Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred This page has been left blank intentionally Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred Transdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by
Celia Deane-Drummond University of Notre Dame, USA
Sigurd Bergmann Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Bronislaw Szerszynski University of Lancaster, UK © Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Technofutures, nature, and the sacred : transdisciplinary perspectives / edited by Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski. pages cm includes bibliographical references and index. isBN 978-1-4724-4410-3 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4411-0 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4412-7 (epub) 1. Technology--Religious aspects. 2. Nature. I. Deane-Drummond, Celia, editor. BL265.T4T425 2015 201ʹ66--dc23 2014039117
ISBN 9781472444103 (hbk) ISBN 9781472444110 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781472444127 (ebk – ePUB)
Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1 Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski
Part I Theories
1 human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature: An Ethical Approach to Technofutures 17 Walther Ch. Zimmerli
2 technology and the Humanisation of Nature: New Resources for Critical Assessment 31 Maria Antonaccio
3 artefactualising the Sacred: Restating the Case for Martin Heidegger’s ‘Hermeneutical’ Philosophy of Technology 47 Fionn Bennett
4 technology in a Postnatural Condition? Concepts of Nature and Meanings of Technology 67 Peter Manley Scott
Part II Religious Narratives
5 Forbidden Fruit: Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 83 Lisa H. Sideris vi Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
6 technology and Iconography: Minding the logoi 99 Francis Van den Noortgaete
7 ‘Millions of Machines are Already Roaring’: Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 115 Sigurd Bergmann
8 The Technologisation of Life: Theology and the Trans-Human and Trans-Animal Narratives of the Post-Animal 139 Celia Deane-Drummond
Part III Practices
9 re-Inventing Homemaking: A Necessary and Ethical Means of Production in a Post-Growth, Ecologically Sustainable Economy 159 David Gormley-O’Brien
10 redeeming the Climate: Investigating a Theological Model of Geoengineering 175 Forrest Clingerman
11 resilience Techniques: Spiritual Practices and Customary Economics within Farming Communities in Amanbaev Village, Kyrgyzstan 193 Zemfira Inogamova-Hanbury
12 Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency: Climate Modification as Divine Economy 219 Matthew Kearnes
Part IV Synthesis
13 The Twilight of the Machines 241 Bronislaw Szerszynski
Bibliography 259 Index 285 List of Figures and Tables
Figures
3.1 Glimpse into that-which-is’ (Einblick in das was ist) 56 3.2 ‘The Fourfold’ Das( Geviert) 58
7.1 Umberto Boccioni, Visioni simultanee, 1911, oil on canvas, 70 x 70 cm 117 7.2 Hannah Höch, Mechanischer Garten, 1920, watercolour, 73.5 x 46.4 cm 120 7.3 Paul Klee, Die Zwitscher-Maschine (Twittering Machine), 1922, watercolour and ink, oil transfer on paper with gouache and ink on border, 63.8 x 48.1 cm 121 7.4 Raoul Hausmann, The Spirit of our Time, 1919, wood and other materials, 32.5 x 21 x 20 cm 123 7.5 Francis Picabia (1879–1953), Parade amoureuse, 1917, oil on cardboard 124
11.1 Craftswoman from Kyrgyzstan 197 11.2 Traditional technologies 199 11.3 Food preservation techniques 202 11.4 Well-being of children 204 11.5 Farmers social tools 212
Tables
1.1 Four-level model of ethical assessment 28 1.2 Systematic classification of environmental ethics according to the agents 29 This page has been left blank intentionally Notes on Contributors
Maria Antonaccio is Presidential Professor of Religion and an affiliated faculty member in Environmental Studies at Bucknell University. She is the author of Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch and A Philosophy to Live By: Engaging Iris Murdoch, and is an Associate Editor of the forthcoming Wiley- Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics, 2nd edition. A long-time teacher of courses on environmental ethics, the ethics of consumption and postnaturalism, her current research focuses on the cultural meanings of sustainability in the context of the Anthropocene.
Fionn Bennett is a philosopher of language at the Université de Reims (France) specialising in intersemiocity and musica speculativa. Since defending his thesis on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of language, his research has concentrated on the links between language and music. Pursuing a radically ‘Cratylian’ line of thought, he is currently exploring the role music used to play in assuring that language and the natural world were in a relationship of ‘concinnity’ or ‘co-naturality’. As part of the synthèse he is completing for his habilitation, he will look at the way the roots of language in musical sound continues to be a part of the very substance of modern language. This study will be accompanied by the publication of a monograph entitled Thaumotropic Hierophonia: The Semantics of Moûsiké in Ancient Greece.
Sigurd Bergmann holds a doctorate in systematic theology from Lund University and is Professor in Religious Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. His previous studies have investigated the relationship between the image of God and views of nature in late antiquity, the methodology of contextual theology, visual arts in the indigenous Arctic and Australia, as well as visual arts, architecture and religion. He has initiated and chaired the European Forum on the Study of Religion and Environment, and ongoing projects investigate the relation of space/place and religion and ‘religion in climatic change’. His main publications are Geist, der Natur befreit (rev. ed. Creation Set Free); Geist, der lebendig macht; God in Context; Architecture, Aesth/Ethics and Religion (ed.); Theology in Built Environments (ed.); In the Beginning is the Icon; Så främmande det lika (‘So Strange, so Similar’, on Sámi visual arts, globalisation and religion); Raum und Geist: x Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Zur Erdung und Beheimatung der Religion; and Religion, Space and the Environment. Bergmann was a co-project leader of the interdisciplinary programme ‘Technical Spaces of Mobility’ (2003–2007) and co-edited The Ethics of Mobilities; Spaces of Mobility; Nature, Space & the Sacred; Religion, Ecology & Gender; Religion and Dangerous Environmental Change; Religion in Environmental and Climate Change. 2011–12 he was a visiting fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in München. He is editor of the series ‘Studies of Religion and the Environment’ (LIT, Berlin), board member of several international journals, and former leader of the section for philosophy, history of ideas and theology/religious studies in the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Forrest Clingerman is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Ohio Northern University, where he teaches classes in contemporary theology, ethics and the history of Christian thought. He is co-editor of Placing Nature on the Borders of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics and Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics. In addition he has published a number of journal articles and book chapters on environmental thought. His recent publications have focused on the meaning of place in environmental philosophy and theology, the relationship between nature and the arts, and theological responses to climate change and climate engineering.
Celia Deane-Drummond is currently full Professor in Theology at the University of Notre Dame, USA. She holds degrees in natural science and theology and doctoral degrees in plant physiology and in systematic theology. She was director of the Center for Religion and the Biosciences at the University of Chester, UK, from 2001 to 2011. She is currently Chair of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and Environment. She was editor of the journal Ecotheology for six years, and is currently joint editor of Philosophy, Theology and the Biosciences. Her research interests are in the engagement of theology and natural science, including specifically ecology, evolution, animal behaviour and anthropology. She has published widely in the field. Her most recent books include Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality and Theology; Genetics and Christian Ethics; Ecotheology; Christ and Evolution; The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming.
David Gormley-O’Brien graduated in 2005 with a DPhil from the University of Oxford with his thesis entitled ‘Rich Clients and Poor Patrons: Functions of Friendship in Clement of Alexandria’s Quis Dives Salvetur’. He specialises in early Alexandrian Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy and explores what insights writers of this period may have to say about what it is to be human Notes on Contributors xi and what makes us as humans happy in light of the current environmental and economic crises. He teaches at the University of Divinity, Australia.
Zemfira Inogamova-Hanbury earned her MSc with Distinction in Holistic Science from the University of Plymouth with Schumacher College (An International Ecological Centre), UK, under a full scholarship from the Christensen Fund, California, USA. Since graduating with her Masters degree she has worked as a full-time lecturer for the Anthropology Department at the American University of Central Asia and for the German International Cooperation (GIZ) as a Consultant and Coordinator for a project component within the ‘Support to Regional Economic Cooperation in Central Asia Programme’ in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She has also worked as a Facilitator and Consultant for the ‘Certificate in Holistic Science and Alternative Development’ Distance Learning Course for Schumacher College, UK. She now lives with her family in Devon, England.
Matthew Kearnes is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and convener of Environmental Humanities at the School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales. Before arriving at UNSW he held post- doctoral positions at the Department of Geography at the Open University and the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change/Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. Most recently he held a Research Councils UK Fellowship at the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience/Department of Geography, Durham University. His research is situated between the fields of science and technology studies (STS), environmental sociology and contemporary social theory. His current work is focused on the social and political dimensions of technological and environmental change, and he has published widely on the ways in which the development of novel and emerging technologies is entangled with profound social, ethical and normative questions. He is a co- editor of the international open-access journal Environmental Humanities (environmentalhumanities.org).
Francis Van den Noortgaete holds degrees in Chemistry and Environmental Sciences (University of Ghent) and in World Religions, Interreligious Dialogue and Religious Studies (KU Leuven). For over a decade, he has been involved in environmental communication and impact assessment (EIA/SEA) for the Flemish Government. He is currently a doctoral researcher at the Research Unit of Theological and Comparative Ethics (KU Leuven). His interests include hermeneutical environmental ethics and the theological aesthetics of nature. His work currently focuses on the iconic-liturgical perspective on nature and its ethical potential. xii Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Peter Manley Scott is Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology and Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Theology, Ideology and Liberation (Cambridge 1994), A Political Theology of Nature (Cambridge 2003) and Anti-human Theology: Nature, Technology and the Postnatural (London 2010), and co-editor of the Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Oxford 2004).
Lisa H. Sideris is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Consortium for the Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society at Indiana University. Her research focuses on religion and nature, and environmental ethics at the intersection of science and religion. She is author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (2003) and editor, with Kathleen Dean Moore, of Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (2008). Her current work focuses on the role of wonder in contemporary eco-spiritual discourse.
Bronislaw Szerszynski is Head of Department at the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK, where he also works at the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC). His research places contemporary changes in the relationship between humans, environment and technology in the longer perspective of human and planetary history, drawing on social theory, qualitative sociological research, geophilosophy and the environmental humanities. Current topics of interest include climate geoengineering and the social and philosophical implications of the Anthropocene. He is author of Nature, Technology and the Sacred (2005), and co-editor of Risk, Environment and Modernity (1996), Re- Ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics (2003) and Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance (2003).
Walther Ch. Zimmerli is presently Senior Endowed Professor of Mind and Technology at Humboldt University of Berlin and Associate Fellow at Collegium Helveticum (ETH Zürich). He studied at Yale College (Connecticut) and at the universities of Göttingen (Germany) and Zurich (Switzerland), where he completed his PhD in 1971 and his habilitation in 1978. From 1978 on he held chairs at the universities of Braunschweig, Bamberg, Erlangen/Nürnberg and Marburg. From 1999 to 2002 he was the President of the private university of Witten/Herdecke gmbH. From 2002 to 2007 he was the Founding President of AutoUni and Member of the Topmanagement of the Volkswagen Group, and from 2002 to 2006 he was also a member of the Executive Board of Volkswagen Coaching GmbH. From 2007 to 2013 he was President of Brandenburg University of Technology. He also was a visiting professor in the USA, Australia, Japan and South Africa. In Notes on Contributors xiii
2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Stellenbosch. His further awards include the International Humboldt Research Award in 1996. He is board member of numerous organisations and academies including the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the IUC (Inter University Dubrovnik), SATW, Acatech, and the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS). He was and is member of the editorial board and editor of different journals including Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Research in Philosophy & Technology, European Journal of Ethics, IM, and InTeR . He has published widely in the fields of ethics, philosophy of science and technology as well as history of philosophy, and he is one of the editors of the works of Hans Jonas. This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgements
The idea for this book arose out of the fourth biennial conference of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment (EFSRE) under the title of Nature, Technology and Religion: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, held at the Sigtuna Foundation in Sweden from 22 May to 25 May 2013. The editors contributed to this conference either by presenting papers or through their involvement on the organizing committee. Maria Jansdotter Samuelsson of Karlstad University, who served as Vice Chair for the EFSRE from 2011–2013, deserves special mention for her dedication to the task of organizing this conference at the local level. She was assisted by Sigurd Bergmann, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, previous inaugural Chair of the EFSRE from 2005–2011; Celia Deane-Drummond, of the University of Notre Dame, who acted as Chair of the EFSRE from 2011–2015; Forrest Clingerman of Ohio Northern University; and Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm of Uppsala University. The chapters in this book are drawn from keynote contributions, short papers as well as a few additional papers that the editors believed were important in order to develop a well-rounded edited volume. We owe special thanks to Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser who helped us with the final preparation of this volume prior to publication, and for the important financial contribution of the Institute for Study in the Liberal Arts, who supported Rebecca’s assistance in editorial work and compiling the index. She went beyond the call of duty in her meticulous checking of the chapters for formatting and in compilation of a bibliography as well as an index. Without her assistance this book would be poorer in quality, and we are particularly grateful for her patience and attention to detail in this task. We are also very grateful to Sarah Lloyd from Ashgate for her encouragement and keen interest in this project. This page has been left blank intentionally Introduction Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski
The capacity to invent, construct and use technical artefacts is arguably an essential feature of human beings. Technology represents one of the central pillars of modern society and increasingly dominates the social sphere. In spite of technology’s deep impact on human lifeworlds, as well as on different kinds of natural environments, critical analysis of the deeper driving forces of technology and their intersection with religious beliefs, alongside ethical implications related to environmental questions, frequently falls short. For example, theologians have habitually dealt explicitly with bioethical issues associated with technology, often dealing with general questions related to health or medicine, or specific biotechnological sciences such as genetics.1 The concern of such texts is deliberately a narrowly conceived one, namely, how far do specific technologies raise important ethical issues for concern for those writing from an explicitly theological perspective. Some theologians, such as Philip Hefner, have endorsed rather than criticised technological developments.2 The religious, theological and sociological significance of biotechnology’s impact on the broader natural world is also addressed in other volumes.3 Sigurd Bergmann and Dieter Gerten weave analysis of technological issues into their discussion of dangerous
1 The number of such books are legion and so we only name a brief sampling here. Attention to general medical technologies: Gerald McKenny, To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology and the Body (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997); genetics: Celia Deane-Drummond (ed.), Brave New World? Theology, Ethics and the Human Genome (London: Continuum/T&T Clark, 2003); technological enhancement: Celia Deane-Drummond and Peter M. Scott (eds), Future Perfect?: God, Medicine and Human Identity (London: Continuum/T&T Clark, 2006); Ronald Cole-Turner (ed.), Transhumansim and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011). 2 Philip Hefner, Technology and Human Becoming (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003). 3 As, for example, in Celia Deane-Drummond, Theology and Biotechnology: Implications for a New Science (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1997); Celia Deane-Drummond, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Robin Grove-White (eds), Re-Ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics (London: Continuum/T&T Clark, 2003). 2 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred environmental and climate change.4 Other theologians, such as George Pattison, have been more interested in tackling broader questions about the significance of technology in terms of its cultural ramifications on society as such.5 Others, such as Brent Waters, have been concerned to situate technology in the context of wider cultural discussions about postmodern philosophy and the posthuman condition.6 Elaine Graham’s focus is on the particular popular portrayals of the posthuman as aliens and the significance of what has come to be termed transhuman philosophy.7 Peter Scott’s work on theological anthropology, on the other hand, offers an original contribution to the field in that it raises important socio-political questions about technology where humanity is living in what he terms the postnatural condition, one where prior ancient assumptions about the natural world are no longer guaranteed or secure.8 At the same time, Scott acknowledges that generally contemporary humanity has resisted acknowledging sufficiently how human relationships are deeply embedded in the natural world. Religious studies scholars and philosophers such as Willem Drees have dealt with issues of trust between those who are religious and modern technological developments, but he does not engage critically with the implicit religious aspects of technology.9 Albert Borgmann’s book Power Failure traces in more detail the implicit religious aspects of technology and the place of Christianity in debates about technology, but it does not deal adequately with technology’s intersection with the natural environment.10 Brian Brock’s book Christian Ethics in a Technological Age11 engages the challenge of technology from philosophical and implicit religious perspectives and sets this up in contrast with a Christian view of material culture as creation, but again, fails to address
4 Sigurd Bergmann and Dieter Gerten (eds), Religion and Dangerous Environmental Change: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Ethics of Climate and Sustainability (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010). 5 George Pattison, Thinking About God in an Age of Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 6 Brent Waters, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 7 Elaine Graham, Representations of the Post/human: Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). 8 Peter M. Scott, Anti-Human Theology: Nature, Technology and the Postnatural (London: SCM Press, 2010). 9 Willem Drees, Technology, Trust, and Religion: Roles of Religions in Controversies on Ecology and the Modification of Life (Lieden: Lieden University Press, 2009). 10 Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press/Baker Publishing Group, 2003). An earlier attempt at similar issues is raised in David Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin, 1999). 11 Brian Brock, Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010). Introduction 3 practical environmental issues. Jay Newman offers a critique of those who argue that religion is necessarily anti-technological, but his work does not reflect current eco-critical thinking on technology or engage more recent technologies or address environmental issues.12 Sigurd Bergmann tackles religious aspects of technology in his book Religion, Space and the Environment, resisting simplistic dualisms between religion and the spaces and places of the natural and cultural landscape, while addressing important issues about the implicit religious face of technology.13 Bronislaw Szerszynski’s monograph Nature, Technology and the Sacred comes closest to the ethos of this volume in that it considers implicitly religious aspects of technology while paying specific attention to the natural world as such.14 The proposed book tackles the problem differently from the majority of these works. It does not presuppose a particular Christian view, while still recognising the significance of a theological voice in the midst of other secular approaches. So in order to begin to correct the deficiency in the literature outlined briefly above, the collection of essays in this book explores the implicit religious driving forces of technological practices by paying attention to the relationships between religious traditions, the diversity of the natural world and the meanings of technology. In particular, we recognise that in the literature more broadly the interactions between religious traditions and the broader cultural meanings of technology are often poorly developed, despite the fact that many developments in technology and science have deep roots in the religious Christian history of the West. In the social sciences and humanities, one can find a variety of different approaches to technology in both Western and non-Western cultures – sociological, anthropological, philosophical and historical. But theology and religious studies have so far only made a sparse explicit contribution to the field. Although there are numerous theological works on ethical issues around the new genetics, and some studies of transhuman or enhancement of the human through technology, the entangled relations between religion, technology and environmental concern have not yet been fully addressed. Environmental humanities more generally has concerned itself with cultural or in some cases religious responses to environmental degradation, but we believe that the specific intersection with technology requires much deeper analysis. As the impacts of modern technology are affecting many different spheres of life, including religious beliefs and scientific research, it should be
12 Jay Newman, Religion and Technology: A Study in the Philosophy of Culture (Westport: Praeger, 1997). 13 Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space and the Environment (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2014). 14 Bronislaw Szerszynski, Nature, Technology and the Sacred (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 4 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred a common intellectual task to reflect on technological developments critically and constructively for the sake of wider common goods, including those of human and non-human life systems. This book accordingly also explores the phenomenon of religion and the spiritual and socio-cultural power of human technical innovation, and offers the beginnings of a wider discourse about the nature of technology and the technically constructed ‘second nature’ and how both interact with each other and impact on our future. Such discussion catalyses new insights about the ways in which notions of ‘the Sacred’ might be at work in human technical creativity. How are understandings of nature and the environment in relationship to ‘the Sacred’ at work in different technologies and discourses? Can we understand modern technology itself as a common mode of expression for a ‘global Sacred’? Regarded from a religious perspective, technology often includes strong claims about salvation, sometimes even identifying itself as a tool of salvation for humanity. Such an idea falls into line with a Western history of a thousand years where attempts have been made to achieve salvation through technical innovations. Augustine’s influence on Western cultural history and his doctrine of original sin stressed the fallen nature of humanity, who, though made in the image of God, succumbed to temptation. Human beings were supposed to restore, at least in part, their godlike state of being on earth by using their creative practical skills. Francis Bacon, for example, believed that the practice of modern experimental science could help undo the impact of the Fall on humanity, so the task of humanity, and men in particular, was to remediate that curse by scientific and explicitly practical and technological innovation. We might call this the modern view of the relations between religion and technology. Today, it is hard to agree with such an optimistic view of technology. In view of this, a countermodern position has developed, which resists technological reconfiguring of the relationships between means and ends. From an ethical perspective, however, it is probably preferable to regard technology as a highly ambiguous phenomenon that needs to be analysed and examined in a much deeper way than is common in the relevant literature. While many scholars have explored the interconnection of environmental ethics and religion, only a few have investigated how technology, environment, ethics and religion interact. The contributors that we have gathered in this collection of essays investigate the deeper normative beliefs implicit and behind technological innovations, and seek to enlarge our understanding of the human and cultural dimension of technology. As research about technology in the humanities is wide and complex, although still undeveloped in its structure, our contributors offer insights into some selected aspects of the discussion, with the intention of developing further questions for research. Examples of some specific questions that come to the surface during our analysis include the following: How are culture and technology entangled? Introduction 5
