrigible romantic in me to go on in this very same lifetime venturing the unknown on my own, alone.


© Ruel F. Pepa, 02 September 2005

THE EARTH IS ALIVE

The Earth is alive . . . yet.

The Earth is alive and yet she is in a very serious condition.

The Earth is alive, yet she is likewise dying.

The Earth is dying and unless we do something imminent at this point in time, we shall surely perish with her.

This is the most pressing and present reality we face in the 21st century. Unless we reverse this tragic flow of events, we are heading toward disaster.

A foreboding atmosphere of impending devastation dominates the landscape for we have gradually systematically poisoned the Earth: prevalent pollutions of the air and waters; holes in the ozone layer; massive destruction of the flora and fauna. We—Earth and humans—are in the worst of times.

Through generations, we have failed to acknowledge the fact that the Earth is a living Super-Organism—a macro-mirror of our own delicate humanity that should have been taken extra care of with the best of our tenderness and protected with the resoluteness of a kindred spirit always ready to defend one of its flesh and blood.

The Earth has always faithfully sustained the most basic of our needs, wishes and desires. The Earth has constantly been a trustworthy patron of our sacred humanity making her the source of that very sacredness.Yet, we have not positively responded to her loving kindness with sincere gratitude. Instead, we have become purveyors of abuses and exploitative acts.

In the modern era, humanity has declared war against nature. In the process, modern technology has been harnessed for exploitative purposes leading to heavy environmental devastations and ecological imbalance to the detriment of the human species. In the final analysis, we humans are at the losing end.Now is the most fitting moment to reconcile with nature.

Now is the most proper chance for us to bow down in humility and accept the magnitude of our misdoings with repentant hearts and total mindfulness of a new worldview that will at last redeem us from the mire of an impending destruction. Now is the era of a new world order pushed and carried by a responsible humanity with all the willingness to renew what is yet renewable on Earth.

The challenge before us therefore is to work together and let a new Earth—now an eco-system where humanity becomes a part of nature—evolve and metamorphose to create a new humanity that does not only appreciate the spiritual but also the natural for they are not two but a unity.

POST-INDUSTRIAL HUMANISM:Transformative Humanization of Nature (or "Naturization" of Humanity)

Prelude

Technology as transforming and transformative is human interpretation and pragmatization. It is an appropriation of the scientific for human purposes.The act of appropriation, by the way, is one of interpretation and pragmatization that responds to a human responsibility. Hence, technology ideally carries the value of responsibility. And responsibility in this sense is measured in human terms. On such basis, the morality of technology is reflected on how technology humanizes, empowers, and elevates the human being. Moral technology should, in that sense, be a transforming/ transformative instrument to: (1) alleviate sufferings; (2) resolve conflicts; and (3) promote happiness.

The Rise of Modern Science and Technology

The modern era in world history is characterized by the widespread dominance of science and technology at the expense of the ecosystem. Such dominance is a narrow and shallow signification of human service and facility--a shortsighted attempt to satisfy human needs and wants without considering the tragic consequences of devastating the natural resources.

The destruction of the ecosystem has been perpetrated by the immoral technology of the modern world. 'Worldwide in scope and profligate in its ill effects, deforestation stands as a symbol of the environmental degradation that so concerns us. Many other stresses vie for our attention: depletion of the ozone layer, with its threat of harmful ultraviolet radiation; loss of reefs andwetlands, so rich in their variety of life-forms; contamination of the air with emissions and the waters with pollutants; and all aggravated by the pressures of a global population rising by a million every four days' (Canby, 1994).

Such losses and destruction in the modern/ industrial era are the major concerns being addressed now by the morality of the post-industrial era. TheNorwegian philosopher Arne Naess provides us with certain normative principles that characterize a type of humanism that humanizes nature and 'naturizes 'humanity, if you will:

(1) 'The flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth has intrinsic value.The value of non-human life forms is independent of the usefulness these mayhave for narrow human purposes.

(2) 'Richness and diversity of life forms are values in themselves andcontribute to the flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth.

(3) 'Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except tosatisfy vital needs.' (Anker, 1998)

The Weltanschauung of the Industrial Era

At this point, we should deem it necessary that a better understanding of the worldview of the post-industrial era can be effectively laid out if viewed in contrast with the kind of worldview that has empowered the events and personalities of the industrial era.

The celebrated futuristic theorist of the '70s and '80s, Alvin Toffler enumerated three key concepts that animated the industrial era: the war with nature, the importance of evolution, and the progress principle. Regarding the war with nature, Toffler says in the The Third Wave (1990): 'The idea thatnature was there to be exploited provided a convenient rationalization for shortsightedness and selfishness: There has been so much destruction in nature, so much brutality towards the earth's ecosystem, because of this worldview. Andthis worldview has created a sense of arrogance in man who has developed the notion that he is the principle of a long process of evolution' (Toffler, ibid.).