What can indigenous cultures teach about the role animated artefacts can play in human survival? How are spiritual practices and perspectives embedded in cultural systems? What is the relationship between science, technology and the natural environment, especially within given cultural and religious narratives? Can technical artefacts be made into fetishes? How are ‘magic’ and ‘power’ fuelled by machines? How can we use theological analysis to diagnose the deeper structure of technological projects? Such questions begin to shed new light on the ambiguous interactions of machines and humans. Threading throughout this work we find an intersection of challenging issues of ethical significance, including trans-humanism, geoengineering, household technology and the salvational demands of technology. The majority of the chapters appearing in this volume emerged from the biennial conference of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment that met at the Sigtuna Foundation in Sweden in May 2013 under the title of Nature, Technology and Religion: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. The authors represent the academic disciplines of theology, religious studies, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and engineering. The first part, entitledTheories , sets the context for our discussion and begins with a provocative chapter by Walther Ch. Zimmerli (Chapter 1) entitled ‘Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature: An Ethical Approach to Technofutures’. The first part of the chapter analyses the temporal aspect of both technology and responsibility through an analysis of the meaning of time as relevant to such a development. The second part explores the idealisation of technology through certain tropes that have appeared sequentially in cultural history. This chapter differentiates between and compares four basic types in the network of human beings, technology, nature and culture: the Judo Type, the Reproducibility/Profit Type, the White-Coat Type and the Technological Wake- up Call Type. Zimmerli explores the historical development of technology that eventually leads to the present postmodern state. The third part analyses the theoretical framework for the notion of responsibility, including the identification of technologyas culture. Modern technology radically challenges, impacts on and changes our understanding of responsibility, where the question of the role of the subject of responsibility must be rethought anew. The final part of the chapter argues that although concepts of technology, human being, nature and culture are still rooted in traditional approaches, they need to be considered as nodes in a common network. Zimmerli makes the case that technology must be analysed as culture, which again is interpreted as a social and historical mode of change. His chapter concludes with an exploration of how the theory of ethics is challenged by modern technology and pleas for a conversion from principles to applied ethics. He also reflects on the significance of hermeneutics, procedural methods, and the new relation of individual and institutional ethics and finally 6 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred encourages the reader to develop a pragmatic mode of applied procedural ethics of responsibility towards extra-human nature. The second chapter in this part is by Maria Antonaccio, who explores the theme of ‘Technology and the Humanisation of Nature’ (Chapter 2). The premise of this chapter is that the increasing ‘humanisation’ of nature through technology (i.e., the enfolding of the biophysical world into the processes of the human social world) is the horizon against which the ethics of technology should be understood. Recent debates in environmentalism can be seen as a battle over the meaning of, and the appropriate response to, humanisation. Although nearly all environmentalists regard some degree of humanisation as unavoidable in order to serve human needs, there is widespread disagreement about whether and at what point humanisation of nature threatens to become distorted or excessive. Environmentalists committed to a broadly preservationist perspective attempt to defend a boundary between the human and natural worlds, so as to identify a clear criterion of excessive humanisation. On their view, nature’s independence from the human is the prime value to be defended against the incursions of technology. Others begin from the premise that there is no clear separation between humanity and nature and that perhaps technology is a natural expression of the human capacity for cultural creativity. On their view, the idea of a fixed boundary between humanity and nature is a false construct that fosters unduly negative assessments of technology and inhibits more creative responses to current environmental realities. Despite their differences, however, the two positions just noted share the assumption that the ideal of an independent nature is the defining issue in the debate; their primary disagreement is over whether to defend that ideal or abandon it. Antonaccio argues that new insights into the nature and meaning of the humanisation of nature may be gained by redirecting the debate away from the issue of nature’s independence. She suggests that such a focus sets up an overly polarised debate over the ethics of technology. What has not received adequate attention are the social and cultural processes by which technologies come to be regarded as valuable in the first place, as well as the goods and values that technologies help to foster and protect. In order to draw attention to these processes, this chapter enlists insights from Margaret Jane Radin’s analysis of commodification as a social process, arguing that humanisation may be seen as an analogous phenomenon. Based on this analysis, the relevant question is not whether a particular technology either preserves nature’s independence from the human social world or undermines that independence; rather, the question is whether a particular technology suppresses, destroys, or renders inaccessible certain goods associated with the human experience of nature that have become integral to the human horizon of meaning. She argues that this analysis has the potential to yield a more nuanced account of the humanisation of nature than the current debate over nature’s independence has offered. Instead of assuming Introduction 7 that humanisation poses a threat only to nonhuman nature (as preservationists and other environmentalists have long argued), critical attention to the goods and values inherent in technologies reveals that humanisation may also pose a threat to human flourishing as well. The third chapter in this part (Chapter 3) is one that will appeal particularly to scholars who have followed debates in the reception of Martin Heidegger’s work on technology. Fionn Bennett’s ‘Artefactualising the Sacred: Restating the Case for Martin Heidegger’s “Hermeneutical” Philosophy of Technology’ challenges standard critical positions towards Heidegger’s analysis of technology, arguing instead for a retrieval of aspects of his work. He argues in the first place that the analysis of Heidegger’s work by prominent contemporary philosophers Andrew Feenberg, Don Ihde and Peter Paul Verbeek are ill-informed, reductive and self-defeating. He also strongly presents his case for Heidegger’s ‘top down’ perspective, that he believes is much more philosophically convincing compared with the descriptive, empiricist and ‘bottom up’ perspectives preferred in this secondary literature. Bennett presses his case for a patient re-reading of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. He argues that Heidegger’s estimation of the role of technology in degrading modern humanity’s ecological life support systems is as relevant today as ever and the solutions he proposes are altogether appropriate. The chapter focuses in particular on Heidegger’s enigmatic claim that technology is ‘supremely perilous’ and for that very reason a source of ‘salvation’. Along the way Bennett explores the extra-technological aspects of his thought and the way that these inform and condition his discourse on technology. He pays particular attention to what Heidegger says about the Sacred, ethics, ‘ethology’ and art, and how his views on these things are factored into what he says about technology. Bennett finally considers whether Heidegger’s notion of determination of technology is still viable in practice and acceptable in principle in a contemporary context. In the fourth and final chapter of this part (Chapter 4), ‘Technology in a Postnatural Condition? Concepts of Nature and Meanings of Technology’, Peter Scott argues that it is preferable to understand technology as devices within a technologised culture rather than a set of unrelated artefacts or tools. Central to any theological anthropology is reference to three spheres of human life: self-relatedness, wholeness and world-relatedness. Technology is implicated in all three areas but in different ways. Different concepts of nature are also implicated in the three spheres as well as a diversity of meanings of technology. Eschewing an assessment of particular technologies, his analysis seeks to explore the problems in developing a theology of technology in the three spheres with the aim of providing a broader theology of technology. The trajectory of this chapter is critical: Scott believes that without sustained reconstructive work, theological anthropology remains located in the interpersonal and the organic; the political and the technological remains theologically elusive. He 8 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred concludes with the suggestion of how a differentiated concept of God might offer theoretical resources for developing a theology of technology. The second part of the book, entitledReligious Narratives, begins with Lisa Sideris’s chapter (Chapter 5), ‘Forbidden Fruit: Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb’. She examines the Manhattan Project scientists’ turn to religious and mythological narratives about innocence, hubris and wonder in order to describe, and ultimately rationalise, research that culminates in widespread loss of life and environmental disaster. The atomic physicists, most notably J. Robert Oppenheimer, appropriated religious stories of innocence and the Fall, as well as myths and motifs referencing familiar symbols of tragic hubris and forbidden knowledge. These narratives are deployed not only to proclaim the innocence of the scientists involved but also to suggest the inevitability of the trajectory of their research: the project takes on a life of its own, while the scientist, lost in childlike wonder, is unwittingly swept along toward an inevitable and tragic conclusion. She engages with scholarship on the role played by the sense of wonder – and even love of nature – in the atomic scientists’ pursuit of the bomb. She argues that it is important to differentiate various types of wonder and consider the proper (moral) and improper objects of wonder. Sideris also analyses critically the work of historians who take at face value the atomic scientists’ protests of their own innocence and ignorance regarding the nature of their research. The second chapter in this part (Chapter 6), ‘Technology and Iconography: Minding the logoi’, is by Francis Van den Noortgaete. He argues in the first place that experiencing a sense of sacrality in nature renders technological intervention in it non-trivial. In contemporary Orthodox Christian ecotheology, there has been a re-emergence of what is called the ‘iconicity of nature’. He suggests that this is related to Maximus the Confessor’s cosmic-liturgical theology, wherein creation is seen as a dynamic concelebration of beings. Humans are thereby called to assume a ‘priestly’, ministrant role, attentive to the divine logoi present in all beings. Such a view on nature substantially differs from more managerial notions of ‘environmental stewardship’ or humans as ‘created co-creator’. Van den Noortgaete argues that this priestly anthropology has consequences for attitudes towards human technological intervention in nature. A crucial tension between contemplation and action appears to be at the core of disquiet from this theological perspective. And even if iconicity cannot (nor intends to) provide clear-cut ethical norms, it entails an alternative understanding of technological responsibility (safeguarding the response-ability of beings). Motivating an ethos of care and precaution, it aligns with philosophies of technology such as those expounded by Jacques Ellul, Hans Jonas or Christopher Groves, aiming at the flourishing of beings and stressing the centrality of ends rather than means. Van den Noortgaete suggests that when taken from such a liturgical-iconic perspective on nature, icon painting forms the paradigm of human activity in Introduction 9 the world: creating forms that do not shut the divine intention out. Instead of autonomously exerting control over nature, technology is seen as a call for relation and collaboration, by being creative in God’s likeness. The third chapter in this part (Chapter 7) is by Sigurd Bergmann and is entitled ‘“Millions of Machines are Already Roaring”: Fetishized Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit’. His chapter explores how discourses about so-called animism, neo-animism and fetishisation can contribute to our understanding of the production, usage and transformation of modern technology. Bergmann’s argument goes beyond over-ideologised claims of a so-called value-neutrality of technical innovations, but rather regards such innovations as physical outcomes of complex social processes about the production and sharing of power between humans as well as between human and non-human life forms. Technological innovations and technical artefacts ‘take place’ in a subtle interplay of forces in the triangle of natural/environmental, socio-cultural and human subjective dimensions. He suggests that technical artefacts, machines and high-tech systems should be approached as animated artefacts for human survival. The implication is that such artificial machines and the skills to handle them are to be regarded as crucial elements in socio-cultural practices. A key question in this study is the way that classical animism was incorporated into modernity which then turned technical artefacts into fetishes. His study raises crucial questions about how ‘magic’ and ‘power’ themselves are fuelled by human machines. How, following Alf Hornborg, should one explore ‘symbolic technologies’? The chapter starts from a detailed interpretation of art works in the controversy among Futurist and Dadaist artists in the beginning of the twentieth century about the myth of the machine and the fascist glorification of modern technology (which still impacts on our present). It continues by discussing the significance of Marx’s analysis of fetishism and alienation and technology’s role in it, and expanding ‘fetishism’ to our globalised world system. The chapter concludes with further reflection about a potential integration of (neo)animism, fetishism critique and belief in the Holy Spirit, and flows into a constructive proposal on how to develop Christian pneumatology as a creative force to transform the cultural and reflexive conceptualisations of technology. In this vein, technology becomes regarded as a gift of life rather than a tool to rule and preside over it. The chapter finishes with an argument for an ecological pneumatology in synergy with animism, an approach that investigates the critical potentials of resisting and overcoming the technical fetishisation of late modern capitalism. The fourth chapter in this part (Chapter 8), by Celia Deane-Drummond, is ‘The Technologisation of Life: Theology and the Trans-Human and Trans- Animal Narratives of the Post-Animal’. She reviews the literature on the boundary between the human and the not-human through the notion of the posthuman, where categories of what humans might be are challenged through technological 10 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred interventions, using either materials that are artificial, resulting in the cyborg, or those that are gleaned from other animals through genetic engineering or xenotransplantation. She suggests that the breakdown of the nature/culture boundary in much of this writing is important, critically engaging the work of Donna Haraway in her attention to both dogs and the cyborg, She also takes inspiration from Hans Jonas’s close attention to the interconnectedness of life and the threat of modern technology. She argues that as well as narratives about the posthuman, there are also sub-narratives of the post-animal, in as much as genetic and artificial technologies, including those used in agriculture, make permeable not just human/non-human boundaries but animal/non- animal boundaries as well. How far this might be viewed as threatening or not depends on preconceived ideas about the status of human and animal natures. She demonstrates that theological narratives are woven into such accounts and tend to align with or distance themselves from technology in a way that runs in parallel with the secular philosophical debate. Transhuman philosophy takes up posthuman discourse, but instead of using the latter as a way of challenging preconceived constructions of the human, pushes instead for a technological means for purported advancement of desirable characteristics such as longevity, intelligence and so on. The difference between transhuman and posthuman discourse is that only the former aligns itself with modernity in that it seeks to use modern science and scientific technology, especially that of artificial intelligence in order to achieve its aims. She argues that transhumanism amounts to a form of Gnostic speculation that is trans-animal as much as it is trans-human, as well as being provocatively in disjunction from Christian theology. Other critical commentators, who are mostly concerned about transhumanism’s rhetoric of perfection or secularised eschatology, have not explored the full significance of human exceptionalism that is wedded to this discussion. Furthermore, just as animals have been abused in the past, so in transhuman discourse animals are incorporated as merely intermediary objects, as tools or means for humans to achieve transhuman goals, reflected in particular concrete practices of animal biotechnology and genetic interventions. Hence transhumanity inasmuch as it practices transanimal interventions raises important ethical questions about human treatment of animals as well as humans. This last chapter leads into the third part,Practices , which begins with a chapter by David Gormley-O’Brien (Chapter 9), ‘Re-Inventing Homemaking: A Necessary and Ethical Means of Production in a Post-Growth, Ecologically Sustainable Economy’. In this chapter, Gormley-O’Brien argues that the changes to home-life brought about by technological development during the industrial and post-industrial periods have led to the situation that the consumption of the average suburban home today is unsustainable both for economic and ecological reasons. He argues that there is a need to re-visit aspects of homemaking prior to the industrial period and, just as importantly, re-invent them in light Introduction 11 of technological advances in order to adapt to the modern phenomenon of suburban life which is the prevalent habitat for many in the English-speaking world. He also argues that a rehabilitation of homemaking both requires, and lays the ethical and theological basis for, a wholesale cultural shift in worldview. The second chapter in this part (Chapter 10) is ‘Redeeming the Climate: Investigating a Theological Model of Geoengineering’ by Forrest Clingerman. Initially seen more as science fiction than responsible policy, geoengineering recently has been discussed as a serious technological response to climate change. But while geoengineering challenges our sense of human meaning and value on a number of levels, the debate has thus far centred on geoengineering’s technical feasibility and on defining the parameters of ethical permissibility. Little attention has been given to how religious belief – at the heart of existence for many – frames our understanding of geoengineering and climate change. In response, Clingerman suggests how a theological voice can be profitably added to the discussion. This chapter constructs a theological model of geoengineering, using the method of theological modelling suggested by David Klemm and William Klink. This model of climate engineering is structured through two qualities of geoengineering proposals: scope and intent. Based on these qualities, theological reflection can investigate geoengineering proposals as attempts at material redemption. Geoengineering attempts to be a material salvation, which emerges from the human capacity to balance individual and social flourishing within the atmosphere. But Clingerman argues that few – if any – geoengineering proposals have the humility to fulfil this aim. Thus, the present theological model suggests a strong critique of geoengineering: when it is unable to listen to nature in meaningful ways, it is a distortion or inversion of the sacred. As such, it is unable to atone for human failure, and it fails to promote a meaningful integrity of life in its redemptive possibilities. The third chapter in this part (Chapter 11) is by Zemfira Inogamova-Hanbury and is entitled ‘Resilience Techniques: Spiritual Practices and Customary Economics within Farming Communities in Amanbaev Village, Kyrgyzstan’. In 1991, during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the villagers in Amanbaev, Kyrgyzstan were allocated land plots and told to look after themselves because the state could no longer look after them before stabilising the country as a whole. In the subsequent years, various relational technologies emerged and evolved to respond to the immediate needs of the farmers who had lost their jobs and social security. In this chapter, Inogamova-Hanbury examines in detail the religious, cultural, spiritual and economical practices among Kyrgyz, Kurdish, Turkish and Uzbek farmers, and the way these different practices form their identity and help to maintain their resilience. She examines the ways farming communities organise their environmental, agricultural and technological knowledge in order to support farming and food resources and to interact with each other in socio-cultural contexts. Religious, cultural, spiritual, 12 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred social and economic practices contribute to biocultural diversity; there are, therefore, alternative technologies to choose from that have the capacity to respond to external and internal changes, which are essential for the resilience of the farmers. Her analysis is based on holistic qualitative anthropological field research, participant observation of farmers’ daily agricultural activities and in-depth conversations (interviews, transcriptions) conducted in Amanbaev. Hence, this chapter contributes to further discussions on the anthropology of food, food security, religion, culture, environment, resilience, technology, biocultural diversity and the role that indigenous farmers can play with respect to these issues. Matthew Kearnes contributes the final chapter (Chapter 12) in this part and tackles the important topic of geoengineering from a social science perspective. His chapter, entitled ‘Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency: Climate Modification as Divine Economy’ draws on John Milbank’s proposal that the secular is not a separate domain from theology, but is constituted through specific theological moves, and argues that normative, moral and ethical analyses of technological systems can therefore no longer be relegated to dilemmatic questions outside the material practices of science and technology. Seen in this light, Kearnes proposes that the notion of a fundamental break between the secular and the theological – and the supposition that science, method and reason are the agents of this break – no longer provides an adequate vantage point for a rich sociological understanding of science and technology. He uses as a case study recent political debates concerning proposals for the deliberate and large-scale modification of climatic systems as a response to anthropogenic climate change – collectively referred to as geoengineering. The challenge Kearnes addresses in this chapter is not simply the possibility that direct climate modification may precipitate profound religious and ethical implications. Rather, in an analysis that resonates with Sideris’s chapter on the implicit theological aspects of the development of the atomic bomb, he attempts to develop a site of theoretical intervention that can start to articulate the socio- theological milieu in which research on geoengineering is situated. Kearnes’s approach is itself indebted to a counter-tradition in theological analyses of technology – of which this volume is but the latest example – which has made significant steps in demonstrating the ways in which technological change is both conditioned by and accomplished in situated socio-religious contexts. Kearnes uses Giorgio Agamben’s excavation of the religious origins of the notion of economy that demonstrates the ways in which a concept of the miraculous remains immanent in the very practice of calculation and the constitution of the market itself. For Agamben, the concept of oikonomia is central to the constitution of modern biopolitical forms of government where notions of executive sovereignty have been supplanted by forms of governing defined by mutually constituted logics of administrative rationality, economic Introduction 13 valuation and divine mystery. He explores the ways in which geoengineering is situated in a biopolitical project that seeks to extend forms of economic valuation to the Earth as a whole, and as such is bound up with a series of theological narratives that invoke both rational administration of the life of a planet and a concept of the divine economy of the globe. The final part,Synthesis , presents a chapter that provokes a drawing together of a number of threads that have appeared throughout this volume. Bronislaw Szerszynski’s concluding chapter ‘The Twilight of the Machines’ uses an unusual narrative form to explore the human relationship with technology. In an imagined myth, one which might be told by unnamed future beings after the fall of technological humanity, Szerszynski combines elements of Norse, Classical and Biblical mythology in a narrative arc which takes us from the co-origination of humans and technology in the moment of the invention of the first tool, to the eventual end of technology and of the category of the human as a specific kind of living being. The human is presented as the animal that places part of their spirit outside themselves, placing in external objects and artefacts part of both their agency and their power to evolve. Initially, the close relationship that human beings enjoy with the tool does not disrupt their relations with the other natural and supernatural beings which inhabit the world. But then, out of their simple tools, humans create a new kind of being – the self-propelling machine. This is revealed as an attempt by humans to mimic the creator God – to have their own mechanical angels, who will extend their agency throughout the universe and erase the contingency of creaturely being. But the angelic machines turn demonic, rebelling against and dominating their masters and creators in various ways. The humans then turn to worshipping the difference between forms of machine life, initiating what is thought will be an eternal March of the Machines in which machines would compete with each other and in which different kinds of machine would succeed each other indefinitely. Yet the belief that machines exist as an infinite number of forms in the mind of God, which would flow like a river out into reality, turns out to be false; the machines are the inhabitants of a lake in heaven, that has been breached by human desire and is slowly emptying into the world. When the last machines emerge and take on material form, all machines lose their powers, and humans lose their distinctive mode of being. The last humans are typologically linked to the first humans, living without tools or machines in a form of ‘blessed life’. Overall this book seeks not only to demonstrate the variety and contested debates within the field, but also to open up new horizons by engaging in transdisciplinary research: namely, that which remains true to the depth of insight arising from the disciplinary origins of the scholars in question, but breaks new ground through receptivity to other ways of knowing. This page has been left blank intentionally Part I Theories This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 1 Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature: An Ethical Approach to Technofutures Walther Ch. Zimmerli
According to a common opinion we human beings, even in the not (yet) industrialised world, live in a technological civilisation and the influence of science and technology is still increasing. Our future, therefore, will be even more permeated by science and technology, and it looks as if there is no alternative. On the other hand, there is a conviction as widespread as the opinion just mentioned that we as human beings have to live and act responsibly, especially in a world increasingly shaped by technology. As the task of philosophy since its very beginnings in ancient Greece has been (and still is) to question opinions and convictions taken for granted, the objective of the following deliberations is to critically scrutinise the development and meaning of both technology and responsibility with respect to their temporal characteristics. In order to do this, I will in a first step reflect on time in general and especially on the future (1). The second step will consist of an ideal-typical reconstruction of the development of technology (2), while the third step will analyse the theoretical framework of the notion of responsibility (3). This then will provide the necessary conceptual background for looking into the pragmatic turn from principle-oriented to applied ethics and thus to human responsibility for extra-human nature which will turn out to be one of the meanings of ‘technofutures’ in the plural tense (4).
Time – A Both Anthropological and Technological Approach
From the point of view of philosophical anthropology, we Western philosophers take for granted that human beings are essentially being defined by time, and we know that time is both happening to and ‘at the same time’ constituted by us in many different respects: we are finite beings, we are mortal, we measure time by constructing all kinds of clocks, and we talk and interact in temporal terms. We also know that within the phenomenological ‘fundamental ontology’ we are 18 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred nothing but being in time as well as time in being (Heidegger1). In addition, we know that we are always living in the permanent present (‘nunc stans’2), although we also know from a hermeneutical point of view that we are nothing but the result of our past and that this past, in terms of a consciousness of reception history (‘wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein’3), is always with us, thus defining our humaneness. There is, however, a certain asymmetry in our existence as temporal beings. Theoretically, we know that there must be something like a direction in time, the ‘arrow of time’, in physics defined by the second principle of thermodynamics, the one-directedness of entropy. As every historian of science and technology knows, this principle is an abstraction and generalisation of a technical insight, that is, an insight into the fundamental principles of a steam engine as first developed by Sadi Carnot and William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin.4 So even the very fundamentals of the temporal aspects of physics have been (and still are) technological by nature. The fact that our history of science and technology as a rule is (or at least has been) written from a history of ideas rather than from a history of artefacts point of view has somewhat obscured the strong connection between concepts of time and the development of technology.
1 One of the groundbreaking insights of the younger Martin Heidegger is that there is no such thing as an essence of human beings independent of their existence and that the existence of human beings (‘Dasein’) is both constitutive for and constituted by time. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh and rev. Dennis J. Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). 2 This notion, originated in Platonic thinking and was questioned by Augustine who reserves eternity’s splendour only for God and focuses instead on time as ‘tendit non esse’, while Boethius (in The Consolation of Philosophy) elaborates it positively in his famous formulation: Nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans facit aeternitatem (The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity). Only in modern times, for example by Schopenhauer, it has been related to the essence of humanity; see Heinrich Aby, Schopenhauer und die Scholastik (Colmar: Verlagsgesellschaft Alsatia, 1930). In the context of neurophilosophy, especially of brain research, there has literally been a renaissance of the discussion on the ‘Now’; see Ernst Pöppel, ‘The Brain’s Way to Create “Nowness”’, in Time, Temporality, Now, (ed.) Harald Atmanspacher and Eva Ruhnau (Berlin/Heidelberg/ New York: Springer, 1997), 107–20; Eva Ruhnau, ‘The Deconstruction of Time and the Emergence of Temporality’, in Time, Temporality, Now, (ed.) Harald Atmanspacher and Eva Ruhnau (Berlin/Heidelberg/New York: Springer, 1997), 53–69. 3 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1965), 324 ff. 4 See Stephen G. Brush, The Kind of Motion We Call Heat. A History of the Kinetic Theory of Gases in the 19th Century, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, New York, Oxford: North-Holland Publ., 1967); Karl R. Popper, ‘Boltzmann and the Arrow of Time’, in Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, (ed.) Karl R. Popper (London: Routledge, 1974), 181–89. Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature 19
This becomes even more obvious when we take into account still another aspect of the asymmetry of time. We usually distinguish between three different extensions (or as the existentialists call them: ‘ekstasies’) of time: the past, the present and the future. At first glance the past, present and future seem to be just different extensions of ever-flowing linear time. But it has been noticed as early as the fourth century B.C. (by Aristotle in his famous sea-battle argument5) that there is a decisive difference between the past and the present, on the one hand, and the future, on the other hand, if we focus on the way we speak about them, that is, according to temporal logic. Strictly speaking only sentences in the past and the present tense do express a truth-value. Sentences in the future tense are neither true nor false unless they have become sentences in the present and the past tense. If we take an even closer look we then see that this decisive difference corresponds to another difference in terms of modality and quantity: whereas in the present and past tense we speak about present and past reality, sentences in the future tense refer to possibility; consequentially, as far as quantity is concerned, sentences in the future tense, although grammatically pretending to speak about the one future, in fact are speaking about different futures because otherwise they would not speak about possibilities. Or to put it differently, when we intend to speak about the future we in fact speak about different possible futures. In order to congeal the different possible futures into one present (and later on: past) reality, we have to make decisions thus realizing that we are observers, and not just passive, but influential observers, and thus players in the game of time which consists in transforming different possible futures into the one present and later on: past. Linguistically speaking there are – at least – two different ways of expressing ourselves when we try to talk about this game of time which is both a game of chance and a language game, the rules of which we are shaping ‘as we go along’. We can either use the notions of ‘before – (at the same time) – after’ or the notions of ‘past – present – future’, and John Ellis McTaggart has called the latter sequence ‘A-sequence’ as opposed to the ‘B-sequence’ somehow presupposing that the ‘A-sequence’ is ontologically speaking prior to the B-sequence6 as it is not pretending to be ‘objective’ in the way the B-sequence is. But what exactly is the difference between the two sequences? Obviously the very notion of ‘present’ is the key which is capable of unlocking the so far still mysterious and secret fabric of time: whereas the B-series ‘before – (at the same time ) – after’ refers to the relation between events only, the A-series (‘past – present – future’) expresses the relation of events to an observer, that
5 Aristotele, De interpretatione, in Aristotelis categoriae et liber de interpretatione, (ed.) Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949). 6 John Ellis McTaggart, ‘The Unreality of Time’,MIND 17 (1908): 457–74. 20 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred is to the presupposed I or We. Only with respect to a given I or We in a given spatio-temporal order does it make sense to call a given event ‘past’, ‘present’ or ‘future’. But this now is implying something else: if transforming future into present and past by reducing the many possibilities into the one reality requires decisions and if decisions amongst other aspects are characterised by including normative features in our reasoning, it becomes unavoidable to talk about values. By ‘values’ I do not mean substantial entities but preference relations that make decisions possible, regardless of whether or not these are decisions of individuals or of communities. And if we take into account that preference relations are basically governed by what we hope and what we fear, it becomes quite obvious that future as the intentionally fundamental temporal structure at the end of the day is not just dependent on values but also on emotions. By ‘future’ we understand the description of a present that one would like to have or avoid.7 Here, however, we can see the link to both technology and responsibility: ethically speaking, one cannot but be held responsible for the consequences of one’s own actions. Therefore, it is not our knowledge about human and extra-human nature one is responsible for, but the consequences of how one has interfered with human and extra-human nature and thus preserving or changing it, in brief, for the consequences of technology.
Development of Technology
In order to understand such consequences, we have to take a look at technology not only in an affirmative but also in a critical perspective.8 And that requires from a temporal point of view, first of all, an analysis of the development of technology. Contrary to our deeply rooted Platonic prejudices, the idea of a substantialist interpretation of the leading concepts of our tradition is in most cases misleading, most concepts having undergone quite remarkable changes over the centuries. In most cases it is not just one concept, but a whole set or pattern of contextual concepts that has been varying and thus changing. In our
7 See Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Zeit als Zukunft‘, inDie Wiederentdeckung der Zeit. Reflexionen – Analysen – Konzepte (Darmstadt: Primus, 1997), 126–47. 8 In what follows, see Walther Ch. Zimmerli, ‘Variety in Technology, Unity in Responsibility’, in Technology and Contemporary Life, (ed.) Paul T. Durbin (Dordrecht/ Boston/Lancaster/Tokyo: D. Reidel Publishing, 1988), 279–93; German version: Walther Ch. Zimmerli, ‘Wandelt sich die Verantwortung mit dem technologischen Wandel’, in Technik und Ethik, (ed.) H. Lenk and G. Ropohl (Reclam: Stuttgart, 1987), 92–111; W. Ch. Zimmerli, ‘Verantwortung kennen oder Verantwortung übernehmen – Theoretische Technikethik und angewandte Ingenieurethik’, in Verantwortung von Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieuren (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2014), 15–31. Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature 21 case, we have to take a closer look at the conceptual quadruple ‘technology’, ‘human being’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. If all of them are still approached in a rather traditional way by considering them to refer to something internally immutable (‘substantia’) with just some changing external characteristics (‘accidentia’), we miss the decisive distinctions in their mutual evolution beginning a next turn of the old pointless ‘quarrel about technology’.9 Therefore, the concepts ‘technology’, ‘human being’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are to be considered as nodes in a network, being defined by its interrelation and interaction with the others: using more or less advanced tools (‘technology’) human beings are changing the human and extra-human nature in order to gain tangible and intangible values; the social and historical aspects of this process is called ‘culture’, which is why technology in actual fact is and always has been identical with or at least closely related to culture.10 In an ideal-typical (Max Weber) reconstruction, four different stages can be distinguished. The first pattern of these four nodal concepts could be called the Judo Type. In struggling with extra-human nature, human beings do not fight the forces of nature by confronting them but by obediently using these forces in a similar way as a judo fighter wins over his opponent by vectorially adding the forces behind the movement of his adversary’s body to his own. Francis Bacon can be called upon as the chief witness for this idea: ‘Natura (…) non nisi parendo vincitur’11 – you cannot win over nature but by obeying its laws. Thus, the early modern human being using technology is homo faber, but homo faber mensura naturae, that is, the human being exploiting nature by following the measure of nature. With the industrial revolution a new pattern arises which I call the Reproducibility/Profit Type. Due to a (at least partial) mechanisation in manufacturing, technology has become characterised by the commercial exploitation of its products. Thus, identical reproduction of goods results in a new type of production: mass production and hence economy of scale. This again leads to an interchangeability of individual workers and a general ‘de- skilling’.12 This then does have implications concerning the social structure, the culture and of course the self-understanding of human beings: the human being still is homo faber but becomes primarily economically interested: homo faber oeconomicus enters the stage. As the industrial revolution is being transformed into the scientific technological revolution a new type is emerging which I like to call the White-Coat Type. Science
9 Friedrich Dessauer, Streit um die Technik (Frankfurt a.M.: Herder, 1958). 10 See Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Technologie als Kultur (Hildesheim: Verlag Georg Olms, 2005). 11 Francis Bacon, ‘Novum Organum’, in Works I, 157 (1.3). 12 See Karl Marx, Das Kapital, in Marx Engels Werke (MEW) 23, 508 ff. et passim. 22 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred itself becomes a productive power and therefore the image of technology itself is changing: oil-stained fitters with spanners and wrenches in hands are being replaced by ladies and gentlemen in white coats reading off and interpreting highly complex instruments. One of the side effects of this development is the increasing power of the experts: only in very limited areas the technical layperson is capable of fixing broken gadgets. Both scientific technology and the mechanisation of science have progressed to such an extent that the human being as homo faber scientificusat the same time turns out to be homo faber ignorans with respect to the cognitive, technological and social consequences of his/her technical behaviour. And now, at the wake of the Digital Era, we have reached a pattern that I like to name the Technological Wake-up Call Type. Today the borders between science and technology have been blurred and permeated by the omni-present Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on the one hand; on the other, the technocratic dream of an ongoing improvement and domination of the world by technology is being questioned as the most recent examples of Social Media and of lacking data security are strikingly demonstrating. A reflexive turn is taking place in science and technology as well as in society. A movement which seemed to be dying is suddenly reanimated: the reflection on unintended negative side effects of the development and application of new technologies, we are witnessing a renaissance of Technology Assessment (TA). Human beings now seem to be deeply divided between the technophilia of the Digital Natives and the scepticism of the Digital Immigrants and vice versa: homo faber technologicus has become homo faber doctus ignorans – or to put it in a more Socratic way: today we do not know, but additionally we know that we do not know, and so we are ‘muddling through’ or we are ‘managing our ignorance’.
Concept of Responsibility
Having thus reconstructed in an ideal-typical way the development of technology it would be tempting to try to do something similar with respect to ethics and especially to the one concept which seems to have become dominant within the ethics of technology: the concept of responsibility. This, however, would meet some serious epistemological obstacles. On the one hand, other than in a more or less global development of technology in ethics there are regionally different types: whereas the Anglo–Saxon world in general follows a teleological or consequentialist paradigm we in continental Europe and especially in German speaking countries are – at least since Immanuel Kant – biased towards a deontological model. In the latter case, the consequences of an action might be of academic interest, but ethically irrelevant; the morality of an action is first and most defined by the ethical conviction and the moral conscience invested Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature 23 which is a position of rational ethics beyond any kind of virtue ethics. This, however, collides with the – even in the German context13 – indisputable fact that the very notion of responsibility is referring to the consequences of an action whether you measure its impact in a utilitarian or any other way. And this is furthermore impressively underlined by the very fact that one of the most influential ethical analyses of the ‘technological civilisation’, theopus magnum of Hans Jonas, is explicitly called ‘The Imperative of Responsibility’.14 Looked at from this perspective the concept of responsibility has undergone a considerable change as well as the concept of technology. This change, however, by definition cannot be correlated one-to-one to the development of technology as analysed above. Instead I would like to proceed by discussing the concept of responsibility first ontologically and then by means of language analysis in order to connect these deliberations with Hans Jonas’s attempt to refute Hume’s criticism of the so-called naturalistic fallacy. In order to do that, it is necessary to critically reflect on the presuppositions of the seemingly obvious prohibited conclusion from Is to Ought. Everybody schooled in Western philosophy knows that in ethical standard theory there is a modal abyss between description and prescription, i.e. between the Is and the Ought, and that we can infer from what is to what ought to be at the expense of a ‘naturalistic fallacy’ only. Our pragmatic everyday experience, however, teaches us differently: we all have experienced ‘the normative power of the factual’, and we come across naturalistic fallacies all the time without them having any detrimental influences on the result of the argumentation ‘flawed’ by them. This ordinary everyday experience might read ‘We always have done it this way’ or ‘We have never done it this way’. To find out whether this is or is not a fallacy, we have to spell it out as a syllogism:
• Everything that always was done in a certain way is well corroborated and ought therefore to be continued. • X was always done this way. • The way X always was done is well corroborated and ought therefore to be continued.
This could be called the conservative version of the so-called naturalistic fallacy, the reciprocally corresponding progressive version of which would read:
13 See Max Weber, ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’, inMax Weber: Political Writings, (ed.) Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 309 ff. 14 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, trans. Hans Jonas and David Herr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 24 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
• Everything that always was done in a certain way is inhibiting progress and is therefore to be ended. • X was always done this way. • The way X was always done is inhibiting progress and ought therefore to be ended.
Spelled out like this it is quite obvious that in both cases it is neither a fallacy nor otherwise detrimental and therefore to be prohibited. On the contrary, both cases are formally valid and could from a theory of action point of view even be reconstructed as practical syllogisms. More important in the context of our argumentation is, however, that in both cases concepts are being used which are descriptive-prescriptive hybrids: the concepts ‘well corroborated’ and ‘progressive’. If we now ask the transcendental question as to the conditions of possibility we can assume that we are not dealing with an Is-Ought-dualism, but with what renders this dualism possible. And that cannot possibly be a dualism again. Thus, it looks as if the source of this ‘bifurcation’ of Being into Is and Ought could be dependent on the one being capable of distinguishing Is and Ought: on the human being. One of the reasons for the seeming contradiction between Is and Ought might therefore consist in the difference between ethical theory and moral practice which might be introduced into our thinking of nature and being conscious by us conscious human beings. To put it differently: it might consist in the obvious fact that the Is-Ought-distinction is a linguistic and logical one and is not ‘natural’ in itself because otherwise it would fall victim to its own verdict. An ontological approach, therefore, would first of all look at nature (or being) without presupposing the Is-Ought-dichotomy. From this (onto-logical) point of view, it makes much sense to characterise nature (or being) as a network of universal connectedness. In nature (or being) everything is connected to everything, which in the descriptive mode leads to a more complex notion of (inter-)causality, and, as in the prescriptive mode, this universal connectedness of everything with everything is called ‘responsibility’ reflecting beings, that is, human beings feel (and are) responsible for everything15 as long as it is in any respect dependent on or even only remotely connected with them. The very notion of responsibility, therefore, can be considered the linguistically reflective mode of the idea of (inter-)causality or network: we human beings can – in a strict and narrow sense of the word – be accused or held responsible for effects we have directly or indirectly caused or which in a strong or weak sense are dependent on us. Therefore, the concept of responsibility traditionally did
15 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature 25 refer only to those activities which are in a strong sense caused by human beings. The subject of action thus became identical with the subject of responsibility, and this relation might be called ‘internal responsibility’. This is how far an ontological analysis of the context of the descriptively and prescriptively reflected network paradigm can take us. Today, however, under the impression of an overwhelming evidence of universal connectedness, it is increasingly evident that the idea of internal responsibility doesn’t suffice, but that we have to include ‘external responsibility’: we become responsible for everything because we as human beings have become subjects of universal responsibility. From this, in turn, it follows that the traditional meaning of responsibility is changing with the increase of the highly specialised, scientific type of technology and with the increasing uncertainty and ignorance with respect to their consequences. To understand this better, it might be helpful to take a closer look at the results of the conceptual analysis of the term in question. ‘To be responsible’ is at least a three-valued relation: someone (subject of responsibility) is responsible to someone (instance or forum of responsibility) for something or someone (scope or area of responsibility). Two of these three values, that is, instance and area, have changed in the course of modern secularisation. The place of God as instance or forum of responsibility has been taken by all reasonable beings in the present and the future; the scope or area of responsibility is going to be more expanded by all the possibilities connected to the new technologies. The subject of responsibility, however, is still the individual human being. But it goes without saying that at the same time the subject of action has changed considerably: in addition to just the individual subjects we now are witnessing teams, groups, collectives and institutions like for example corporations acting as subjects of action.
Ethics – From Theory to Practice
As demonstrated so far, general theoretical ethics is capable of developing a general conception of responsibility, analysing different aspects of the notion ‘responsibility’, and answering the questions as to the addressee (subject) of responsibility as well as to the changes with respect to the instance and the area of responsibility. For everything else, especially regarding the relation to technofutures of human and other beings, general theoretical ethics is not sufficient. In this context, it is necessary to notice a phenomenon which could be called ‘the application turn’ in ethics. Since the second half of the twentieth century, questions of application have become of ever greater interest to both the ethicists and the public as can be seen in the establishment of ever more subdisciplines like legal ethics, business ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, gene ethics, 26 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred medical ethics, media ethics, ethics of science and – last but not least – ethics of technology. If we would need more confirmation of this turn towards application in ethics it would be relatively safe to conclude it from the fact that suddenly handbooks are beginning to being published.16 To understand the importance of this turn it is helpful to look at the title of a small essay by philosopher Stephen Toulmin: ‘How Medicine Saved the Life of Ethics’.17 By this title (and the essay itself ) an important fact is expressed: that of recursive self-reference dealing with the feedback of the application of ethical principles to those principles themselves. The more diverse the fields of application of ethical principles become the more obvious it gets that something is terribly wrong with one of the basic assumptions of the traditional principle-oriented type of ethics: namely that the ethical principles are eternally and immovably valid while only different fields of application are being added. Rather something completely different is happening before our very eyes: even the ethical principles themselves are changing due to the increasing dynamic development of their application. This is why ‘medicine saved the life of ethics’: instead of being petrified in repeating the ethical principles time and again ethics has to adapt and to become more flexible; as principle oriented ethics it literally would have died without the revitalising effect of an orientation towards application. At second glance, however, it becomes evident that the fundamental structure of this process is even more complex, lacking at least one more feedback-loop: applied ethics consists in the application of ethical principles that are taken for granted, the criticism of their applicability or scope, and the formulation of new, more extended principles or principles rendered more precise. To philosophically educated readers it is easy to see the analogy to what in the context of understanding is called the ‘hermeneutical circle’ (what might be connected with the fact that in Gadamer’s own words ‘understanding always includes application’18), which – like the circular structure in applied ethics – is not a vicious, but a heuristically constructive, circle. Whereas ethics in the past mainly consisted of theoretically deduced principles with some examples, ethics today is mainly based on application, i.e. the analysis of real cases that are capable of exerting feedback effects on the presupposed principles.
16 See the comprehensive German standard handbook: Julian Nida-Rümelin (ed.), Angewandte Ethik. Die Bereichsethiken und ihre theoretische Fundierung, 2nd rev. and enl. ed. (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2005). For an English equivalent see, for example, Ruth F. Chadwick, Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (London: Academic Press 1997). 17 Stephen Toulmin, ‘How Medicine Saved the Life of Ethics’, in New Directions in Ethics: The Challenge Applied Ethics, (ed.) Joseph P. DeMarco, Richard M. Fox and Michael D. Bayles (New York: Routledge 1986). 18 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, (ed.) and trans. J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall (London: Sheed & Ward, 1989). Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature 27
To put it in a nutshell: within applied ethics it is not good enough to know what is right, but you also have to have the ‘right knowledge’ about the cases in question. But it is also not good enough to have the ‘right knowledge’ about what is right, you also have to know how to apply it correctly. This is what Kant (and even more explicitly: philosophical hermeneutics) have called ‘good judgement’ (‘Urteilskraft’). Working out how to apply those principles while taking account of the specifics of the case requires practical wisdom. Due to the overwhelmingly rapid transition from the industrial to the post-industrial (or as I prefer to call it: the technological) age there is an abundant choice of examples. To illustrate this: of course many people seem to know or at least think that the future of energy lies in the field of regenerative energy but this is not good enough; as regenerative energy sources like sun and/or wind are not available at any given time, we need to know more about the storage of energy gained, for example, from sun and/or wind. But even if we knew something about storage, for example, with respect to hydrogen storage technologies, we would still have to be knowledgeable about liquid gas pipelines, for example. Because if we did not know that we have to compress the hydrogen and if we did not know that the pressure needed in gas networks is 60 bar, then all our morally correct reasoning about regenerative energies would simply be moral theorising. But there is still another problem to be solved with respect to the application turn. This problem becomes visible if we ask ourselves a question which becomes ever more important the more enlightened our ethical reasoning becomes: is there still a binding or universally valid canon of values? The answer to this question is: no – but for different reasons than we might suspect. The answer is: no, we do not have one binding canon of values – not because there are not any, but because there are too many. Modern society becomes the more pluralist the more enlightened it gets exactly because it is a pluralist society. And as soon as we realise that we do not have to seek desperately for the one general ethics anymore because our society is at bottom, characterised neither by ethical relativism nor by ethical monism but by ethical pluralism, we begin to understand that we have to look for something different: for ethically legitimate procedures of argumentation rather than for universally valid values. So the ethics we are looking for has to be, on the one hand, hermeneutical (see above) and, on the other hand, procedural. This implies that in a both a technological and pluralist society an applied ethics must meet three conditions:19
19 The following ideas and the resulting model of a procedural ethics have been developed by some co-authors and me at different occasions since the 1990s; see Walther Ch. Zimmerli and Stefan Wolf, ‘Die Bedeutung der empirischen Wissenschaften und der Technologie für die Ethik’, in Handbuch der christlichen Ethik, (ed.) Anselm Hertz et al. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1993), 297–316; Walther Ch. Zimmerli and Michael S. Assländer, ‘Wirtschaftsethik’, inAngewandte Ethik. Die Bereichsethiken und ihre theoretische Fundierung, (ed.) Julian Nida-Rümelin (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1996) 302–84; 28 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
• It must be oriented towards problems, instead of principles. Formal (universal) and material (situational) principles are integrated in this ethics in order to allow for differentiated decisions according to the situation. • Applied ethics must be capable of dealing with disagreement as plurality of values in a pluralist society presupposes irreconcilable differences between the different competing value systems. An ethics of this kind therefore is oriented towards management of dissensus rather than towards consensus. • Furthermore, this ethics has to be focused on the consequences of technological and economic actions, but in a way that is beyond the traditional alternative between teleological and deontological ethics: it becomes rather a matter of (deontological) conscience to be a teleological ethicist with responsibility.
Thus, a procedural four-step model of ethics results according to which an ethical evaluation of each action must follow a procedure from top to bottom. Any course of action the morality of which cannot be decided upon as either ‘forbidden’ or ‘permitted responsibility required’ is put into the category ‘not yet decided’ and needs further clarification at the next level, and so on.
Table 1.1 Four-level model of ethical assessment20
Forbidden Further clarification Permitted
1. Formal principles 2. Regional principles 3. Professional principles 4. Material values
Amongst the formal principles (level 1) there are the principles of modern ethics, e.g. universalisability, equality and justice as fairness, while the regional principles (level 2) include principles limited to particular times and places, such as priority of the worst case. The professional principles (level 3) take account of the specialisation between various professions in our society (professional ethics, e.g. the principle of informed consent in medical ethics). It is only on
Walther Ch. Zimmerli and Michael S. Assländer, ‘Business Ethics as Applied Ethics’, in Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance, (ed.) Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Klaus Richter, Markus Holzinger (Berlin/Heidelberg/New York: Springer, 2007), 37–54. 20 Zimmerli and Assländer, ‘Business Ethics as Applied Ethics’, 42. Human Responsibility for Extra-Human Nature 29 the lowest level 4 that material values come into effect. This model meets the requirements for the pluralism of values typical in market economies; at the same time it demonstrates the extent to which moral action is in need of a general problem-oriented ethical approach. If, as stated above, the addressee of moral responsibility even in highly institutionalised contexts like companies, corporations and so on still is (and probably always will be) the individual, then it becomes necessary to distinguish the different levels (micro-, meso- and macro-) from the different types of ethics (individual and institutional) because to mix up levels and types of ethics is one of the sources of the never-ending story about trans-individual moral responsibility.