With the first two key concepts of the industrial era, the third key concept which is the progress principle is now well entrenched. It is 'the idea that history flows irreversibly toward a better life for humanity' (Toffler, ibid.). Adam Smith in his The Wealth of Nations and Karl Marx in his Das Kapital had their own respective theories of human progress.

In the industrial framework, time is linear and space is concentrated to satisfy the demands of the progress principle. The very idea of progress entails the linearity of time. And since industrialization is the highest stage of progressive evolution, its centers being the urban cities are the most important space concentrations.

On the metaphysical question of 'What are things made of from the perspective of the industrial era?', reality is looked upon not as a fused or integrated entity but as a structure built upon a multiplicity of components. This is known as the atomic view of reality and this is the foundation of the principle of individualism. As the old agricultural civilization decayed, as trade expanded and towns multiplied in the century or two before the dawn of industrialism, the rising merchant classes, demanding the freedom to trade and lend and expand their markets, gave rise to a new conception of the individual-- the person as atom.

The Weltanschauung of the Post-Industrial Era

In the post-industrial era or the third wave civilization (as this is called byToffler), humanity is reconciled with nature. 'There is no such thing as either man [i.e., human] or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machine together' (Deleuze and Guattari,1977). And the war is against those who have declared war against nature in the industrial era. Now is the age of 'ecosophy' or 'eco-philosophy' whose leading proponent is the Norwegian thinker Arne Naess. 'During the last thirty years philosophers in the West have critiqued the underlying assumptions of modern philosophy in relation to the natural world. This development has been part of an ongoing expansion of philosophical work involving cross-cultural studies of worldviews or ultimate philosophies. Since philosophical studies in the West have often ignored the natural world, and since most studies in ethics have focused on human values, those approaches which emphasize ecocentric values have been referred to as eco-philosophy. Just as the aim of traditional philosophy is Sophia or wisdom, so the aim of eco-philosophy is ecosophy or ecological wisdom. The practice of eco-philosophy is an ongoing, comprehensive,deep inquiry into values, the nature of the world, and the self' (Drengson,1999).

In the post-industrial era, the seemingly omnipotent notion of uninterrupted linear evolution has already lost its momentum. There has been a wholesale breakdown in the most basic key concepts of the industrial era's worldview which gives the final death blow to the progress principle that animates the entire infrastructure of the industrial era.

Finally, the paradigm shift has been felt as the concepts of time and space change and as the atomic model of reality is displaced by the holistic model.

Postlude

The direction now of post-industrial technology aimed to humanize nature and'naturize' humanity is one of synthesis: the non-subversion of the ecosystem whereof humanity is subsumed to be a part. Human progress is therefore construed in the post-industrial sense as a bi-condition of ecosystem protection and defense. In this condition, there is no viable way to come upwith a real workable human development program in isolation of certain considerations affecting the ecological network. Deleuze and Guattari say:

[We] make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species. Industry is then no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of man and by man. Not man as the king of creation, but rather as the being who is in intimate contact with the profound life of all forms or all types of beings, who is responsible for even the stars and animal life, and who ceaselessly plugs an organ-machine into an energy-machine, a tree into his body, abreast into his mouth, the sun into his asshole: the eternal custodian of the machines of the universe (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977).

Further human development that is proper or morally defensible is possible only if there should be immediate and concerted conservation and/ or preservation measures instituted for the world's remaining natural resource base, if there is to be continuing but sustainable use of it by mankind. Such continuing human development should be with the end in view of more equitable sharing and benefits distribution. A simple enough prescription, but one that is quite at all order to do from any perspective -- historical, political, economic,social, etc. -- even under the best of circumstances. And, truth to tell, the actual condition of the world today is anything but the best of circumstances.

Therefore, 'moral technology' -- if indeed there is such a thing existing or even forthcoming any time soon -- sure has its work cut out for it. But whether or not technology is or becomes moral and thus transforming or transformative, still it is just an instrument to alleviate sufferings, resolve conflicts, and promote happiness. Ultimately, it is still man himself who determines the fate of his environment and the destiny of his own species. The synthesis that fully integrates human development with earth's ecological network glimmers in the horizon, beckoning.

REFERENCES

Anker, Peder. 1998. 'Ecosophy: An Outline of Its Metaethics.' http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca

Canby, Thomas y. 1994. Our Changing Earth. Washington D.C.: NationalGeographic Society.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1977. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Viking Penguin.

Drengson, Alan. 1999. 'Ecophilosophy, Ecosophy and the Deep Ecology Movement: An Overview.' http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca

Toffler, Alvin. 1990. The Third Wave. New York: Bantam Books.

(c) Ruel F. Pepa 2005