Table 1.2 Systematic classification of environmental ethics according to the agents21
Individual ethics Institutional ethics For example, questioning For example, questioning the responsibility of the the internationalisation of Microlevel individual in the decision- specific corporate intentions making process with regard of acting to the environment For example, questioning For example, questioning the changing organisational the responsibility Mesolevel structures that allow of corporations for individual morality consequences of acting For example, questioning the For example, questioning influence of environmental the role of corporations in Macrolevel processes on the self- ecological policies conception of an individual
***
Having thus demonstrated that responsibility is to be considered the reflective normative mode of (inter)causality with respect to the future and that this has become obvious by taking into account the development of both the understanding of technology and the understanding of responsibility, as well as the transition from principle-oriented to applied ethics, two insights follow that have been implicit but so far have not been explicitly mentioned. First,
21 This is an adapted variation of Zimmerli and Assländer, ‘Business Ethics as Applied Ethics’, 51. 30 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred responsibility is by definition always (but not exclusively) responsibility for extra-human nature. In a quasi-transcendental way, responsibility for extra- human nature keeps returning if (and exactly at the time when) we try to get rid of it. Second, responsibility for extra-human nature is inextricably connected with the ‘arrow of time’, that is, with the direction of time, with its a-symmetry, that is, with future(s). And although this has been true throughout recent history, it becomes especially true since technology has reached a point where it becomes feasible to radically change our world by adapting to it. And that is exactly the true meaning of ‘technofutures’. Chapter 2 Technology and the Humanisation of Nature: New Resources for Critical Assessment Maria Antonaccio
‘The End of Nature’ and the Emergence of the Anthropocene
It is not easy being an environmentalist in the twenty first century. The litany of threats to the global biosphere is long and depressing; I need not rehearse them all here. But it is worth noting that the New York Times reported that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been measured at 400 parts per million, passing what the Times called ‘a long-feared milestone’.1 Climate change is only the most sobering evidence that we live in an age of breached limits, crossed thresholds, and points of seemingly no return.2 As a result, some commentators are arguing that we are entering a new chapter in human history in which ‘the impact of humans [on nature] is now as great, and in some instances greater, than nature’s impact on humans’.3 In the face of the biophysical facts, two diametrically opposed responses have risen to the surface of current debate.4 The first is exemplified by the environmentalist Bill McKibben, who was one of the first to speak of ‘the end of nature’ in connection with climate change. Long before the topic had achieved widespread scientific consensus, McKibben grasped its implications and tried to bring it to the attention of a wider public. Just as important as the scientific
1 Justin Gillis, ‘Heat Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears’, New York Times (10 May 2013): A1. 2 Elizabeth Kolbert’s recent book on the current pace of species extinctions reaches a similar conclusion. Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014). 3 Joshua J. Yates, ‘Abundance on Trial: The Cultural Significance of Sustainability’,The Hedgehog Review (Summer 2012): 20. 4 There are many other responses to the current status of the biosphere as well; singling out for emphasis the two I have chosen here is an oversimplification of a complex debate. But they do help to identify a clash of sensibilities afoot both in current debates over the future of environmentalism and in the wider culture. 32 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred evidence he presented, McKibben argued that climate change marks a profound shift in the human horizon of meaning. Through the burning of fossil fuels, humanity has in effect taken the ‘independent, eternal world [of nature], and turned it into a science-fair project’.5 ‘We have built a greenhouse, a human creation, where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden’.6 This is what McKibben meant by ‘the end of nature’: a process of progressive ‘humanisation’ that has finally led to the loss of nature’s independence as a reality separate from the human. ‘By changing the weather’, he writes, ‘we make every spot on earth man-made and artificial. We have deprived nature of its independence, and that is fatal to its meaning. Nature’s independence is its meaning; without it there is nothing but us’.7 The fact that human beings can influence the composition of the atmosphere is definitive evidence, in McKibben’s view, of human hubris taken to its extreme, a sign that humans have finally succeeded in overcoming their status as mere creatures and become god-like. Although he concedes that it is impossible entirely to reverse the processes that have led to this point, he contends that the proper response to the humanisation of nature is repentance, and a scaling back of human desires to fit a more humble self-conception. Recently, a radically different response to the current state of the biosphere has gained ground. This response is exemplified by thinkers who take climate change and other harbingers of the end of nature as heralding a new epoch in Earth’s history called the Anthropocene, or Age of the Human. Although this neologism was first coined by scientists seeking to assess the pace and trajectory of increasing human impacts over a long historical time-span,8 others have adopted the idea of the Anthropocene as the banner of ‘postnaturalism’, marking the liberation of humanity from the myth of pristine nature. These thinkers exemplify an entirely different sensibility from McKibben. For example, whereas McKibben chastises humanity for overstepping its creaturely limits and assuming god-like aspirations, some proponents of the Anthropocene embrace the newfound vocation of humans to be planet managers and ‘guardian gods of Earth’.9 Whereas McKibben laments the loss of our Edenic paradise and describes the independence of nature with nostalgic longing, writers such as Erle Ellis, Director of the Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Biology
5 Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House Trade Paperback, [1989] 2006), 90. 6 McKibben, The End of Nature, 91. 7 McKibben, The End of Nature, 58. 8 Paul Crutzen, the Nobel-prize winning chemist who discovered the ozone hole, was among the first to use the term. See Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen and John R. McNeill, ‘The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?’, Ambio 36, no. 8 (2007): 614–21. 9 Ronald Bailey, ‘Better to Be Potent Than Not’,New York Times (23 May 2011). Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 33 at the University of Maryland-Baltimore, urges us to grow up and get over it. Ellis writes:
Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids were built. You are living on a used planet. If this bothers you, get over it. We now live in the Anthropocene – a geological epoch in which Earth’s atmosphere … [is] shaped primarily by human forces. Yes, nature is still around … but definitely in no position to take the wheel. That’s our job now … For better or for worse, nature has long been what we have made it, and what we will make it … [I]t’s time for ‘postnatural’ environmentalism.10
A more striking contrast to McKibben could hardly be imagined. Whereas McKibben sees the end of nature as evidence of human arrogance, Ellis and other like-minded advocates of postnaturalism see it as an opportunity to embrace our humanity and the anthropogenic landscape we have created. For them, the term ‘Anthropocene’ is not intended to signal human hubris or arrogance, but rather to ‘highlight the immense power of [human] intellect and … creativity, and the opportunities they offer for shaping the future’.11 Rejecting what some have called ‘doom and gloom environmentalism’, the dominant mood of writers like Ellis is one of resolute but cheerful demythologisation in the service of a more hopeful global prospect. They approach our current reality as ‘an opportunity to foster a new appreciation of the lack of separation of people and their planet and a bright prospect for enriching that relationship’.12 As Ellis puts it: ‘What good is environmentalism if it makes you depressed about the future?’13 The ideas and sensibilities associated with these two tropes – despair over the end of nature, on the one hand, and celebration of postnatural environmentalism, on the other – represent radically different responses to the shifts taking place in our current horizon of meaning with respect to ‘nature’, both as an idea and as a biophysical reality. Although these two positions do not exhaust the range of available options and represent ideal types of a sort, they help to clarify the contours of recent debates over the meaning of, and the appropriate response to, the humanisation of nature. Technology is centrally implicated in this debate, since it has been the primary agent of the transformations that have subsumed increasing portions of the biosphere under human influence. The question at the
10 Erle C. Ellis, ‘Stop Trying to Save the Planet’, Wired (6 May 2009). 11 Christian Schwägerl quoted in Andrew Revkin, ‘Confronting the Anthropocene’, Dot Earth, New York Times (11 May 2011). 12 Andrew Revkin, ‘30 Ways to Foster Progress on a Finite Planet’, Dot Earth, New York Times (7 July 2012). 13 Garry Peterson, ‘Erle Ellis on “Postnatural” Environmentalism’, Resilience Science (10 May 2009), http://rs.resalliance.org/2009/05/10/erle-ellis-on-“postnatural”-environmentalism/ (accessed 20 June 2014). 34 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred heart of the debate is the following: what does it mean to be an environmentalist in a postnatural age? Should the task of environmentalism be to try to restore nature’s independence and thus reverse the ‘end’ that has already occurred (as McKibben seems to suggest)? Or should the demise of an independent nature be welcomed and the task of environmentalism be reconceived in more hopeful and explicitly humanistic terms (as Ellis recommends)? Framing the issue as a choice between these two starkly opposed alternatives, however, can be misleading. Neither of the extreme positions just noted can fully account for the complexity and ubiquity of human/nature interactions as they are increasingly mediated by technology today. If these are the only two options, it seems likely that the debate will reach an impasse. The first option – the ideal of a completely independent nature – tends to promote a ‘hyperseparation’14 between humanity and nature that renders any intervention suspect and forces us to choose between environmental integrity and creative human initiative. On the other hand, if we give up on the ideal of an independent nature and accept humanisation as inevitable (as Ellis’s postnaturalism seems to do), then we seem to risk losing the critical force of environmentalism in its traditional role of protecting nature from destructive human impacts. I contend that the problem with both positions is that they remain locked in the assumption that the ideal of an independent nature is the defining issue in the debate, and the only choice is either to defend that ideal or to abandon it. Either environmentalism should try to reverse (or at least restrain) the processes of humanisation by restricting technology to some limit that should not be breached, or environmentalism should take the humanisation of nature as a foregone conclusion and welcome technology as integral to the human project. In both cases, we are forced into an all-or-nothing proposition. Against this assumption, and in order to widen the range of available alternatives, I argue that we may gain a valuable new perspective on the ethics of technology and the meaning of humanisation if we no longer assume that nature’s independence is the defining issue in the debate. Instead of either affirming or rejecting the ideal of an independent nature to provide as the baseline against which human actions should be assessed, we can adopt a less monolithic account of technology and the diverse goods and meanings it makes available in particular contexts of human life. I sketch the outlines of such an approach by drawing on Margaret Jane Radin’s work on commodification in the final section of this chapter. But first, in order to underline why such an approach might be needed, I want to explore two intermediate positions in the current debate, which can be
14 See Val Plumwood, ‘Toward a Progressive Naturalism’, in Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature: Theory and Practice, (ed.) Thomas Heyd (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005): 25–53. Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 35 located midway between the more extreme options I have been discussing. These intermediate positions (represented by Ned Hettinger and Paul Wapner) agree that the ideal of a completely independent nature is no longer a credible ideal for environmentalism. To that extent, they reject the myth of pristine nature underlying McKibben’s position. Yet in spite of this, they continue to affirm some degree of nature’s independence as a safeguard against human overreach. For this reason, they may not offer adequate resources to engage the challenges presented by postnatural environmentalism.
Alternative Paradigms: Restoration Ecology and Reconciliation Ecology
In the aftermath of McKibben’s publication ofThe End of Nature in 1989, at least three related trends emerged which have helped to redefine the terrain of environmentalism: 1) a critique of the dualism that underlies the myth of pristine or untouched nature, especially the ideal of wilderness as a place devoid of human presence; 2) a recognition that ideas of nature are not transparent or value- neutral descriptions of reality, but social constructs that emerge in particular historical and cultural contexts; and 3) a shift from the preservationist paradigm of nature-protection that dominated twentieth-century environmentalism to alternative paradigms that acknowledge the inevitability of human impacts and the co-implication of nature and society.15 The work of two environmentalists, Ned Hettinger and Paul Wapner, shows the influence of some of these trends. Both thinkers attempt to formulate a middle path between the preservationist ideal of an independent nature and the wholesale rejection of nature’s independence characteristic of promoters of the Anthropocene. Of the two positions, Hettinger remains closer to the preservationist pole and more critical of the claims of postnatural environmentalism, while Wapner adopts a more activist approach that recognises the need for deliberate human management of nature. Although both thinkers continue to defend some degree of nature’s independence from humanity, Wapner is more forthright in unsettling this notion and seeking an alternative conceptualisation. In a 2012 essay, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm for the Human Relationship with Nature’, Hettinger notes that restoration has largely replaced preservation as the major paradigm for the protection of nature and offers a survey of restoration’s risks and benefits. He begins by defining the difference between preservation and restoration. Whereas preservationists ‘loc[ate]
15 For a classic collection of papers on these and other trends, see William Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996). 36 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred nature’s value in its lack of humanization …, restorationists see nature’s value in its thriving biodiversity’.16 Whereas preservationists tend to regard humans as separate from nature, restorationists contend that ‘restoration is a virtuous way for humans to be part of nature’.17 And whereas preservation adopts an ethics of restraint and sees the proper human role in nature as that of a visitor who treads lightly, restoration adopts an ethics of healing and sees human beings as participants in that process through appropriate technologies. From this description, restoration seems to represent a perfect compromise between what Hettinger calls the ‘human/nature apartheid’18 of the preservation paradigm and the celebration of humanisation characteristic of some proponents of the Anthropocene. Hettinger makes three points about the value of restoration.19 First, restoration can be genuinely effective in helping a degraded piece of nature flourish again on its own and for its own sake, not only for human benefit. Thus restoration need not be anthropocentric in either its motives or its results.20 Second, instead of simply pretending that nature will be fine if we just leave it alone (as preservation seems to assume), restorationists acknowledge the massive damage humans have caused the natural world and seek to make amends through active intervention.21 Third (and this is perhaps the most important point), the restoration paradigm insists on the importance of human participation and engagement in nature ‘as a necessary part of a healthy human/nature relation and views the self-abnegation in preservationism as incompatible with human flourishing’.22 That is, restoration provides a positive vision of humanity’s place in nature: as an engaged and active participant, rather than a visitor who leaves nature undisturbed. These points suggest that Hettinger favours the restoration paradigm as a positive gain over preservation. However, Hettinger goes on to note that ‘there are also serious problems with taking restoration as a positive model for human/nature relations’.23 First, restoration is often guilty of hubris insofar as it overestimates the extent to which nature ‘needs’ human beings to ‘heal’ it. This is an exaggeration of human importance, the old sin of anthropocentrism in a new guise.24 Second, Hettinger
16 Ned Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm for the Human Relationship with Nature’, in Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change, (ed.) Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendik- Keymer (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 27. 17 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 28. 18 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 34. 19 Actually, he makes four points, but I have conflated the third and the fourth in this summary. 20 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 34. 21 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 30. 22 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 33. 23 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 35. 24 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 35–7. Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 37 contends that restoration does not adequately appreciate the value of wildness. By encouraging the ongoing human management of restored landscapes as a positive opportunity for human participation in nature, restoration underestimates the value of having some portions of biotic nature remain free from human manipulation.25 Finally, Hettinger argues that restoration’s positive vision of the human-nature relation is flawed because it presupposes a prior destructive relationship.26 That is, since the purpose of restoration is to rectify past mistakes and to undo wrongful harms, it can hardly be considered an appropriate model of healthy human-nature relations. For these reasons, Hettinger concludes that embracing restoration ‘as a paradigmatic relationship with nature only make sense given the current abusive human treatment of nature’.27 The better alternative would be for humans to find ‘a type of participatory relationship with nature that doesn’t presuppose degrading nature to begin with’.28 Hettinger defines a positive human-nature relation by distinguishing between the use and abuse of nature: ‘Humans can use nature and be involved with it while respecting its autonomy, as long as they do not massively impact nature or try to dominate or control. It is only the abusive, domineering human impacts on nature that require restoration’.29 The main difference between this model and the preservationist paradigm is that it recognises the human need to make use of nature and offers a more positive endorsement of technology than preservationism does. ‘Culture, civilization, and technology’ are ‘essential aspects of what make us human’, Hettinger writes, and they ‘do not necessarily destroy or dominate nature’.30 However, the norms that Hettinger believes should guide the use of technology are the ideals of non-domination and minimal impact. In Hettinger’s scenario, the human footprint on the planet would remain relatively small in scale so that nature could typically heal itself and greater levels of wild nature would be able to flourish free from human manipulation or control. In short, humans would cause so little damage to nature (i.e., ‘only on a local scale with harmful impacts limited to individuals’31) that our role as restorers or healers would not be needed. Hettinger’s criticisms of the restoration paradigm indicate the continuing influence of preservationism on his thought, despite his acknowledgment of the inadequacies of that paradigm. Although he is willing to acknowledge that human technological capacities are part and parcel of our distinctive nature as a species, the norms that should guide the use of technology, in his view, are
25 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 37–8. 26 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 39. 27 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 41. 28 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 40. 29 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 40. 30 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 40. 31 Hettinger, ‘Nature Restoration as a Paradigm’, 40. 38 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred severely restrictive. Hettinger finds the use of technology even to restore damaged nature potentially grandiose and hubristic, because it allows human beings to inflate their own importance as healers of the earth. This is rather puzzling, since one of the strengths Hettinger associated with the restoration paradigm was its insistence on the importance of human participation in nature as a positive and necessary part of a healthy human-nature relation. Yet the position he ultimately affirms seems to limit that participation to near-preservationist levels ofnon - impact, i.e., to accommodate human needs, but not much more. For that reason, his position seems like a modified version of preservationism, rather than an attempt to subject the preservationist ideal of an independent nature to critical scrutiny. Wapner’s book, Living Through the End of Nature, is more effective in engaging that critical task. Written in part as both an elaboration of and a correction to McKibben’s original thesis about the end of nature, Wapner acknowledges that the humanisation of nature is a reality and that it poses a fundamental challenge to traditional environmentalism. However, instead of lamenting this situation, Wapner argues that it presents an opportunity for the environmental movement to reinvent itself. This note of hopeful optimism suggests that Wapner shares something important with proponents of the Anthropocene: he takes postnaturalism for granted as his starting point. Nature has already ‘ended’ (in the sense that it can no longer be conceived as absolutely independent of the human), so the question is how to move forward from this point, not backward. Wapner is thus prepared to distance himself from the ideals of preservationism more decisively than Hettinger. This is reflected in the fact that Wapner is not as sceptical of deliberate human interventions into nature. In fact, one of the myths he is at pains to dispel is that the preservation paradigm involves leaving nature undisturbed. Instead, Wapner contends that ‘wilderness protection is, and always has been, a matter of human creation and management involving a tremendous amount of human thought, energy, and intervention’.32 Moreover, given the extent of human impacts today, ‘we can no longer simply let the nonhuman world be … [W]ilderness cannot survive on its own, or more accurately, cannot maintain a semblance of wildness without human help. We have become, whether we like it or not, managers of the nonhuman world’.33 In Wapner’s view, environmentalism should embrace rather than resist this fact. Wapner favours a paradigm called ‘reconciliation ecology’ to capture the type of human/nature relation he believes is appropriate in a humanised world. Similar to the restoration paradigm described earlier, reconciliation involves active human intervention to heal nature of damages and to restore so-called
32 Paul Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 135. 33 Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature, 142. Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 39 natural values that have been degraded through humanisation. However, reconciliation ecology differs from the restoration paradigm – at least as Hettinger describes it – in significant ways.34 The goal of reconciliation is not simply to restore nature to its former state; rather, its ideal is a more intentional and creative ‘melding’ of human communities with nature (e.g., by establishing wilderness corridors that provide migration routes and safe havens in and around the built human environment). The central metaphors of reconciliation ecology as Wapner describes it are ‘permeability’ and ‘connectivity’. Its general strategy is the blurring of boundaries between the human world and the biophysical environment. As Wapner writes: ‘For too long, humans have maintained cultural and philosophical boundaries between ourselves and wildness … [W]e have carried on a tradition of separation and separateness’.35 Reconciliation ecology replaces this emphasis on boundaries and separation with the ideas of relationship and interconnection. It should be clear from this description that reconciliation ecology directly challenges the human-nature dualism characteristic of the preservationist insistence on an independent nature. The appropriate metaphor for human beings’ relation to nature is not primarily that of ‘a visitor who treads lightly’ (as in preservation), nor is it primarily ‘an active participant in healing nature’s wounds’ (as in Hettinger’s description of restoration). Rather, reconciliation ecology sees human beings as ‘part and parcel of … natural cycles’.36 Human beings are not only engaged participants but partners in a relationship with nature that may include a variety of activities: from deliberate management of nature (as in the creation of wildlife corridors), to targeted restoration of degraded areas, to wholesale protection or preservation (as in wilderness areas). The reconciliation paradigm is therefore significantly more active and interventionist than the small-scale human impacts envisioned by Hettinger. In short, Wapner is more willing than Hettinger is to challenge the assumption of an independent nature and to acknowledge the ubiquity and constancy of human/nature interactions as the baseline assumption from which a contemporary environmentalism should begin its work. However, although Wapner recognises that blurring the human/nature boundary is important and even inevitable, he insists that ‘the future of [environmentalism] is not about completely collapsing the distinction between
34 The range of views among restorationists is actually quite varied and lie on a spectrum, from less interventionist (as in Hettinger) to more actively participatory. Restorationists such as William Jordan, for example, might align themselves with the reconciliation view favoured by Wapner. See William Jordan, The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion With Nature (Oakland: University of California Press, 2003). Thanks to Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser for her helpful comments. 35 Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature, 159. 36 Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature, 159. 40 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred humans and the more-than-human world’.37 Rather, ‘there needs to be some appreciation for and effort devoted to safeguarding the otherness of the nonhuman world’.38 Not unlike Hettinger, then, Wapner retains some notion of nature’s independence (or at least differentiation) from the human. For both thinkers, the ideal of ‘wildness’ functions as a restraint and a safeguard against the dangers of humanisation. The difference is that for Wapner, wildness or otherness need not only be a quality associated with undomesticated nature free of human influence. Wildness can also refer, in his view, to the qualities of wonder and surprise that arise in all intimate relationships – including the human relationship with nature. Rather than seeking to leave nature undisturbed, Wapner’s reconciliation ecology strives to remove the obstacles that segregate humans from nature and to provide increased opportunities for the quality of wildness to emerge in and through this interaction. Wapner’s emphasis on the blurring of boundaries between humanity and nature offers a more decisive challenge to the dualism of the preservationist perspective than Hettinger’s. In fact, Wapner’s entire approach attempts to break out of the habit of ‘boundary thinking’ in general. He recognises, for example, that the attempt to erect and maintain boundaries against technological interventions in a postnatural age is highly paradoxical, since technology is centrally implicated both in the humanising processes that have compromised nature’s independence, as well as in the reversal of those humanising processes through the strategies of restoration and reconciliation. The irony of the postnatural condition, in Wapner’s view, is that appreciating and cultivating wildness now requires deliberate human intervention. Despite the more nuanced understanding of human/nature interactions that Wapner offers, however, there is a sense in which his position reinstates the ideal of nature’s independence in another form. His version of postnaturalism is inflected with a Buddhist-inspired ethic of non-dualism, which allows experiences of otherness or wildness to emerge from within the human experience of relationality. Although he is prepared to acknowledge the permeability of the boundary between humanity and nature, the values of wildness and otherness function no less than the ideal of a separate or independent nature as a safeguard against excessive human mastery or control. In the remainder of this paper, I want to advance the debate beyond Hettinger’s and Wapner’s critiques of the preservationist paradigm. Although both thinkers, to differing degrees, recognise the limits of this paradigm as an appropriate model for human/nature relations, they fail to break out of the habit of appealing to a univocal value (e.g., nature’s wildness or otherness) as the norm against which human actions in nature should be assessed. That habit of mind
37 Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature, 157. 38 Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature, 157, emphasis added. Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 41 is often linked with a view of technology that sees it primarily as a set of devices, techniques, or feats of engineering that allows human beings to manipulate and transform the physical realities of nature. As an alternative, I want to suggest that technology is the arena in which the complexity of the relations between the biophysical environment and the human social world are negotiated and played out. That is, technology can be understood as lying ‘at the confluence of the physical and the social’ and as ‘inherently and inevitably shaped by both’.39 Seeing technology in these terms disrupts the common tendency to associate the protection of the environment with the critique of technology (i.e., as inherently damaging to nature), as well as the tendency to associate the promotion of technology with human domination and arrogance. Instead, technology can be understood as a human practice whose widely varied uses and impacts are not monolithic and need to be evaluated in particular contexts and in relation to the goods and values it expresses. To indicate the general direction of this approach (which I can only sketch here), I turn to what may appear to be an unlikely source, Margaret Jane Radin’s work on commodification, for methodological resources that provide an alternative method for assessing technology in the context of the humanisation of nature.40 What could commodification, a phenomenon associated with economics and the effects of market culture on human values, have to do with environmentalism? I begin by indicating why I think Radin’s work may be suggestive in this context.
Humanisation and Commodification
As Radin defines it, commodification ‘denotes a particular social construction of things people value, their social construction as commodities. Commodification refers to the social process by which something comes to be apprehended as a commodity, as well as to the state of affairs once the process has taken place’.41 The focus of her book, contested commodities, ‘refers to instances in which we experience personal and social conflict about the process and the result’.42 Although commodification and humanisation are not identical processes, and
39 William R. Freudenburg, Scott Frickel and Robert Gramling, ‘Beyond the Nature/ Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain’,Sociological Forum 10, no. 3 (September 1995): 370. 40 Margaret Jane Radin, Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children, Body Parts, and Other Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [1996] 2001). I cannot do justice here to the complex and engrossing argument of this book; further development will have to await a future occasion. 41 Radin, Contested Commodities, xii. 42 Radin, Contested Commodities, xii. 42 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred concerns about commodification may not exactly parallel those associated with humanisation, I believe that commodification and humanisation are similar in some relevant respects. The first and perhaps most immediate connection between the two processes is that the humanisation of the biophysical world is often carried out precisely by means of commodification, as the increasingly common habit of referring to nature in terms of ‘natural capital’ suggests. In this locution, the value of nature is reduced to its exchange or market value, making it difficult to think about nature’s value in any other way. The fact that the rhetoric of natural capital has become so widespread (spreading far beyond the domain of environmental economics where it first emerged) points to a structural similarity between commodification and humanisation: both are social processes that have a tendency to exceed a limited field of application and become totalising or monolithic in their effects. When this occurs, as Radin notes, we may have reason to fear that certain goods are thereby suppressed or rendered unintelligible. Radin argues that the increasing encroachment of market norms and market discourse into areas of human culture that were previously thought to be immune from them may endanger values associated with human dignity and personhood that have become deeply entrenched in modern democratic cultures. Among the examples she gives of currently ‘contested commodities’ are ‘infants and children, human reproduction, sperm, eggs, embryos, blood, human organs, human sexuality, human pain, human labor’.43 The worry about the commodification of these things is that the meanings and values associated with them will be transformed or degraded once they become monetised or subjected to market exchange. I suggest that a similar worry may attend the processes of humanisation, for similar reasons. Like commodification, the humanisation of nature threatens to subject areas of nature that were previously thought to be immune from human influence to the dynamics of the human social world. In doing so, humanisation, like commodification, may alter or render inaccessible certain values associated with nature that we have come to regard as essential or constitutive goods within the human horizon of meaning. Given the dangers of commodification, one might expect Radin to develop a theory for why certain boundaries ought to be erected against commodification in many instances. Yet one of the striking features of her approach is that she intentionally refuses to start her analysis from the blanket assumption that ‘commodification is always wrong’.44 Instead, she regards it as a genuine question whether certain goods should be protected against commodification or not. Adopting a pragmatic methodology, Radin eschews the search for an overarching theory or single meaning of commodification and instead attends to the details
43 Radin, Contested Commodities, 21. 44 Radin, Contested Commodities, xii. Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 43 of context. In her view, ‘no one theory is suitable for all cases of contested commodification’.45 Hence, she gives ‘no wholesale argument that commodified understandings – market conceptualisations – are bad no matter where and how they occur’. Instead, she tries ‘to work through these complexities with respect to a number of salient issues’.46 Accordingly, Radin analyses particular instances of commodification in contemporary culture (e.g., prostitution, adoption, organ donation, etc.) in order to diagnose the various meanings and social conflicts implicit in each. My contention is that Radin’s methodology is suggestive for how we might approach the ethical import of the humanisation of nature. Consider the selling of human body parts as an instance of contested commodification. Radin notes that one approach to this issue would be to prohibit people from selling their own organs on the grounds that it is degrading to human personhood. (In fact, the protection of personhood is one reason that organ donation continues to be guided by the norm of altruism rather than by the logic of market exchange.) However, as Radin points out, the decision to ban the practice of selling organs could actually endanger the value of personhood rather than protect it, and it could jeopardise other values such as social justice as well. This is because an absolute ban on selling one’s organs may affect economically disadvantaged individuals in a society differently than the well- off, thereby giving rise to what Radin refers to as ‘double binds’. As she notes:
[I]f people are so desperate for money that they are trying to sell things we think cannot be separated from them without significant injury to personhood, we do not cure the desperation by banning sales. … Perhaps worse injury to personhood is suffered from the desperation that caused the attempt to sell a kidney or cornea than would be suffered from actually selling it. The would-be sellers apparently think so.47
Double binds are a pervasive feature of contested cases of commodification and one of the most difficult problems to resolve. Although Radin admits that ‘I have no handy algorithm for making the decision to allow the sale of organs or not’, she insists that ‘the double bind must be taken seriously in all cases in which it is claimed that commodification harms or disempowers persons or contributes to social subordination’.48 Radin’s sensitivity to context and her adoption of a pragmatic methodology that rejects univocal theories of commodification may be taken as a suggestive model in evaluating complex instances of humanisation in relation to technology.
45 Radin, Contested Commodities, xii. 46 Radin, Contested Commodities, xii. 47 Radin, Contested Commodities, 125. 48 Radin, Contested Commodities, 126. 44 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
For example, her analysis of the way in which double binds frequently arise when a univocal theory is applied seems applicable to the highly contested policy discussions of global climate change (and the remedies proposed to correct it) given its differential effects on human populations. The call to set internationally mandated limits to emissions of the atmospheric gases contributing to climate change may seem an obvious environmentally-warranted solution, yet the disparate effects of this policy among developed vs developing countries often incurs a double bind with respect to norms of justice. In such cases, one can readily agree with Radin that there is no ‘handy algorithm’ for deciding what policy to adopt. Yet the very existence of double binds calls attention to the limitations of applying univocal norms or blanket prohibitions and to look more carefully, as she does, at the social and physical conditions generating the differential effects of technologies in the first place. A second feature of Radin’s methodology that may contain useful analogies for an analysis of humanisation is her contention that commodification need not be an all-or-nothing affair, but admits of degrees. Rather than assuming that the only options are ‘universal noncommodification’ (i.e., nothing should be subjected to markets) at one extreme, and ‘universal commodification’ (i.e., nothing should be immune from markets) at the other, she contends that ‘matters [are] too complex to be captured adequately by one of these wholesale theories’.49 Instead, Radin develops a theory of ‘incomplete commodification’ that avoids both extremes. Her hope is that this intermediate concept ‘will help us deal better with the complexities of commodification as we experience it’.50 As Radin construes it, incomplete commodification can accommodate the co-existence of both commodified and non-commodified understandings of various aspects of social life. She uses work and housing as examples of incomplete commodification. For many people, work is ‘not only the way we make our living but also a part of ourselves’.51 Similarly, ‘although a house has market value and we can express our investment in terms of dollars, there is a nonmonetizable, personal aspect to many people’s relationships with their homes’.52 Thus both work and housing have both commodified and non- commodified values that can coexist relatively stably. From a social perspective, the incomplete commodification of work is supported by reforms such as collective bargaining, health and safety requirements and retirement benefits. Regulations such as rent control and antidiscrimination policies play a similar role in supporting the incomplete commodification of housing. The upshot of Radin’s analysis is that: ‘Once we recognize that commodification and
49 Radin, Contested Commodities, xiii. 50 Radin, Contested Commodities, xii. 51 Radin, Contested Commodities, 108. 52 Radin, Contested Commodities, 108. Technology and the Humanisation of Nature 45 noncommodification can pervasively coexist …, complete noncommodification and complete commodification can be seen as largely hypothetical end points of a continuum of possible meanings and corresponding policy choices’.53 Radin’s concept of incomplete commodification yields some potentially illuminating insights in the context of the humanisation of nature. It suggests the need for a category of ‘incomplete humanisation’ as an alternative to the extreme options of the ‘universal nonhumanisation of nature’, on the one hand, and ‘universal humanisation’, on the other. Like commodification, the humanising of nature can be seen as a continuum rather than a clear boundary. ‘Universal nonhumanisation’ (the analogue to Radin’s category of universal noncommodification) represents the preservationist ideal of traditional environmentalism. Those who adopt this viewpoint assess technology’s humanising effects in terms of the degree to which they either leave nature as undisturbed as possible, or conform to nature’s own laws and limits. As we saw earlier in this chapter, however, an ethic that takes complete nonhumanisation as its baseline fails to acknowledge the ubiquity and necessity of human/nature interaction and threatens to write human beings and their distinctive cultural capacities out of nature entirely. The other extreme, ‘universal humanisation’ (the analogue to Radin’s category of universal commodification), represents the vision associated with some proponents of the Anthropocene. Like universal commodification, universal humanisation can be seen as a reductionist or monolithic value scheme that threatens to destroy, transform or render inaccessible certain natural values. Universal humanisation obviously endangers nonhuman nature, since a completely humanised world subjects nature entirely to human processes. This, in fact, has been the constant worry of environmentalism. What is not as obvious is that universal humanisation may pose a threat to human flourishing as well, if we acknowledge that human participation in and interaction with nature are essential components of what it means to live well as a human being. That is, when humanisation threatens to become a monolithic value scheme, it arguably renders certain conceptions of a flourishing human life unintelligible. In contrast to the two extremes, ‘incomplete humanisation’ (the analogue to incomplete commodification) represents the middle position on the continuum: a situation in which humanised and non-humanised meanings of nature co-exist. As Radin’s analysis of commodification suggests, there may be more or less stable instances of this co-existence. In unstable instances of incomplete humanisation, the tendency is for the humanised meanings and experiences of nature to gain the upper hand or become monolithic. In more stable instances of incomplete humanisation, however, the natural world may be experienced as valuable in more than one sense simultaneously: as enfolded within the human world (and
53 Radin, Contested Commodities, 104. 46 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred thus subject to human design or control in some measure), yet at the same time continuing to develop according to its own internal exigencies. The coexistence of humanised and non-humanised values, moreover, may give rise to values and meanings that only arise at the confluence of the social and natural worlds. Although further analysis is needed to develop this line of inquiry, let me conclude with some remarks as to why I find the conceptual alternative represented by Radin’s methodology a helpful stimulus in considering how environmentalism might respond to the challenges of postnaturalism. Those who adopt the view of incomplete humanisation as an ethical stance would be committed to the view that reductionist value schemes cannot do justice to the plurality of the values by which human beings live or the complexities of the ways in which technologies mediate interactions between the natural and social worlds. Such proponents of incomplete humanisation would have an interest in resisting forms of technology that encourage a reduction of values or that ignore the double binds that arise when univocal theories are applied to complex human problems. The notion of incomplete humanisation can make a potentially helpful contribution to contemporary environmentalism by urging a rapprochement between humanistic and environmental values, one that avoids unthinkingly equating a positive affirmation of humantechne with the sin of hubris. In that sense, it represents a genuine alternative to the visions of human/nature relations proposed by proponents of both preservationism and the Anthropocene. Chapter 3 Artefactualising the Sacred: Restating the Case for Martin Heidegger’s ‘Hermeneutical’ Philosophy of Technology Fionn Bennett
Introduction: A Litany of Misprision
‘Never has such a succession of non sequiturs played such an important role in the history of philosophy!’ That is Andrew Feenberg’s opinion of Heidegger’s contribution to the philosophy of technology. He is seconded in his disapproval by Don Ihde who rejects Heidegger’s ‘völkisch techno-romanticism’ and ‘reactionary modernism’. Along with Peter-Paul Verbeek, Ihde also berates Heidegger’s ‘externalist’, ‘high altitude’, ‘one size fits all’ analysis of the ‘essence’ of technology. And his view that Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is an apologia for inhumanity is echoed, inter alia, by Soren Riis.1 Faced with assessments as damning as these, some readers will conclude that the days of Heidegger being considered a legitimate reference for the philosophy of technology are over. Others will be less rash and conclude that philosophy of technology readers would benefit from a fresh close reading of Heidegger. This will be particularly true of those who are familiar with Heidegger’s corpus. For they will know that his philosophy of technology is part of a larger ‘thought- way’ (Denkweg) and suspect that much of the criticism he has received in recent commentaries reflects a failure to see his comments on technology in their proper context. These same readers may also sense that developments in technology since Heidegger’s time have not so much diminished the relevance and importance of his views as given them added urgency. What will have convinced them of this more than anything else is the role played by technology
1 Andrew Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (London: Routledge, 2005), 22; Don Ihde, Heidegger’s Technologies: Postphenomenological Perspectives (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 14; Peter-Paul Verbeek, Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 3, 161; Soren Riis, ‘Towards the Origin of Modern Technology: Reconfiguring Martin Heidegger’s Thinking’, Continental Philosophical Review 44, no. 1 (2011): 103–17. 48 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred in aggravating humankind’s already poor relations with nature and thereby the material conditions of possibility of its own existence. Why, they will wonder, is so little credit given to the philosophy of technology of a thinker who seeks not just to stop this tendency but to actually make technology an interface for a positive and even a soteriological relationship with nature? With the aim of being of service to such a readership, this chapter offers a summary of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. It focuses in particular on the enigmatic claim that technology is ‘supremely perilous’ and for that very reason a source of ‘salvation’. Along the way it looks at the way the extra- technological aspects of his thought inform and condition his discourse on technology. Particular attention is paid to what Heidegger says about the sacred, ethics, ethology and art, and how his views on these things are factored into what he says about technology. To conclude, it considers whether a determination of technology that conforms to Heidegger’s thought is viable in practice, and, if so, whether adopting it would entail adjustments that twenty-first century humanity could accept in principle. We also consider if it is acceptable and viable to not embrace Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. What, then, does Heidegger mean by calling technology ‘the uttermost danger’ (die äußerste Gefahr)?
What is ‘Dangerous’ about die Technik?
To answer this question we need to make a few distinctions and restrictions. First, we need to distinguish between the standard, ‘instrumentalist’ acceptation of technology and what Heidegger calls the ‘essence’ (Wese n) of technology. This is important because it is only in the essence of technology that we will see why it is a ‘danger’ that ‘saves’.2 The second distinction we need to make is between technology in all its acceptations and ‘danger’ as Heidegger uses the word, and once we have made that distinction we need to focus on what Heidegger means by ‘danger’ quite independently of what he means by technology. Doing this is essential because technology per se is not ‘dangerous’. For unto itself technology is merely ‘a mode of unconcealment’ (eine Weise des Entbergens).3 This means it is a medium that relays what is revealed by it. And qua medium it is incumbent on it to be neutral in relation to what is revealed by it, for if it were not its opacity would obscure the perception of what gets mediated thereby.4 Hence,
2 Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: G. Neske, 1994), 16–17, 154. 3 Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 32–4. 4 The remark in ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ about the danger of viewing technology as ‘something neutral’ (See Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 9), applies only to the ‘conventional’ acceptation of technology – not to its ‘essential’ acceptation. Artefactualising the Sacred 49 if there is something dangerous about technology, which in itself is neutral, one needs to look for the causes of the peril in some extra-technological factor or variable. And where Heidegger finds the cause of technology’s dangerousness is in the way humanity and nature currently interface, interact and, through this interaction, inter-condition one another in their ‘Co-Being-together-in- the-world’ (Miteinandersein). To put it another way, for Heidegger, technology is dangerous because it equips and operationalises something dangerous in the way that modern humanity interfaces with its more-than-human surroundings. What, then, is perilous in the way humankind and nature interface, and how does technology operationalise this danger? First, a reminder of Heidegger’s perspective on these matters.
Heidegger’s ‘Existentialism’: Apprehending Being-in-the-world Apocalyptically and Eucharistically
To come straight to the point, Heidegger was, in the final analysis, a proponent of an ‘existentialist phenomenology’.5 For despite all the caveats that are required when speaking of an oeuvre as varied, complex and overdetermined as Heidegger’s, no appellative suits quite as well as this. What singularises this approach is an apprehension of ‘that-which-exists’ (das was ist) from the dread-inspiring perspective of the ‘possibility of the unlimited impossibility of any existence whatsoever’ (die Möglichkeit der schlechthinnigen Daseinsunmöglichkeit).6 Predictably, this ‘holding that-which-exists out into Nothingness’ (Hineingehaltenheit in das Nichts von Seyn)7 has lead to the academic equivalent of blood-curdling shrieks about Heidegger’s philosophy boiling down to a ‘thanatopraxis’ or a ‘cult of death’.8 Just as predictably, Heidegger was tireless in denying this9 insisting that an experience of ‘Being-towards-Death’ (Sein-zum- Tod e) was a prerequisite for two things. First, ‘Being-towards-Death’ defines that-which-exists qua existing because it is only from the perspective of not existing that an existing being’s specificityqua something existing stands out.10
5 Mark Wrathall, Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 4. 6 See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1927), 250, 262. 7 Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1996) 115, 118. 8 Françoise Dastur, Heidegger et la question anthropologique (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), 28. 9 Martin Heidegger, Metaphysik und Nihilismus (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1999), 59; Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1987), 155. 10 See Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 171, 248; Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 250–52; Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie: Vom Ereignis (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1989), 161; Heidegger, Wegmarken, 113–20. 50 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Second, ‘Being-towards-Death’ determines the value of ‘that-which-exists’ qua existing. For when apprehended from the perspective of ‘the pure-Other-than- that-which-is’, everything one perceives precipitates Eckhartian ‘Isness’ (Istigkeit) and existence itself becomes ‘eucharistic’, ‘thaumatic’ or ‘wonderous’.11 Now from this existentialist perspective the currently dominant humankind- nature relation – and therefore the role played by technology in mediating that relationship – reflects an essentially nihilistic existential degeneracy.12 This is what Heidegger means when he uses expressions like ‘Homelessness’, ‘Self-alienation’, ‘wasted’ (Heimatlosigkeit, Selbstentfremdung, verwahrlost) to characterise our dystopic ‘Worldview’ (Weltbild, Weltschicksal). In fine, our age is ‘indigent’ (dürftig) because it is in a ‘deficient’ or ‘privative’ relationship to what gives meaning and value to Being-in-the-world.13 When discussing the aetiology of this existential pathology Heidegger focuses on what he calls the ‘Subject- Object relationship’ (die Subjekt-Objekt Beziehung).
What Singularises our Worldview: the Incubi of the ‘Subject-Object Relation’, ‘the Enframing’ (das Gestell) and ‘Being requisitioned by the Enframing’ (das herausfordernde Stellen)
Obviously, it is not feasible to enter into Heidegger’s exhaustive analysis of the birth and history of this existentially degenerate ‘Mode-of-Being’ (Seinsart). Suffice it to say, it became the dominant and normal mode of Being-in-the- world from the moment Western humanity arrogated to itself the prerogative of deciding what ‘that-which-is’ is and what it is not.14 This development Heidegger calls ‘die unbedingte Selbstbehauptung der Subjektivität des Menschen’, i.e., a refusal to allow anything to be and to behave in any other way than how it suits human volition and appetence for it to be and behave. The determination of what-is that suits this aspiration best is what Heidegger calls an ‘unbedingte und vollständige Vergegenständlichung von allem, was ist’ or ‘die Bestellbarkeit der Natur als Bestand’. That is to say, the creation of a world peopled by nothing but
11 Heidegger, Wegmarken, 306–7; Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (Frankfurt-am- Main: Klostermann, 1982), 74, 110–11. For Heidegger’s use of ‘Istic-keit’, see Martin Heidegger, Seminare (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 2005), 325. Compare with Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1976), 73; Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 39; Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought(New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 65–6, 81 on the related notion of ‘enargeia’. 12 Martin Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1996), 12. 13 On the ‘depravity’ of this mode of Being-in-the-world, see Heidegger’s analysis of ‘das Böse’ in Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Stuttgart: G. Neske, 1997), 59–60. 14 Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 110; Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt- am-Main: Klostermann, 1950), 81. Artefactualising the Sacred 51
‘objects’ whose calculability, manipulability and exploitability secures the place of humankind in this world as the sole arbiter of Being and not-Being. Now, from the perspective of Heidegger’s existentialist phenomenology, this determination of ‘Being-there’ (Dasein), world (Welt) and their relation (Verhältnis) is problematic for two main reasons. The first is that it radically disserves the interests of the intended beneficiary – humanity itself. Heidegger explains why in those places where he speaks of ‘the Enframing’ (das Gestell). Basically, the Enframing is an existence-embracing, purely ‘anthropo-telic’ organising principle conceived to sate homocratic appetence and volition and to do so as efficiently, productively and comprehensively as possible. However, the Enframing cannot satisfy the collective appetites and volition of humankind as comprehensively as it is supposed to without requisitioning and commissioning human beings as radically and brutally as it exploits nature, and in so doing reducing people to ‘technicised labour animals’.15 But what Heidegger deplores more than humanity’s quasi-robotisation by the Enframing is the way this Mode-of-Being ‘dissimulates and falsifies’ what is ‘innately own-most’ about humans, about world and about their relation, namely, that ‘ec-static di-mension’ of Dasein and of the world into which one must inquire in order to discern how they are given to themselves by being given to each other by something incommensurably other than either but without whose agency neither could be. Now, if Heidegger is at pains to draw our attention to this blind spot it is not simply to identify this ‘Obliviousness-towards-Being’ (Seinsvergessenheit) as the source of our nihilistic mode of Being-in-the-world. It is also to point out that because ‘Obliviousness-towards-Being’ is the source of our pathologically nihilistic mode of Being-in-the-world, it is in this source that we need to seek a remedy for existential degeneracy. For if it is nihilistic to have a privative relationship to that to which we are indebted for our Being, then to not be in a nihilistic relationship to Being means we need to enter into a privative relationship to our privative relationship to Being. Alternately the ‘cure’ for self-alienation is a ‘turn’ (Einkehr) within the process leading to self-alienation from where it is heading at present towards what is left behind by becoming self-alienated.16 Only thus will we be re-appropriated (an-eignet) to what is innately ‘own-most’ and most essential to what it is to ‘Be’. But what is ‘innermost’, ‘own-most’ and ‘essential-most’ in Dasein, in world and in their relation? And why is it salutary to be heedful to or attuned to
15 Martin Heidegger, Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1959), 22; Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 68–9; Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 115; Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie, 72, 155; Heidegger, Seminare, 370; Martin Heidegger, Überlieferte Sprache und technische Sprache (Sankt Gallen: Erker Verlag, 1989), 19–20. 16 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology trans. William Lovitt (New York: Garland, 1977), 41–4; Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 118–19; Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage, 41; and Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 68. 52 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred this ‘ownfulness’ (Eigenheit)? The answer Heidegger gives to these questions is contained in those passages where he uses words like ‘Serenity’, ‘intimate Tenderness’, ‘Grace’, ‘pure coming-to-Be’ (die Heitere, Feindseligkeit, χάρις, das reine Ereignis) and – singularly – ‘Releasement’ (Gelassenheit) to identify the salvational (rettend) mode of Being-in-the-world which is obscured by the currently dominant Subject-Object relation.
‘Pure coming-to-Be’ and ‘Releasement’ (Gelassenheit): Ethical and Utilitarian Applications
What these words and their cognates represent is notoriously difficult to describe. But basically what they evoke is a unitive communion of the human being as percipient and nature as correlative perception resulting in a state of ‘un-owned awareness’ very like samâdhi in Tantric Yoga, fanâa il ’illâh in Sufism andziran in Taoist philosophy.17 One could also say that it consists of a ‘de-dual-isation’ or ‘un-selving’ of experience by becoming one’s more than one’s Subject-hood in the more than the Object-hood of that with which one communes in ‘infused contemplation’.18 ‘Co-letting-them-Be-together’ (Zusammen-gehörenlassen) is how Heidegger identifies this mode of ‘Being-with’ Mitsein( ) linking Dasein and world. What is felicitous about it is not merely attaining a state of awareness of what is ‘innately own-most’ in Dasein, in nature and in their Co-Being in the ‘Clearing of Being’ (Lichtung des Seienden). More felicitous still is the way in which experiencing Releasement predisposes one to a ‘concernful Being-with others’ (fürsorgende Mitsein mit den Anderen) and, accessorily, circumspection, considerateness, forbearance and empathy (Umsicht, Rücksicht, Nachsicht, besorgendes Sein bei Zuhandenem, Zärtlichkeit, Freundlichkeit) towards the beings with which one shares Being-in-the-world. However, again, a mere ‘awareness’ of this solicitude is not aspired to as an end in itself. Moreover, attaining it in no way entails being in a state of catatonic will-lessness.19 Above all, it does not, as some critics aver, ‘condemn human agency’.20 For, just like the Platonic ‘anabasis’, it has a ‘katabatic’ side
17 On samâdhi and fanâa, see Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 72–3. On ziran, see G. Parkes, ‘Lao-Zhuang and Heidegger on Nature and Technology’, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2003): 21–3. 18 As Heidegger puts it, ‘eine einfache Erfahrung ihrer Übereignung zueinander’. See Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz (Stuttgart: Gunther Neske, 1999), 17; Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 176. 19 See Heidegger, Gelassenheit, 58–9. For a full discussion of this highly complex matter, see Parkes, ‘Lao-Zhuang and Heidegger on Nature and Technology’, 26–8. 20 Andrew Feenberg, Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press. 2010), 24. Artefactualising the Sacred 53 to it. In other words, the ‘concernful Being-with’ we feel when we experience Releasement is ‘declinable’ into all the ways in which Being-in-the-world gets mediated: perception, representation, reflexion, knowledge, science, art, appetence, volition, production, consumption, etc. Hence, appropriating these things to Releasement, and making Releasement their ‘fundamental mood’ (Grundstimmung), redeems them and transforms them into accessories of a salvational mode of Being-in-the-world. A contrario, not having Releasement as their ‘ground’ or essence makes them instruments of a ‘privative’, ‘deficient’ and ultimately nihilistic praxis of Being-in-the-world. And that tells us all we need to know about why Heidegger considered technology to be ‘the uttermost danger’ (die äußerste Gefahr). For, as indicated above, technology in modern times exists to equip and operationalise what is existentially degenerate in the way that humanity and nature interface and interact and, in that interaction, inter-condition one another in their Being. What is more, technology operationalises this existential degeneracy with an efficacy which makes it not merely viable or productive but virtually impossible to resist.21 And that, the efficacy and irresistibility of a determination of technology that serves nihilistic finalities, is ‘the most dangerous’ die( Gefährlichste). In fine, no other domain or pursuit compares with technology in the completeness with which it requisitions human Dasein to a Subject-hood and nature to an Object-hood which, inconspicuously but intractably, estranges us from everything Heidegger believed was essential to a sane Mode-of-Being: from what is phenomeno-existentially own-most about our own Dasein; from what is phenomeno-existentially own-most about nature; from what is phenomeno- existentially own-most about the relation between the twain and, thereby, from a ‘solicitous Co-Being’ with nature.22 However, just as often as Heidegger says that for this reason technology is ‘the most dangerous’, he just as often insists that it isn’t fated to be this way, no more than it is fated that Dasein, world and their relation should be in a privative relation to what is innately own-most about themselves. And he is just as tireless in insisting that precisely because it is ‘dangerous’, it is therefore where we must look for ‘salvation’. So why is it that technology is not destined to be no more than a means for aggressing what is own-most in ourselves and in nature, and how can it instead be a means of salvation through its use? Let us start by going back to what we said about the Enframing.
21 On ‘das Unaufhaltsame ihrer schrankenlosen Herrschaft’, see Heidegger, Überlieferte Sprache, 18–20. 22 Heidegger makes this point with particular force and clarity in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 116. 54 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
The Mediation of Being-in-the-world as ‘epochalities’ epochale( Prägungen)
As we saw, the problem with the Enframing is that it makes Dasein and world be and do what it is good for the Enframing for them to be and to do. We also saw that in doing so the Enframing estranges Dasein and world from what is essential about them. Now, because the Enframing is designed to be existence-embracing, it seems to be consubstantial with reality itself, an impression magnified by the efficacy of the technological means that the Enframing uses to mediate Being-in- the-world. However, as Heidegger says, ‘things can be entirely otherwise’.23 For what gets requisitioned by technology to be and do what it suits the Enframing for them to be and to do can be requisitioned by other Modes-of-Being and can therefore serve other modes of revealing and other modes of Being-with. This is so because the Enframing is only one ‘epochality’ (epochale Prägung) in the history of Being;24 a history of Being that has known other epochalities and other modes of Being-in-the-world; including modes of Being-in-the-world that do not involve desecrating what is innately own-most about Dasein or world; modes of Being-in-the-world which, to the contrary, requisition humanity and world to comply with what is own-most in each and oblige them to respect a Being- with-one-another characterised by a ‘solicitous Co-Being’; modes of Being that therefore make no demands on technology which fail to respect an existentially sane and sustainable humankind-nature relationship; indeed, modes of Being which require of technology that it be an accessory of a sane humankind-nature relationship. This is important because a technology that is a by-product ofthis kind of expectation cannot not be ‘salvational’. So, as the Mode-of-Being which prevails today commissions technology and homo faber to be and to behave dangerously, to put an end to this reality, and instead make technology salvational, it is clear that we should (a) identify the ‘epochality’ the Mode-of-Being of which was salvational because it accommodated a productive ‘Co-letting-Be-together’ (Zusammen- gehörenlassen) between humanity and nature, (b) discern how homo faber factored this salvational Mode-of-Being into his technological practices, products and end uses and, finally, (c) we need to consider whether it might be prudent to emulate this model in our own acceptation of technology today.
Hellenic Being-in-the-world as the Model to Follow
Now, concerning the ‘epochality’, which Heidegger urges modern homo faber to emulate, there is no mystery. For even if references to East Asian religious
23 Martin Heidegger, Das Ereignis (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 2009), 200. 24 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche II (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 2003), 399–412. Artefactualising the Sacred 55 and philosophical traditions figure prominently in many of the relevant texts, the culture whose Mode-of-Being Heidegger consistently refers to as the model to follow is that of the Hellenes of remotest antiquity. However, what is not especially clear in the relevant texts is why Heidegger was so convinced that the Hellenes of yore had succeeded in ‘declining’ their ‘salvational’ Mode- of-Being into their technological practices and products and thereby made them accessories, rather than impediments, to a mode of Being-in-the-world he considered to be ‘salvational’. Granted, he goes to great lengths to link the German word ‘Technik’ to its etymological origins in the Greek word téchne, and téchne to poiésis, poiésis to physis and physis to alétheia,25 the apprehension of which for Heidegger was not just synonymous with the ‘unowned awareness’ of Releasement but something Releasement was inconceivable without. However, even where he goes to the greatest lengths to explain how this interdependent chain of relations was factored into early Hellenic technology – for example, in the technology that was essential to their metallurgy and temple-building practices – one nonetheless has difficulty accepting that even a rock solid, totally incontrovertible etymological analysis of the Greek word téchne is a sufficient basis for making the case that Hellenic praxes of technology were salvational and therefore a model to emulate. There is, however, a way of reducing obscurity on the point, at least if we are willing to look at Heidegger’s philosophy of technology in the light of the things Heidegger says in texts not explicitly devoted to technology. Indeed, this is not just useful, it is actually essential. For, as suggested at the outset, Heidegger’s thought is a coherent whole, a whole of which his philosophy of technology is but a part, and a part whose sense is dependent on the other, extra-technological parts and a fortiori on the whole containing these inter-conditioning parts. So which part of his overall thought-way (Denkweg) is especially useful in discerning the aspect of his ideas on technology that we need to elucidate? Curiously enough, it is the things Heidegger tells us about Hellenic Poets and versecraft. For the salvational relationship between humanity and nature that had to be factored into technological practices and productivity so that they too could be salvational was not something all Hellenes had access to directly. It was mediated to them via their ‘encyclopaedia’ (ἐνκυκλοπαιδεία). And the way their encyclopaedia received this salvational humankind-world relationship was through art and, in particular, the Rhapsodia composed by their Poets. But how? How did ‘rhapsodoi’ enter into a ‘unitive communion’ with their greater-than-human surroundings and acquire that state of ‘unowned awareness’ which predisposes them to a salvational relationship to world, things, others and self? Above all, how was this salvational mode of Being-in-the-world communicated
25 Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 42–59, and Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 38–9. 56 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred to and factored into the technological practices and products crafted by Hellenic homo faber? Heidegger tells us about all this in numerous places and ways. But it is possible to simplify this somewhat if we refer to Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 Glimpse into that-which-is’ (Einblick in das was ist)
A. The Clearing of the Coming-into-Presence of ‘that-which-is’ created whenDasein and world interface (Die Lichtung des Anwesenden; Unverborgenheit; Alétheia; etc.) B. The ‘Retreat’ from ‘that-which-Is’ Der( Spung; Zurücktreten vor dem eienden; Ausgesetztsein in das Verborgene und Ungewiss, etc.) C. ‘Originary nothingness’ (Das Geheimnis ; Die freie Weite worin alles ins Scheinen kommt; die Gegend; Die ortlose Ortschaft alles Anwesens, etc.) D. Glimpse into ‘that-which-is’ (Einblick in das was ist; eignende Eräugnis) E. An existentially ‘ec-static’ relationship to ‘that-which-is as such in totality’ on; the basis of Dasein’s ‘Abgrund’ (Der ek-statische Innestehen in der Wahrheit; des Seins ; Der ek-statische Bezug zur Lichtung des Seins, etc.) F. An experience of the unfolding of Welt from its ‘Abgrund’ (Die Entfaltung der Zweifalt) E.+F. Experiencing In-der-Weltsein as a reciprocal giving of Dasein to Welt and Welt to Dasein (‘eine einfache Erfahrung ihrer Übereignung zueinander’)
This diagram is distilled from the works in which Heidegger speaks of the vocation of the Poet and the finality of his art. What it describes might seem familiar to readers of Mircea Eliade’s works on Shamanism inasmuch as they too Artefactualising the Sacred 57 portray the process of ‘unselving’ and ‘mortification’ that the Poet-Seer must undergo to achieve an ‘ecstatic’ perspective on that-which-is.26 Similarly, readers of comparative religion anthologies will see a family resemblance between the kinds of ‘mystical possession’ they have come across and the various stages leading to Heidegger’s ‘Glimpse into that-which-is’ (Einblick in das was ist). The point of departure of the process is the ‘Clearing of the Coming-to- Presence of that-which-is’ (‘A’). The first stage consists of a noetic leave-taking from this ‘Openness’ by way of an essentially thanato-phoric ‘step back’ (Schritt zurück) from that-which-is (‘B’). Where the Poet-Seer finds himself when he undertakes this ‘leap’ is a place Heidegger describes as an ‘originary nothingness’ (‘C’).27 But merely to be in this kenotic alterity is not why the Poet-Seer undertakes his ‘step back’ from that-which-is. It is to perceive ‘that-which-is- as-such-in-totality’ from the shadow of ‘the pure-Other-than-anything-which- is’ (‘D’) and in so doing apprehend it to the power of its eucharistic value and apocalyptic meaning.28 For, once again, ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘eucharistic’ is what Being-in-the-world seems like once one perceives that and how Dasein (‘E’) and world (‘F’) are given to each other, and thereby to themselves, by the Nothing both would be if that Nothing did not somehow project them into their Co- Being-together or ‘Übereignung zueinander’ (‘E+F’). In addition to perceiving that-which-is as a luminous hyphen between a darkness and a darkness, ‘Glimpsing into that-which-is’ is undertaken to conduct what Heidegger calls ‘dichterisch Maß-nehmen’, i.e., ‘poetically measuring out’ and ‘founding’ humanity’s dwelling on the Earth, under the Sky in the ‘Openness’ between what it faces and is faced by by Being-in-the- world.29 He develops his ideas on this ‘Openness’, and the way it gets ‘measured out’, in those places where he speaks of ‘the Quadrature’ or ‘the Fourfold’ (das Geviert), a tetrapolar, chiastically organised ‘vis-à-vis’ (Gegeneinanderüber) of Sky and Earth, Mortals and Immortals. Figure 3.2 reproduces his first attempt to formalise this notion graphically.30
26 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 265–74 and Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 47–56. 27 Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymnen ‘Germanien’ und ‘Der Rhein’ (Frankfurt-am- Main: Klostermann, 1980), 169–72; Heidegger, Parmenides, 130–39. 28 Martin Heidegger, Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1957), 112–14 and Heidegger, Seminare, 63. 29 For ‘dichterisch Maß-nehmen’, see Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 190–93. For Poesy as ‘the wordly founding of that-which-is’ (worthafte Stiftung des Seins), see Martin Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1981), 41; Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 73. 30 Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymnen, 245. 58 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Figure 3.2 ‘The Fourfold’ Das( Geviert)
Where this crucially important idea comes from is a little murky. Certainly, Heidegger’s reading of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin was a factor.31 But this debt should not obscure the debt of both Heidegger and Hölderlin to their reading of references to Poetcraft in Plato and Pindar.32 Precepts intuited from the natural philosophies of Anaximander, Heraclitus and Parmenides were also a source. In describing the Fourfold, one should be cautious in making comparisons with outwardly similar, ‘structuralist’ analyses of cosmology and mythology in Eliade, Lévi-Strauss and Vernant inasmuch as nothing can be found in them which resembles Heidegger’s ‘holding what-exists out into nothingness’.33 Still, like the latter, Heidegger very much conceives this ‘Fourfold’ as a sort of ‘template’ (Grundriß, Wesensbau, Weltgefüge, Seynsfuge) for the world – to the point even of speaking of world and the Fourfold interchangeably.34 But dichterisch Maß-nehmen is not confined only to measuring out and establishing world as the ‘systemisation of Sky and Earth, Mortals and Immortals’ (σύστημα ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ γὴς τε καὶ ἀνθρωπῶν καὶ θεῶν).35 It was also undertaken
31 Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymnen, 245–8. 32 See Plato, Ion, trans. Harold North Fowler and W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 531c; Plato, Gorgias, trans. W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 507e; Plato, Republic, trans. Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 596c and Plato, Theatetus, trans. H.N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 173e. 33 We are thinking in particular of Eliade’s description of a ‘sacred space’ organised around an archetypal ‘axis mundi’ in Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 50–52; Eliade, Images and Symbols, 47–56; Eliade, Shamanism, 259–74; as well as Lévi-Strauss’ echt-‘etic’ schemas in, inter alia, Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962),, 184; and Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le Cuit, Mythologiques I (Paris: Plon, 1964), 202. 34 Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 179, 199. 35 Jean-François Mattéi, Heidegger et Hölderlin: Le Quadriparti (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 2001), 195. Artefactualising the Sacred 59 to ascertain the ‘right’ time, place, nature, rank, role and destiny of everything that exists on the Earth and under the Sky. This ‘rightness’ (ὀρθοτής) was known to the Poet because his ‘ecstatic remove’ from the ‘Clearing of what-is’ allowed him to apprehend what it was good for mortal, finite things to be and to do because being and behaving that way was what it was good for the cosmos for those things to be and to do. And because we are speaking here of what it is ‘right’ for the ‘cosmos’ for things and events to be and to do, we are not just speaking of a cosmology. We are speaking of a cosmo-dicy (κοσμο-δίκη) or a ‘care for the whole’ (μελέτα τὸ πᾶν),36 i.e., an existence-embracing, all-normatising, ‘eu-ethological’37 governance of the world, its contents and its operations. This is why this cosmo-dicy could not not have had a decisive, ‘normatising’ influence on technology, its conception, practice and end-use. However, to see why this is so requires that we supplement Heidegger’s oracular, detail-sparse commentary on the subject with data furnished by scholars like F.W. Otto, F. Solmsen, Jean- Pierre Vernant, Gilbert Simondon and other historians of technology. This, of course, is not without risk given Heidegger’s disdain for the ‘thoughtlessness’ (Gedankenlösigkeit) of conventional ‘historiological’ approaches.38 But at least we are assured that by doing so we will understand clearly why Heidegger believed that, in its essence, technology is merely a prosthetic extension of the ‘ergon-character’ of physis.39 Let us start by considering why it is appropriate to describe the Poet as a ‘tribal encyclopaedist’.40
Arte-fact-ualising the Sacred
The Poet enjoyed this status because his vocation was to ‘astro-geognosically’ study ‘happenings above the firmament and in the earth’s vasty deeps’.41 He needed to do this for two reasons: first, to discern the processes, sub-processes and macro-processes that were immanent in and operative through the emergence and Being-there of ‘the creatures which people the space between the Earth
36 Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 3, 21. 37 The sense we give to ‘eu-ethological’ is highly etymological: the ‘ethos’ whose ‘logic’ is applied in it is one which is co-orchestrated by humankind and its greater-than-human environment. The ‘bounty’ generated by this co-orchestration is signalled by the prefix ‘eu’. 38 For ‘Gedankenlösigkeit’, see Heidegger, Gelassenheit, 11–13. 39 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche I (Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1989), 97. 40 Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 27–31. 41 ‘τὰ περὶ τῶν οὐρανίων παθημάτων καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου’, Plato, Ion, 531c; Plato, Theatetus, 173e and Plato, Republic, 596c. 60 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred below and the Sky above’;42 second, to identify the entropic, ‘titanistic’, counter- cosmic agencies that interfered with the ‘cosmo-poietic dynamic’ (κοσμοποιητική δύναμις). Without both sorts of data, the Poet would have been powerless to offer his community what it wanted most from him: namely intelligence that was useful for developing values, norms, sciences and techniques that helped it negotiate a ‘poros’ between the immutable constants of ‘Necessity’ (ἀνάγκη) and the imponderables of the Contingent (τύχη).43 And speaking of the Poet as a sort of natural scientist, as we are doing here, is not incompatible with his better-known role as a priest, hierophant or spiritual medium. For this was an ‘epochality’ where nature was considered Sacred. Hence, when the Poet sang of hierogamies, theogonies, gigantomachies and the other things of which he was informed by listening to the Sirens, Sileni, Nymphs and Pans in the proverbial trees, rocks and brooks, he was merely reporting the results of ‘scientific’ research into ‘complexity’, ‘emergence’ and ontogenesis. But more important for us than the ‘bicephalous’, scientifico-sacral nature of the Poets’ vocation was the normatising impact of the macro laws which his ‘geognosy’ helped him to divine. For studying the way natural entities that are ‘well-constituted’ (σὺν κόσμῳ, εὖ μοῖραν, κατὰ κόσμον, μετρίως) contained and instanced a cosmo-poietic dynamic was not an end in itself. It was undertaken to extrapolate from the ‘dynamis’ and ‘eu-mechania’ (εὐμηχανία) that made them ‘well-constituted’ in order to figure out how to make what is not nature-made ‘well-constituted’ too. And in consummating this aspiration, the Poet played a key role. For his job was to supply human-made productivity (κατὰ τέχνην ποίησις) with something mere practitioners (ἐργαστοί, χειροτέχνης, μηχανοποιοί) could not provide but which was needed to ‘homologize’ their productivity and make it ‘lawful’ (ἐν τῷ δεόντι παραγιγνέται). That something was an ‘architectonics’, a deontic set of guidelines stipulating the means, modalities and finalities that ‘skilled artificers’ (ἔντεχνος δημιουργοί) should follow in plying their trade.44 What was essential to this architectonics was making technological practices subserve a cosmos-embracing, ‘eu-ethological’ ‘care for the whole’ (μελέτα τὸ πᾶν), thereby giving them a role in securing the ‘common good’ (κοινῇ βέλτιστον) where ‘common good’ is applicable not to the way it seems when it is conceived sub specie hominis but rather sub specie totalitas. Key to the way ‘skilled artificers’ satisfied the expectation that they too play a role in this aspiration was, again, by making the dynamis and eu-mechania that were operative in nature-made beings a model to follow in arte-factualising human-made products (τὰ κατὰ τέχνην).
42 ‘τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ὑπὸ τῷ οὐρανῷ ὄντα’, Plato, Phaedo, trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 110b. 43 Plato, Laws, trans. R.G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 709b. 44 Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs (Paris: La Découverte, 1996), 305. Artefactualising the Sacred 61
This is why it is apt to say that among the Hellenes of yore, la‘ τέχνη “mortelle” et humaine ne fait que réproduire une τέχνη divine’. 45 For if the ‘eu-mechania’ in nature-made artefacts that are ‘well-constituted’ makes them ‘divinely ordained’ (θεία μοῖρα), then replicating that same eu-mechania in the production of human- made artefacts makes them ‘divinely ordained’ too. The technological corollary of this is obvious: technology had a ‘cosmo-dic-ic’ legitimacy only if and only to the extent that its design, development, applications, products and end-uses were accessories of an ‘eu-ethological’ ‘care for the whole’. When and to the extent this condition was satisfied, its praxis was a quasi-religious act,46 its products were ‘arte-factualisations’ (ἀγάλματα) of the Sacred and, finally, technology facilitated a synergy or collaboration (συμμαχία) between mortal artificers (δημιουργοί, χειροτέχνης, etc.) and agencies in their greater-than-human surroundings. The relevance of all this to what Heidegger says about technology being ‘salvational’ in its essence is patent. For when technology is requisitioned and commissioned by a cosmo-dicy like this, as it was among the Hellenes from whom we inherited it, it cannot any longer be used or engaged in without ipso facto making whosoever practices it an actant in a ‘concernful Co-Being’ with their more-than-human environment. This is the necessary consequence of replicating in mortal artefacts the same eu-mechania that is immanent in and operative through the emergence and Being-there of nature-made beings. And because this manner of Being-with-one-another is salvational, making technology an auxiliary of it results in it being salvational too. Which means that the point of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology was not to ‘curse it as the work of the devil’. Nor was it to say that there should be less of it or that we need to not only stop but actually reverse technological ‘progress’. Indeed the case can be made that he was amenable to even more technology and far more sophisticated technology than anyone today can even imagine – but only on the condition that its conception, design, applications, aims and effects subserve a higher-order organising principle or cosmo-dicy which makes the pursuit of human felicity a by-product of a solicitous Co-Being with our greater-than- human surroundings. The way Heidegger thought this should be accomplished is by subjecting technology to a change like the one described in Zur Seinsfrage where he ‘crosses out’ the word Sein, and does so thus: Sein. Appearances notwithstanding, this kreuzweise Durchstreichung is not a negation of that which bears it, only the mise en abyme and ‘reappropriation’ of that-which-is by the Fourfold. In other words, in Sein we find the Fourfold and in the Fourfold we
45 Vernant, Mythe et pensée, 291n. 80. 46 On Athena as the patron Goddess for demiourgoi in metallurgy, architecture, shipbuilding, pottery, carpentry and weaving, see Walter F. Otto, Die Götter Griechenland (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1987), 56–7 and Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Les Ruses de l’intelligence (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 169–72. 62 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred findSein . By the same token, technology becomes ‘salvational’ when it becomes technology, i.e., when it ‘admits and installs’, ‘gathers and stays’, ‘presences and preserves’, ‘bears and is borne by’ the Fourfold.47 But is this anything anyone today can accept in practice or even in principle? This question needs to be asked because implementing salvational technology will not take place without the will and the cooperation of people currently addicted to ‘damnational’ technology. So, what incentive do they have for embracing salvational technology? On the face of it very little.
Anyone for ‘Technology’? The Human, Political and Economic Costs
For salvational technology interdicts the use of humanity’s daedalean resourcefulness to strive for what it is good for humanity to have just because homo consumens sees it as something that is desirable to have. The only thing it allows us to strive for is what it is good for the cosmos for humanity to have. But we cannot impose a limitation like that on technological ‘progress’ without on occasion foregoing what we know is in the collective interest of humankind and know that our technologies can help us procure. Indeed, in a way, adopting salvational technology means that sometimes we have to knowingly participate in doing wrong to ourselves by refusing to use technological capabilities to further the collective wellbeing of humanity and refusing to do so because we know if we did not, that would be damaging to nature. To see how disturbing this prospect can be, one has only to think of how dependent humanity today is on technology that ruthlessly ‘fracks’ nature to be ‘productive’ and then estimate how many people might have to die as a consequence of a revolution in technological practices that results in making it ‘salvational’. What the casualty tally might be, no one can say with certainty. But even if it is low, the mere thought that anyone might die as a result of implementing salvational technology would probably be enough to make even ‘dark green deep ecology’ zealots hesitate to advocate its enforcement. Furthermore, would it not be unrealistic to suppose anyone will find salvational technology palatable on political grounds. After all, to whom can modern humanity confide a role analogous to the one played by the Heideggerian-Hölderlinian ideal of the mystical Poet? In other words, who will decide what technology can and cannot be used for because their hermeneutico- mantological perspicacity gives them the right to speak in the name of a cosmo- dicy whose ordinances must be respected so that we do not trespass against our duty to nature? In earlier times, people knew how important it was for them to have prophets and hierophants who were qualified by years of study to
47 See Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 148–55. Artefactualising the Sacred 63 mediate between themselves and the Sacred. They therefore readily accepted the coercion these officiants deemed necessary to make sure their ordinances were complied with. But no one today recognises the need for such officiants and their ordinances, for this sort of divine law-making is an affront to all our most hallowed values and vanities: reason, progress, equality, human dignity, freedom of choice and thought, freedom from want. And what about the economic and communication challenges facing the evangelists of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology? Who today would be willing to fund the expensive lobbying and advocacy work needed to (a) gain access to corporate, civic and government decision-makers, (b) make sure they implement the measures needed to make salvational technology a reality and (c) do so over the time scale necessary for it to have a significant and lasting ‘eu-ethological’ impact? What is more, what forum exists or could be created that could withstand pressures on it to prevent salvational technology being implemented if that implementation ever posed a threat to ‘vested interests’? Those who have asked similar questions before are deeply pessimistic. This, they say, is not the way our ‘consensual’, ‘democratic’, ‘market-driven’, ‘pro-growth’ way of dealing with things works.48 So, as one can plainly see, there are all sorts of reasons for doubting that there is any realistic chance humankind could ever possibly accept salvational technology in practice or even in principle, which, paradoxically, is probably the best thing that could happen to humankind. Indeed, perhaps homo consumens should be encouraged to continue behaving as though it is a viable option not to accept salvational technology. Why? Because that is the fastest and surest way of being certain one ends up embracing it.
Why Technology will become ‘Salvational’ (rettend) or will not be
To justify saying this, let us avoid referring to the well-known IPCC reports about what is happening to our ecological life support systems as a consequence of technologies whose use subserves homocratic rapacity. They speak for themselves. Let us instead consider the best-case scenario for the consequences of not adopting Heidegger’s path. Let us assume, improbably and concesso non dato, that the evolution of technology will never be responsible for problems with which homo faber will not be able to deal by using its daedalean ingenuity.
48 See Ted Benton, ‘Environmental Sociology: Controversy and Continuity’. Sosiologisk tidsskrift 9, no. 1 (2001): 20–22. See also David Sonnenfeld, ‘Assessments, Critical Debates and Future Directions’, in The Ecological Modernisation Reader: Environmental Reform in Theory and Practice, edited by A.P.J. Mol, D.A. Sonnenfeld and G. Spaargaren, 501–20 (London: Routledge, 2009), 507 for a summary of the criticisms made by various ‘Neo- Malthsuian’, ‘Neo-Marxist’ and ‘dark green deep ecology’ zealots. 64 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Let us assume that no one will ever be indisposed or incommoded, even in the slightest, by the existential self-estrangement imposed upon them by the Enframing. Let us assume that, far from ever wanting to rage against the Enframing, modern humanity will instead rage against any obstacle standing between it and becoming robotised by the Enframing. Let us assume all this. But let us not assume that any of this suffices to confound all possible threats to a technological paradise on earth. For the world homo faber creates with his technological wizardry will never elude one eternally inexpugnable reality: that humanity’s very existence continues to depend on factors and agencies it does not control and that it has to take into consideration in its decisions and actions if it is to avoid disaster. Foremost among those factors is the one we call nature. Affirming this of course pits us against those who believe in the viability of ‘self-dependent autopoietic systems’. But they are wrong. The nature that technicised humanity turns its back to by embracing the smarter, faster, securer, better brave new world it is promised by its daedalean ingenuity is not done away with simply by turning away from it. It is still there and will remain an ‘allopoietic’ parameter we will need to factor into everything we do for as long as we are around to do anything. When the absurdity of the ‘human exemptionalist’ idea that we do not have to do this finally becomes too evident for anyone to any longer deny it, we will understand the meaning of one of the most enigmatic things Heidegger ever said: ‘Only a God can save us now’. In the final analysis, this is not, as some would have it, a ‘cry of despair’.49 Still less is it an appeal to a new or an old theology. For Heidegger counted himself among those who believed it is possible to have ‘divine’ thoughts without thinking of a God.50 But what is it to think the divine without thinking of a God or of any other ‘other-worldly power’ (nichtdaseinsmäßigen Machten)? Let us answer that question by reflecting upon what Heidegger says about ‘The Last God’ inVom Ereignis, in particular those passages where he enjoins us to attain ‘a belongingness to ourselves out of a belongingness to God’.51 What we discovered in the preceding pages has prepared us to discern what this means. Let us nonetheless try to make it clearer. All it means is that there is no Dasein without world nor world without Dasein. For they are given to one another by something incommensurably other than either so that the ‘Clearing of what-is’ their interface creates can accommodate them and be the only place they can be. Knowing this, thinking this, being aware of it and making this awareness the ‘fundamental mode’ (Grundstimmung) of your doing, behaving, producing and consuming does not lead to theology, ontology, metaphysics, foundationalisms,
49 Feenberg, Between Reason and Experience, 94. 50 Heidegger, Erläuterungen, 114. 51 Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie, 26, 397–8. Artefactualising the Sacred 65 essentialisms or a sacerdotal determination of the divine.52 It leads you to where, when, how and as you are if you ‘are’ and for as long as you are. It also leads you to value the company of the things you encounter by Being-in-the-world, not because they are always nice or safe to be around but because you are aware that without that encounter neither you nor they nor anything could Be. Having this awareness as the fundamental mode of your experience of Being-in-the- world eu-charizes it, divinizes it and makes it salvational. Making technology a concomitant thereof makes it salvational too.
52 Heidegger, Way to Language, 193–4. This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 4 Technology in a Postnatural Condition? Concepts of Nature and Meanings of Technology1 Peter Manley Scott
Introduction
Although it is easier to consider technology by reference to technical artefacts, in this chapter I wish to assess technology more broadly. In other words, I shall be arguing that it is preferable to understand technology as devices within a technologised culture rather than a set of unrelated artefacts or tools. Understood as devices, as Albert Borgmann recommends, technology raises quite fundamental questions for culture and theology.2 Following a suggestion from Peter Hodgson, we may understand technology as raising questions in three spheres of human life: self-relatedness, wholeness and world-relatedness.3 This is to press Hodgson’s suggestion in a new direction in support of presenting the postnatural condition in which ‘north Atlantic’ humanity finds itself. The phrase ‘postnatural condition’ is my attempt to present together these three distinctive aspects of present life that affect how we should think theologically about technology. First, technology in a postnatural condition has implications for how we think about the human, its self-understanding, powers, limits and responsibilities. How is our relationship with and to ourselves altered in a technological culture? In theology of technology, this has been the main focus of enquiry – mainly with reference to powers, limits and responsibilities – and I shall comment only briefly on it in the next section. Second, the theme of wholeness in the postnatural condition invites consideration of the wider natural (cosmological, ecological and biological) relations of the human. What are these relations, and how might they be transformed? Third, the postnatural condition seeks
1 I thank Scott Midson for his research assistance in the writing of this essay. 2 Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 3 Peter Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit (London: SCM Press, 1994), 200–201. 68 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred to do justice to human technological activity. By way of their tools, human beings transform the circumstances in which they find themselves: their self- understanding, their habitat and a wider ‘nature’. There is quite a lot at stake in this discussion. For example, religious people may be cautious about granting technological mediation any role in our self- understanding. Further, to stress wholeness may lead the enquirer to employ organic metaphors and thereby to downplay the ways in which technology does not simply interact with nature but transforms it. On the other hand, to stress the matter of world-relatedness may do little more than reverse this polarity: the stress is now on the urban, the machinic, the transformative – and the givenness of nature is then occluded. As Noreen Herzfeld argues, we have here a tension presented by modern technological practices. Modern technology does not ‘simply “disclose” or shape nature but transform[s] and replace[s] nat ure ’. 4 In sum, technology requires attention to the self-interpretation of the human, materialism and praxis. In the following sections, I explore each of these aspects. In the sixth section, I offer a brief theological conclusion.
Technology and Self-Relatedness
In Christian Ethics in a Technological Age, Brian Brock argues that a Christianity that considers ‘… questions of technology [to be] remote from questions of faith’ has lost its way.5 In agreeing with this assessment, we may also note that the effort by religious believers to keep technology at arm’s length is at least understandable if not persuasive. As I have argued elsewhere, such an effort may be motivated by the understanding that Christianity is concerned with the personal rather than the technological.6 On such a view, is not Christianity concerned with the ‘spiritual’ rather than the ‘material’? If technology is concerned with the contingent, is not Christianity concerned with something else: the naked human rather than the artefactual human? A related way of proceeding is to suggest that technology must be understood in some way as a tool. That is, technology is neutral until put to the service of some desire, some good. The meaning of technology in this line of enquiry is, broadly, benign, or at least not malign. Herzfeld describes this position as ‘technology as morally neutral’.7 This approach often has its
4 Noreen Herzfeld, Technology and Religion (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2009), 9. 5 Brian Brock, Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 7. 6 P.M. Scott, Anti-human Theology: Nature, Technology and the Postnatural (London: SCM Press, 2010), 124. 7 Herzfeld, Technology and Religion, 6. Technology in a Postnatural Condition? 69 terminus in quandary ethics or ethical consequentialism. Nonetheless, I accept that the theological approach to technology cannot be by way of such ethical considerations. Such approaches may be understood as a further attempt to restrict the force and reach of technological practices by reference to powers, limits and responsibilities only. However, much discussion in the theology of technology now eschews this route. Instead, technology is regarded as more than a phenomenon concerned with technique.8 As Romano Guardini says: ‘The development of technology is primarily an inner human process. … Our age is not just an external path that we tread; it is ourselves’.9 The meaning of technology is on this understanding primarily cultural: ‘… technology is not just something that mediates between our mental intentions and the physical world about us, technology gets into our heads and affects the very way in which we conceive our reality’.10 To argue otherwise seems to restrict falsely the reach and impact of technology. What is clear is that culture will be shaped and re-shaped by technology – and culture will in turn shape and re-shape technology. The distortions and limitations of any culture we shall then expect to find in the meanings and practices of technology. In addition, we should expect to find that the powers of technology will intensify those limitations and increase those distortions. In sum, science and technology may be understood as ideological. For Jürgen Habermas, science and technology function as an ideology, specifically as a dominating form of rationality: ‘… the rationality of science and technology is immanently one of control: the rationality of domination’.11 The rationality of technology is thereby not restricted to areas of technological production. Instrumental reason has occupied other spheres of society, and in so doing invites all political problems to be construed in terms of such rationality: above all, as problems requiring a technical solution. Note that the construal is a double one: political issues are not so much offered a technical solution but instead are raised as technical problems and, thus, as requiring ‘merely’ technical solutions. A difficult question now emerges: how to develop a theology of technology that is not itself technologised? That is, how to develop a theology of technology that does not try to address the matter of technology by construing it as a technical problem that needs to be ‘solved’. As a possible way forward, Pattison quotes George Grant: ‘Thought is steadfast attention to the whole’.12 I turn to the matter of technology and wholeness in the next section.
8 Recent work by Brock and Pattison fits this description, as does my own work. 9 Romano Guardini, Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 79, 81. 10 Pattison, Thinking About God in an Age of Technology, 3. 11 Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 85. 12 Pattison, Thinking About God in an Age of Technology, 100. 70 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Technology and Wholeness
The theme of technology and wholeness presents us with the important matter of the cosmological, ecological and biological conditions of human life. That is, the impulse of life towards life. Broadly, in what follows I argue that attempts to relate technology to nature are always efforts to appeal to harmony and to marginalise the machinic. Such attempts turn upon an account of nature in which the human is to be interpreted from the perspective of the whole of nature. My analysis thereby takes a turn towards materialism and encounters specific difficulties, which I shall now discuss. This discussion takes us back to the early modern period. Once the ordering authority of tradition had been marginalised, and the shaping power of human reason understood as pre-eminent, a number of questions were raised during that period. On what was the relation between humanity and nature, and between human beings themselves, to be founded? What sort of society would the mastery of reason produce? Who would be responsible for its production? In addition, what would be the ‘place’ of nature in this society? ‘It is at this point’, Paul Tillich has written, ‘that the problem of how nature can be grasped through human knowledge and how society can be constructed through human activity is of greatest urgency’.13 What is the human relationship to nature? How could society be ordered and harmonious?14 Tillich argues that the two answers given to these questions in the early modern period, ‘liberalism’15 and democracy, are united by a notion of harmony:
Liberalism believes in a natural harmony that happens through the free play of productive forces. Democracy does not believe in natural harmony; it does believe, however, that nature can be subjected to reason. It believes in a metaphysical harmony that is certain to prevail in the historical process.16
We might then agree with John Milbank’s view that ‘the early modern age already fled to the arms of nature as support for a new objectivity’.17 Indeed, this new objectivity is the heart of the Enlightenment project: the transformation
13 Paul Tillich, The Socialist Decision (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 49. 14 This paragraph, and the next three, from Peter Scott, ‘The Resurrection of Nature? Problems in the Theology of Nature’,Theology in Green 4, no. 2 (1994): 23–35. 15 Although the word liberalism is of nineteenth-century coinage, liberal thought emerges certainly as early as the seventeenth century: see C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke(Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1962] 2011). 16 Tillich, The Socialist Decision, 51. 17 John Milbank, ‘Out of the Greenhouse’, New Blackfriars 74, no. 867 (January 1993): 5. Technology in a Postnatural Condition? 71 of the natural conditions of human living through the process of objectification (especially in science and technology). Of this development, David Harvey has written:
The idea was to use the accumulation of knowledge generated by many individuals working freely and creatively for the pursuit of human emancipation and the enrichment of daily life. The scientific domination of nature promised freedom from scarcity, want and the arbitrariness of natural calamity. The development of rational forms of social organization and rational modes of thought promised liberation from the irrationalities of myth, religion, superstition, and release from the arbitrary use of power as well as from the dark side of our own human natures. Only through such a project could the universal, eternal, and the immutable qualities of all of humanity be revealed.18
We have here the running together of the two types of ‘objective harmony’, natural and metaphysical, identified by Tillich. Yet this is not a form of objectivity in the abstract; it is rather to be connected, as Rosemary Radford Ruether has noted, to ‘the expanding world of European capitalism and colonialism’.19 This important reservation allows us to acknowledge that the project of the Enlightenment operates with specific understandings of universal and particular. The presentation of nature as a whole which precedes history and politics is common, and enjoys a certain coherence and persuasiveness. The state of nature arguments of Hobbes and Locke provide one example from the seventeenth century.20 Yet the tradition continues: in the 1933–34 seminar Nature, History, State, Martin Heidegger argues that ‘history and state are incorporated in nature, and the state in turn belongs within history’.21 In exploring the multiple ways in which nature is present to us, he shows the error in simply treating it as the beginning of a sequence. Nonetheless, a sense of a sequence may be found in contemporary appeals to natural law: as Jean Porter argues, ‘the distinction between the natural and the conventional [is used] as a warrant for interpreting human action in the light of the diverse forces that ground and limit it’.22 We
18 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 12. 19 R.R. Ruether, To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (London: SCM Press, 1981), 63. 20 See P.M. Scott, ‘Right out of Time? Politics and Nature in a Postnatural Condition’, in Religion and Ecology in the Public Sphere, (ed.) Celia Deane-Drummond and Heinrich Bedford-Strohm (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 57–75. 21 Martin Heidegger, Nature, History, State 1933–34 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 17. 22 Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 51. 72 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred may readily appreciate that such a view of natural forces tends to sidestep the issue of the deployment of technology in the construction of artefacts. Additionally, we find that ethical naturalism appeals to nature as a whole. As Sebastian Gardner writes: ‘For naturalism, we are complex parts of a larger whole …’23 Moreover, according to Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay, ethical naturalism affirms that there are moral properties and facts that are mind- and language-independent – a position that natural law would also affirm.24 Ethical naturalism may also affirm as part of its methodology that the only world we know is the world portrayed by the sciences. Natural law could not agree with this but does accept that moral properties and facts are real, and that these properties and facts are natural in the sense of being discoverable by natural reason. We may notice immediately the restriction in the meaning of technology that follows from such a position. For the whole with which we are presented here does not easily draw our attention to the range of technologically mediated interactions between humanity and nature. Throughout, we are required to acknowledge a moral order based in a reading of stable properties and facts, and a set of ahistorical or pre-social needs to which a theory of technology must respond. However, as I argued earlier, the meaning of technology is better understood as cultural. In other words, technology refers us always to the self- relatedness of the human. One implication of this observation is that, in any discussion of nature as whole, the interaction between human actors and their machines in a wider technological culture must be foregrounded. These criticisms notwithstanding, the reference to wholeness presents us with a vital issue: in technological perspective, how shall we consider the cosmological, ecological and biological bases of human life? In effect, we are searching for the material bases of human living. The question before us is: is it credible to affirm either a natural or a rational harmony? (The first is originary; the second to be established as part of the progressive unfolding of the originary.) Are these material bases given and need only to be (re-)discovered? Or, are they to be established through rational activity? Alternatively, we may conclude that there is no harmonious, positive relation between nature and society and that nature is estranged from society. If that is the case, then we seem to be in the realm of a double alienation: nature is estranged from humanity and society in its turn is reified. Political hope, if a claim to hope is made at all, must then presumably be vested in the historical development or unfolding of both nature and society; any harmony can then
23 Sebastian Gardner, ‘The Limits of Naturalism and the Metaphysics of German Idealism’, in German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, (ed.) Espen Hammer (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 22. 24 Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay, ‘Introduction’, in Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates, (ed.) Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1. Technology in a Postnatural Condition? 73 only be anticipated in the historical process. Before we attend to the matter of political hope, however, I want to pursue the theme of wholeness, by reference to the resurrection of nature.
Technology, Wholeness and a Resurrected Nature25
So far, I have argued that there is no innocent objectivity, and hence there is no innocent harmony, as regards nature.26 The character of the objectivity and harmony posited here is, as Ruether reminds us, to be interpreted under the specific headings of capitalism and colonialism. Moreover, it is precisely the drive for accumulation that characterises capitalism and colonialism that lies close to the heart of our current ecological crisis. Therefore, given this history, any appeal to nature will need to be made with caution. Furthermore, it may, as Milbank observes, be best to explain the enthusiasm for this ‘turn to nature’ by relating it to the sorts of divisions that a capitalist social order secures and reproduces: ‘“Nature”, like private life, is turned into the repository of what capitalism denies or relegates: community, mutuality, objective aesthetic value’.27 Marx notes this tension in Grundrisse, when he insists that Romanticism is part of the reaction to the bourgeois development of productive forces:
It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness [Marx is referring to the writings of certain Romantics] as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois point of view has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint and therefore the latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.28
We have here a difficult matter of interpretation concerning the status of nature as subject in relation to the modern objectification of nature discussed in the previous section. An appeal to nature as subject needs to be understood as part of a development premised upon nature as object. Specifically, I am arguing that a tension between nature as objectified and nature as balm is of benefit to the current dominant social order. (For instance, it plainly has immediate connections with the patriarchal emphasis
25 This section is adapted from Peter Scott, ‘The Resurrection of Nature? Problems in the Theology of Nature’,Theology in Green 4, no. 2 (1994), 23–35. 26 Throughout this chapter, I use the terms ‘objectivity’ and ‘objectification’. The first refers to the otherness and wholeness of nature as a basis of human life. The second refers to those processes of manipulation, control, transformation, etc. by which nature is transformed by human beings. Confusingly, the objectivity of nature is founded in nature-as-subject. 27 Milbank, ‘Out of the Greenhouse’, 7. 28 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1973), 162. 74 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred that associates men with rationality and women with embodiment, men with culture and women with nature.) Theologies of technology that reproduced this dualism would then be precisely producing the intellectual conditions for the reproduction of the current hegemony. The turn to nature may appear as a way of grounding the interdependence of humans and non-human nature. Yet this turn to nature is precisely modern, and it is to this modern turn (particularly scientific investigation and the application of technology) that the contradictions of modernity may partly at least be traced. I have suggested that the turn to nature seems to be concerned with the conditions of nature-human relations. Yet the difficulties of such an approach were noted. First, the objectivity of nature was affirmed in the early modern period but this affirmation could hardly be understood as innocent. Second, the notion of nature as objectified called forth a romantic reaction, affirming nature as balm. But both the domination of nature and its romantic appropriation assume a basic humanity/nature dualism. A theology of technology that operates within this dualism is, arguably, caught in a difficulty. If the theological approach to nature is an appeal to nature as grounds for a new harmony, then some account needs to be given as to how this appeal to nature is not simply incorporated into the objectification of nature in science and technology. To repeat Milbank: ‘“Nature”, like private life, is turned into the repository of what capitalism denies or relegates: community, mutuality, objective aesthetic value’.29 How is such an appeal to nature not solely the romantic repetition of the positing of nature as subject over against nature as object – but also its criticism? The issue that needs to be resolved at this point is the relation between nature as subject and the objectification of nature. If an appeal to the ‘resurrection of nature’ is to be the basis of a theology of technology, this needs to be specified in order to avoid the incorporation of nature as subject as romantic reaction by powerful forces governing the objectification of nature. The turn to nature seems to be caught within the movement of the posting of objectivity in nature, and the subsequent romantic reaction. Theology may then be tempted to invest its emancipatory interests in a fresh account of nature that is neither objectified nor a repository of that which capitalism devalues. One way of doing this is to suggest the ‘resurrection of nature’. In other words, nature may escape its determination as object; it is not possible to ‘fix’ nature in a subject-object schema. Here we have the suggestion of the revivification of nature as subject that insists upon a new form of living. Nature, the unconscious, and wilderness have been offered as starting points in this kind of argument. Such a move attributes to nature a profound transformative power against the complete emptiness of the bourgeois period. It is, we might say, a de-colonising strategy: technology objectifies all things, leaving nothing unchanged. Are there
29 Milbank, ‘Out of the Greenhouse’, 7. Technology in a Postnatural Condition? 75 any sites of resistance that have escaped such colonisation? If our response is no – not even nature, the unconscious, and wilderness serve as sites of resistance – is the claim of a resurrected nature of any merit? Jürgen Habermas has suggested that the emphasis on the resurrection of nature is available in the work of Herbert Marcuse. According to Habermas:
[For Marcuse] social emancipation could not be conceived without a complementary revolutionary transformation of science and technology themselves. In several passages Marcuse is tempted to pursue this idea of a new Science in connection with the promise, familiar in Jewish and protestant mysticism, of the ‘resurrection of fallen nature’’. This theme, well-known for having penetrated into Schelling’s and Baader’s philosophy via Swabian pietism, returns in Marx’s Paris Manuscripts, today constitutes the central thought of Bloch’s philosophy … .30
Let us consider the implications of this argument for science and technology. If followed through, it would suggest the possibility of a New (redeemed?) science and technology. There would then be two types of science: the dark science of the rapacious forces of capitalism, and the redeemed science of critical theory (and the new age?). What is the result? According to Habermas, ‘the viewpoint of possible technical control would be replaced by one of preserving, fostering, and releasing the potentialities of nature: “there are two kinds of mastery: a repressive and a liberating one”’.31 Now Habermas insists that there is no alternative technology in this sense. The remainder of his argument is taken up by trying to show how Marcuse is correct in seeing that science and technology function as an ideology and have effectively depoliticised the public sphere, but also that there is no requirement for – indeed, no possibility of – a resurrected nature, a New Science and a New Technology. I do not want to follow Habermas’s argument further, but perhaps we may use his critical discussion of Marcuse to highlight the difficulties in thinking in theological terms about a ‘resurrection of nature’. If Habermas’s reservations are correct, the notion of the resurrection of nature is questionable. Habermas and Marcuse, we might accept, are correct in their insistence that science and technology do not simply propose the benchmark of rationality in a scientific ‘world’; science and technology are also ideological. Political problems are transposed into scientific or technical problems, with the result that decisions about the shape and direction of human society – the work of the polis – cannot be made because they are not raised in political form.
30 Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, 85–6. 31 Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, 86–7. 76 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
If this is so, then the notion of the resurrection of nature suggests that what is required is a ‘new’ nature; a nature that is outside culture and resources praxis against the dark forces of capitalism. Yet, for Habermas, this suggests that the only response to science and technology must come from outside the realm of human practice, i.e. a utopianism. A similar concern is voiced by Tillich in a comment on what he terms the utopian element in Marxism: ‘it looks forward to a miracle of nature that transforms human nature as well as non-human nature’.32 The resurrection of nature suggests the reconstitution of nature (including human nature) from ‘beyond’ human practice: in short, a miracle. Put differently, the praxiological aspect of technology – that humans by technology transform their circumstances – and themselves – is here bypassed. However, is not the difficulty with miracle, as Gordon Kaufman and Sallie McFague have pointed out, precisely that it can be construed as the invitation to human beings to wait upon a god with a particular form of miraculous power rather than to assume responsibility for their own actions?33 Habermas’s concern with the Marcusean version of the resurrection of nature is that it distracts us from appreciating and engaging with our natural constitution, both as ‘given’ and as extended by the (re)organisation of our powers in specific relations (including the practices of science and technology). The resurrection of nature is utopian, but in a bad sense. This option struggles to give an account of the reified and alienated technological practices of our present society and how nature is constructed through such practices. In a sense, this position naturalises society – and to overcome this naturalisation, calls for the resurrection of nature.
Technology and World-Relatedness
If referring technology to nature, given or resurrected, does not seem convincing, then reference to world-relatedness seems an obvious option. We arrive at the consideration of technology in the context of humanity’s active transformation of its circumstances. In other words, human beings live already situated in technological practices in and through which human beings both transform the world and are mediated to themselves. As Herzfeld puts the matter, ‘… technology is central to our understanding of ourselves and the environment around us’.34 Yet that understanding emerges from the active deployment, so to speak, of technology.
32 Tillich, The Socialist Decision, 73. 33 See Gordon Kaufman, Theology for a Nuclear Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (London: SCM Press, 1987). 34 Herzfeld, Technology and Religion, 9. Technology in a Postnatural Condition? 77
The temptation at this juncture is to derive a theology of technology from a static account of world-relatedness. To accept some fixed human nature, some given order and thereafter to enquire how technology might or might not serve that order. However, such order is precisely denied by a cultural interpretation of technology. That is, from the technological interactions between humanity and nature: ‘tools, processes, and a social context’, as Herzfeld puts it.35 At this point, I think that technology raises the very difficult matter of historical contingencies. I have written about this matter of contingencies elsewhere, and will not pursue it further here.36 Except to note that if theology accepts a cultural meaning of technology, how we are theologically to understand technology-related contingencies emerges as a difficult matter. What is required is the presence of eternity in technological reality that is not its stabilisation or demand for its miraculous overcoming. What needs articulation and development is a theology of technology that does not stabilise the contingent and thereby offers an underpinning of certain ‘natural’ structures. On this view, nature is temporal and technology is effective because of that temporality. This in turn suggests that society is transient as well. The effort to develop a theological interpretation of technology based on the givenness of the human in fact unravels at this point. If there is technological transformation of nature, then that nature is plastic and pliable. Human society as a technological work then seems to be a re-doubled transience: the transience of nature is redoubled through technology. Or, contingency upon contingency. Such an affirmation of contingency may be related to theological insights. Take climate change as an example. That a warming climate may be related to contingency does not undermine the important theological theme of the goodness of creation. Such goodness may instead be understood to be manifested through the conditions that permit such warming. Planetary ecological systems are not taking their revenge upon the human but are instead in revolt. The contingency of these dynamic systems is that of a stable and durable nature that has some capacity for change – but beyond certain limits is tipped into a ‘new’ nature. On this view, global warming is evidence of the goodness of creation: a climate suitable for certain sorts of life that operates within certain constraints.37 Staying with the example of climate change, the COP process of international efforts at addressing the global disruption caused by these changes need not be a cause of scepticism or resignation. The process itself seems remarkably unsuccessful – that is true. However, other approaches to political negotiation
35 Herzfeld, Technology and Religion, 8. 36 Scott, Anti-human Theology, 134–7. 37 P.M. Scott, ‘Thinking like an Animal: Theological Materialism for a Changing Climate’, Studies in Christian Ethics 24, no. 1 (2011): 60–62. 78 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred and change are not ruled out thereby. A set of virtues and normativities is vested in the institutional densities of the COP process. However, from the perspective of contingency, alternative normative practices emergent from different institutions are not ruled out.38 A temptation here might be to step back from such contingency by returning to a view of technology as artefacts. That is, understanding technology as essentially neutral and thereby recovering some stable account of human nature or a theory of human needs as that which is served by technological artefacts. However, we have already explored the weaknesses of this position when considering the ideological functions of science and technology. An alternative approach would be to restrict the theological engagement with technology to ethical dilemmas. However, we have already seen that such an approach offers an arbitrary restriction to the effects of technology. We can hardly note the near omnipresence of technology and then restrict its scope in theological interpretation. Moreover, we may recall that one of the implications of the conclusion of the previous section reinforces the ubiquity of technology: in the consideration of technology, we are invited to pay attention to our material circumstances. As material beings, we are transforming our circumstances in the context of specific powers and forces that support and limit us. To propose a theological interpretation of technology is also to take with full theoretical force this materialist aspect.
Technology in a Postnatural Condition?
Our initial questioning seemed straightforward: what are the contours of a theology of technology? However, we have encountered difficulties in developing a broad theology of technology. What is required of a theology of technology is to question technology in relation to three spheres of human life: self-relatedness, the material whole and human activity. Nonetheless, we have established some protocols for thinking about technology in a postnatural condition. First, as regards self-relatedness, it has become clearer that technology is more than artefacts and tools but instead mediates between us and ourselves: technology is a mode of self-relating that invites the technicisation of issues and tends to the reversal of means and ends in which the resolution of problems is privileged. A changing climate is again a good example here: although it requires sophisticated science to monitor a changing climate that should not lead to the conclusion that the resolution to climate change is technical. In developing this case, I have turned to critical
38 P.M. Scott, ‘Humanity’, in Systematic Theology and Climate Change, (ed.) M. Northcott and P.M. Scott (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 115–17. Technology in a Postnatural Condition? 79 theory to explore the ways in which technology exceeds the technological sphere. In turn, this demands the development of a critical, philosophical theology of technology that persistently attends to the transgressive aspects of technology. In this regard, that technology is now cultural needs to be affirmed. Second, as regards wholeness, straightforward appeals to nature are unlikely to be convincing. Technology interrupts the meanings of nature required to sustain this position. Moreover, if such objectivity is not available a stress on nature as subject also did not appear to be convincing. The analysis that I have offered suggests that the way to consider technology in theological perspective is not best secured by reference to either the objectification or the subjectification of nature. Nonetheless, that technology requires us to reckon with a materialism is clear. Third, neither is it obvious that a theology of technology is best advanced by referring technology to world-relatedness. For that way, the unity of humanity and nature seems to be obscured and the contingencies that technology presents to us appear to be contingencies only in a narrow sense of historical. Nonetheless, that a theology of technology must encompass the transformative aspects of the human is evident. In the consideration of technology, the postnatural condition thereby identifies the following aspects: ideology critique, non-difference and the non-miraculous, and practice. To develop, all three will require an interruptive moment. Why is this? The task of ideology critique will be interruptive in the sense of calling into question technical solutions to non-technical issues and by resisting the refusal of materialism. Non-difference and the non-miraculous will also be interruptive in the sense of calling to account the transformative version of the relations between humanity and nature and enquiring whether the ways in which we interpret technology to ourselves are poorly aligned with the forces and powers of nature. Practice will be interruptive of claims to natural patterns and an epistemology of technological anthropocentrism. A theology of technology will therefore be reciprocally and constitutively interruptive of our three themes of self-relatedness, wholeness and world-relatedness. In this precise sense of perichoretic-like movement, such a theology of technology will be utopian. What emerges is a requirement to understand the three aspects of technology – self-relatedness, wholeness and world-relatedness – as reciprocal. Anthropologically, the conclusion is to affirm technological mediations via culture, materialism and praxis. Theologically, the task is to explore how such interactive reciprocity is already in some fashion available in theological tradition. In previous work, I have explored the concepts of activity, ground and force as a way of characterising the differentiation in God that is required of a 80 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred philosophical theology of nature.39 Such differentiation is required, I argued, as a way of exploring how God relates to the whole of creation and its parts. Nature is here not a universal but is instead actual through the activity of God. The whole which theology proffers is a diminished whole. Nonetheless, the divine activity resources the whole and that means that creative activity is to be associated with the non-human as well as the human. When we speak of creation, we identify the range of creatures. Yet there is also differentiation: creation having its ground in God’s activity suggests a pattern or order. Moreover, such differentiation has its unity through the force of God. At this point, it would be interesting to relate activity, ground and force to our three themes, considered sequentially. That is, activity would relate to wholeness, ground to world-relatedness and force to self-relatedness. However, perhaps activity, ground and force could be related to all three themes synchronously. That is, the objectivity/subjectivity of nature (its wholeness) could be considered from the perspective of God’s activity in which the comprehensive aspect of nature could be affirmed; by reference to ground the competition between nature as object and nature as subject would be called into question; and the effort to think nature as a whole would always be attempted. With reference to world-relatedness, the activity of God criticises efforts to separate the human from the non-human; the ground of creation in God recommends a search for commonalities; and the reference to force suggests not a competition between nature and a resurrected nature but instead the effort by God to bring all of creation to its completion or transformation. Such an eschatological impulse would be the resource for thinking about the renewal of nature. With regard to self-relatedness, the reference to activity would stress that the self-awareness of the human is by way of all culture: that is, including those parts of culture that relate to embodiment (work and reproduction especially); reference to ground would suggest that self-relatedness directs us to the whole self; and reference to force that the divine effort is directed towards the integration of the human. Certainly, attempts to secure a core self – by reference, say, to the concept of person – would not be immediately convincing. In such fashion, the profile of a theology of technology in a postnatural condition emerges.
39 P.M. Scott, A Political Theology of Nature(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 38–42. Part II Religious Narratives This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 5 Forbidden Fruit: Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb Lisa H. Sideris
Introduction
In The Enchantment of Modern Life, Jane Bennett cites the creation of Robo-pets that mimic the behaviours of real dogs as a minor instance of modern wonder. The scientist in Kyoto who created the artificial animals, it turns out, is troubled by them. ‘I’ve been reading about the people who built the atomic bombs, because I profoundly identify with them’, he tells a journalist. ‘They knew what they were doing and where it would lead’, he continues, ‘and I worry about where this will lead’.1 Bennett passes over this remark without comment, but the analogy with atomic scientists is interesting, and unnerving, not only because of the catastrophic uses to which their invention was put, but also because of the scientists’ similar recourse to language of enchantment and wonder, and their reliance on religious and mythological narratives in accounting for their creation. Following the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert, on 16 July 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer famously likened his role in the bomb project to that of a world-destroying Hindu god, and later to Prometheus, the bringer of fire. He also alluded to the scientists’ state of innocence, and their subsequent acquisition of sinful knowledge.2 In fact, as one atomic historian notes, many of the scientists who were present for the bomb’s detonation, even those ‘ordinarily without religious faith or even any inclination thereto, recounted their experiences in words derived from the linguistic fields of myth and theology’.3 Robotic pets are not nuclear weapons. Yet these cases of techno-enchantment point to the dangers inherent (in varying degrees) in humans becoming
1 Quoted in Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 172. 2 Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 676. 3 Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, translated by James Cleugh (Middlesex: Penguin, 1958), 183–4. 84 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred intoxicated with their own powers, even as they understand those powers to include mastery and potential destruction of nature and living beings. In what follows, I want to highlight, and question, the tendency of the atomic scientist – and those who write about them – to take refuge in concepts of childlike wonder and well-worn narratives of lost innocence, hubristic trespass and forbidden knowledge. I will also consider how the turn to religious narratives, and to particular – and problematic – interpretations of wonder, continues to lend plausibility to claims of innocent enchantment, or noble and detached inquiry, for current generations of scientists who invoke these familiar refrains in explaining their motivations and justifying their research. The atomic scientists – and a number of atomic historians – dip into a range of narratives; some of these invoke childlike wonder, while others feature mythological figures and motifs. Viewed synoptically, these narratives sometimes appear mismatched and oddly disjointed; taken together, they cast doubt on whether wonder – particularly a wholesome or childlike form – provides an appropriate description of the aims and attitudes of the scientists in question.
Nature-Study, Wonder and Career Scientists
Some scholars have puzzled over the fact that many of the atomic scientists were, as children, steeped in the educational philosophy of early twentieth- century nature-study. The nature-study movement played an important role in the developing environmental sensibilities of such well-known figures as Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold, as well as E.B. White and E.E. Cummings who published nature-themed works as children.4 Nature-study offered educational reforms premised on a belief in the life-long salutary effects of childhood interactions with nature and animals. Proponents believed that children’s bond with the natural world was critical to their ethical, cognitive and affective development. The goal of nature-study was to put children into direct and sympathetic contact with the natural world and to instil a sympathetic moral outlook that would last a lifetime. The nature-study approach was further premised on a distinction between what we might call the book of science and the book of nature. ‘Nature-study is not synonymous with the old term “natural history”, nor with “biology”, nor with “elementary science”’, wrote Liberty Hyde Bailey over a century ago.5 A kind of revolt against formal science and
4 Kevin Armitage, The Nature Study Movement: The Forgotten Popularizer of America’s Conservation Ethic (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2009). See also Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 18–19. 5 Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Nature-Study Idea (New York: MacMillan Company, 1909), 4. Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 85 mechanical memorisation, nature-study aimed not to teach facts but to instil ‘spirit’ – a point of view, a sense of intimate contact – that could pave the way for science education, but remain distinct from it. Rachel Carson’s thinking about the natural world and human responsibility was so profoundly shaped by her nature education that she produced her own now-classic contribution to nature- study with The Sense of Wonder.6 The Sense of Wonder – first written for a women’s magazine in 1956 and later published posthumously as a small, illustrated book – contains a succinct statement of the nature-study philosophy she imbibed early in life. Carson discourages parents from teaching children names and facts about plants and animals and instructs them instead to engage the child’s emotional and sensory responses to nature. Like nature-study advocates who came before her, Carson believed that cultivating wonder at an early age would ground one’s moral character and sustain a compassionate concern for life, as well as an abiding curiosity about the natural world, well into adulthood. Similar, though less explicit themes are discernible in Silent Spring (1962) as well, where, as I interpret her, Carson suggests that humans have turned away from wonder at the world around us and become enchanted with our own technological powers and our progressive ‘mastery’ of nature.7 Much of Carson’s later writing presents an image of humans caught in their own spell, ‘intoxicated with [their] own p ower ’. 8 Carson understood a major cause of hubris to be a dearth of wonder at that which is ‘natural’ – a withdrawal from what she considered the ‘real world’ of nature into the artificial worlds humans have created. Much as she admired science, she lamented that scientific hubris increasingly made ‘the most farfetched schemes seem entirely possible of achievement’ and that ‘man seems actually likely to take into his hands – ill-prepared as he is psychologically – many of the functions of “God”’.9 In his fascinating study of wonder and the atomic bomb, environmental historian Mark Fiege argues that feelings of awe, wonder and reverence for the natural world were in fact ‘a precondition to the bomb’s production’.10 He finds striking parallels between Carson (and to a lesser extent, Leopold) and Oppenheimer. ‘The atomic scientists’ experience of wonder matched that of
6 Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (New York: Harper and Row, 1965). 7 See Lisa H. Sideris, ‘Fact and Fiction, Fear and Wonder: The Legacy of Rachel Carson’, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 91, no. 3–4 (2008): 335–69. 8 Rachel Carson, ‘The Real World Around Us’, inLost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, edited by Linda Lear (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 163. 9 Rachel Carson, letter to Dorothy Freeman, February 1, 1958, in Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964, edited by Martha Freeman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 249. 10 Mark Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists, the Sense of Wonder, and the Atomic Bomb’, Environmental History 12, no. 3 (2007): 578–613. Emphasis mine. 86 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred other prominent contemporary observers of nature, including … Rachel Carson’, Fiege writes. ‘It might seem odd to place the atomic scientists in such company’, he admits. ‘Yet in their capacity for wonder and in their fundamental enthusiasm for nature, the two were very similar’.11 He sees similarities between Carson and Richard Feynman’s early years as well: ‘Nature study with loving parents, wonder experienced in local landscapes, scientific careers, the championing of unmediated contact between children and the physical world: Carson and Feynman shared much’.12 Even those atomic scientists whose childhood years were not spent in America had early experiences in nature that, according to Fiege, ‘mirrored events in Rachel Carson’s girlhood’.13 The atomic scientists, Fiege notes, revelled in the natural environment of New Mexico where they worked in secrecy, and many of them were, like Oppenheimer, great outdoorsmen and avid hikers. ‘The sense of wonder never left the scientists’ during their expeditions in the Los Alamos countryside.14 Meditation upon the changing shape of the clouds and the sublime mountain vistas stimulated their thinking and even ‘prompted important discoveries’, including discoveries in the realm of the ‘fantastically small’ (that is, in the atomic and subatomic realm).15 Fiege concedes that wonder ‘did not compel [the scientists] to transform their knowledge into a weapon’ but wonder nevertheless remained ‘integral’ to discoveries that made the bomb possible.16 Carson’s biography seems to present us with a paradigmatic success story of the nature-study movement. Her work displays precisely the moral instincts and aesthetic sensibilities that nature-study advocates hoped to cultivate in their pupils. If we can trace a line between critiques (such as Carson’s) of environmental mastery and dangerous hubris back to early childhood education in wonder, then how can we make sense of the trajectory of the atomic scientists – many of whom received similar childhood educations, and virtually all of whom readily employ language of awe and wonder? Does their role in atomic research point to a failure of the nature-study approach? Does it perhaps point to something pernicious and shady about wonder itself? Does advanced training and a lifelong career in science destroy the sense of wonder? In sum: if their forms of wonder and ‘enthusiasm’ for nature show such similarities, why do some ‘observers of nature’ go on to become passionate defenders of nature’s fragility and integrity, while others become irresistibly drawn into research that puts into human hands the very power to destroy the earth and its life support systems?
11 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 583. 12 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 587. 13 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 585. 14 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 590. 15 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 591–2. 16 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 584. Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 87
In many ways, I realise, these are impossible questions to answer with any precision. Perhaps a more manageable question is: what strange form of wonder is this that finds expression in the creation and detonation of deadly weapons? Or this: how did the scientists themselves characterise the sense of wonder that led them to pursue their careers, and ultimately, to participate in this project?
The Scientist as Child
As Fiege is aware, many of the atomic physicists, and scientists generally, displayed a penchant for characterising themselves as children. Isidor Rabi (1898–1988) described the Los Alamos scientists as ‘Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up, and they keep their curiosity’.17 Leo Szilard (1898–1964) who also participated in the Manhattan Project described himself as a ‘born scientist’ with child-like inquisitiveness: ‘… I became a scientist because in some ways I remained a child’.18 Niels Bohr (1885–1962) was described by those close to him as someone who never shed a boy’s sense of playfulness and curiosity. The motif of the scientist as an enrapt and enthralled child, an innocent absorbed in play, recurs regularly in the history of science. Newton is supposed to have remarked: ‘to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me’.19 Evolutionary biologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould characterised his motivations in similar terms: ‘I could not dent the richness in a hundred lifetimes, but I simply must have a look at a few more of those pretty pebbles’.20 Perhaps no scientist is so frequently associated with playfulness as Albert Einstein, who attributed much of his own creativity to a childlike inclination for play. Some of the most iconic images of Einstein – Einstein on his bike, his long hair flying; Einstein sticking out his tongue; Einstein on the beach – reinforce his essentially benign and childlike qualities. The trope of the scientist as a wondering, awe-filled child is indeed so common that Kurt Vonnegut parodied the notion in his novel Cat’s Cradle. There he presents an Oppenheimer-like character named Hoenikker, who, in accepting the Nobel Prize, summarises his lifelong motivations as a scientist with
17 Quoted in Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 585. 18 Quoted in Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 584. 19 The origin of this quote is difficult to pin down but the Cambridge University Library’s exhibition on Newton, ‘Footprints of the Lion: Isaac Newton at Work’, does attribute it to him (without citing a source). See http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/ Footprints_of_the_Lion/introduction.html, accessed March 16, 2014. 20 Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: Norton and Company, 1985), 20. 88 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the following words: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man’.21 It may be significant that among the scientists just quoted, for all of them but Gould (who actually studied a genus of land snails – and their shells – for much of his life) ‘nature’ stands in almost as a metaphor for their research. That is, these scientists are not actually engaged with pebbles or shells, but with forces invisible to the naked eye – ‘fantastically small’ particles that cannot be seen directly, are often known primarily through equations, or are posited as theoretical entities. In much the same way, Fiege alludes to the grand views and sublime scenery of subatomic physics – again, using nature, and natural landscapes, as a metaphor for an abstract realm we cannot apprehend directly, the details of which may be highly speculative.22 The scientists’ abstraction facilitates detachment from a natural realm that humans encounter through their everyday senses. Yet, the scientists’ discoveries – in this case, the atomic bomb – may threaten that natural realm in ways that are anything but abstract and intangible. For his own part, Fiege claims that while the atomic scientists may have been ‘relentless instrumentalists’ they ‘were also childlike innocents enthralled by glittering particles. The sense of wonder compelled them to explore the recesses of those tiny pieces of matter’.23 This leads him, as it should, to speculate about what he calls the ‘moral implications of wonder’. He concludes that, while nature-study perhaps made those children better adults than they would otherwise have been, ‘wonder did not prevent some of those same children from growing up to build bombs … [A]n abiding passion for nature actually enabled destructive ends’.24 I am not quite prepared to accept this assessment. Perhaps, to paraphrase Vonnegut’s Nobel Prize winner, not just anything ought to make us stop and wonder. Perhaps we ought to exercise discernment, a kind of practical wisdom, in choosing and pursuing our objects of wonder.25 Robo-dogs, as I have said, are not atomic bombs, but neither are atomic bombs pretty pebbles. Fiege’s portrait of scientists as innocents dazzled by pretty pebbles is difficult to reconcile with horrific images of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. How did the scientists – and those who wrote about them – reconcile these disparate images? Feynman, who was
21 Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (New York: Random House, 1963). 22 ‘Physical science and its subjects were beautiful, sublime, and enchanting’, Fiege writes, ‘indeed, the deeper the physicists, chemists, and mathematicians went, the grander their view’. Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 594. 23 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 603. 24 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 603. 25 See Celia Deane-Drummond, Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality, and Theology (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2006). Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 89 enticed to join Oppenheimer’s team as a young researcher still completing his doctorate, later said the following of that decision: ‘what I did – immorally I would say – was to not remember the reason that I said I was doing it [he cites the rise of Hitler and Nazism as his original motivation], so that when the reason changed, not the singlest thought came to my mind at all about that, that that meant now I have to reconsider why I am continuing to do this. I simply didn’t think, okay?’26 Even when the bomb was exploded over Hiroshima, Feynman recalls only being ‘blinded’ by his own reaction, which he characterises as a kind of drunken exaltation.27 Unfortunately, some historians seem more or less to take the atomic scientists at face value when they protest their initial state of innocence or claim they were so lost in, or blinded by, wonder that they did not fully apprehend the uses to which their research would be put – until it was too late. Feynman’s comments certainly resemble a child’s inadequate and uninsightful defence of his actions to an interrogating parent: ‘I simply didn’t think, okay?’ Many, though not all, of the Manhattan Project scientists cited political and military reasons for taking on the project. I do not mean to suggest that those reasons were disingenuous or unimportant; however, as the rationales for the bomb began to shift and evolve, it was an enchanting vision of the research itself that carried them forward – their compulsion to solve what Oppenheimer famously called the ‘technically sweet’ problem that lay before them. In an observation that resembles Feynman’s vague defence, Oppenheimer noted the Faustian allure of the Manhattan Project from a scientist’s standpoint: ‘… it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it’.28 When we look more closely at the forms of wonder the scientists describe and defend, and when we weave those narratives of childlike innocence together with the mythological, religious motifs they employed, a more complicated picture of their motivations emerges – one that makes it more difficult to grant them immunity.
Wonder, Shock and Awe
In Strange Wonder, Mary-Jane Rubenstein identifies a trend in Western thought – her particular focus is continental philosophy – toward what she
26 Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 9–10. Emphasis mine. 27 Feynman, Pleasure, 9–10. 28 Quoted in Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 266. 90 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred labels an ‘internalised’ form of wonder. Here wonder is ‘related to a certain will toward mastery, even toward divinity; by comprehending the source of the wondrous, the thinking self in effectbecomes the source of the wondrous’.29 Carson, as I interpret her, warns against precisely this trend toward self- deification; her critique of enchantment with our own powers of mastery looks a lot like Rubenstein’s warnings about an internalised form of wonder that recasts the thinker (in Descartes’s phrase) as ‘like God in a way’.30 As an example of the culmination of this trend toward self-deifying wonder, Rubenstein cites the American military doctrine in Iraq of ‘Shock and Awe’. Wonder, in this strange incarnation, has become something to be ‘imposed’ forcefully, devastatingly and in God-like displays, on others. ‘The attempt toinflict shock and awe’, she writes ‘is thus an extreme and disastrous contemporary expression of the modern super-powerful ego’s internalization of wonder’.31 Internalised wonder follows from a centuries-old flight from uncertainty, she argues, a quest for invincibility, a persistent refusal to endure ‘the awful uncertainty’ of (genuine) wonder.32 Like Carson, she suggests that wonder has not been excised from the modern world; rather, it has been reborn in unwholesome and idolatrous forms.33 In turning again to the scientists’ use of religious narrative and mythology, we readily find intimations of self-deification and a perverse form of wonder turned strangely inward, even as its outward, shocking manifestation is inflicted on others. Particularly apropos are Oppenheimer’s reflections at the moment that the world’s first atomic weapon was detonated. He recalls that words from the Hindu Baghavad Gita flashed through his mind: ‘I am become Death, Shatterer of Worlds’. Oppenheimer (later) set the scene from the Hindu scripture where these lines appear: ‘Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince [Arjuna] that he should do his duty and to impress him he takes on his multi- armed form’.34 Oppenheimer turned to another mythic figure: ‘We thought of the legend of Prometheus, of that deep sense of guilt in man’s new powers, that reflects his recognition of evil …’35 Many of the scientists similarly described having ‘touched the nerve of the universe’, or having glimpsed ‘the divine’.36 The
29 Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 16. 30 The phrase is René Descartes’s, quoted in Rubenstein,Strange Wonder, 15. 31 Rubenstein, Strange Wonder, 188. 32 Rubenstein, Strange Wonder, 188. 33 Rubenstein’s solution to this problem is rather different from Carson’s; she does not juxtapose internalised wonder to wonder that is ‘out there’ in nature, as Carson does, but understands wonder in epistemological terms, as the unsettling and disturbing condition that makes philosophy possible, even as it continually ungrounds it. 34 Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 676. 35 Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 676. 36 Fiege, ‘The Atomic Scientists’, 594. Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 91 visual impact of the bomb prompted many to try to articulate what the project meant. Viewing the first detonation, Rabi felt that ‘a new thing had just been born; a new control; a new understanding of man, which man had acquired over nat ure ’. 37 Until that moment, Rabi remarked, ‘humanity was, after all, a limited factor in the evolution and process of nature’.38 Though the scientists often take refuge in childlike or naïve forms of wonder, a more accurate description might be wonder at the uncanny correspondence between the inner, mental world of the scientist and the outward (and in this case, astonishing) demonstration of the correctness of his theory. It may seem an esoteric or arcane form of wonder, but it is one that scientists, particularly physicists, allude to fairly frequently. Here one wonders at the way in which hypothesised entities turn out to correspond with or predict reality. The bomb was, after all, a spectacular ‘triumph of theory’.39 Marie George pinpoints the scientist’s ‘desire to feel this wonder, this thrill of inventing a theory which accurately predicts phenomena’ as a primary motive of scientific research, even if this thrill is not really ‘about nature’.40 Theoretical physicist Leo Kadanoff, for example, explains it as ‘an experience like no other experience I can describe, the best thing that can happen to a scientist, realizing that something that’s happened in his or her mind exactly corresponds to something that happens in nature. … A great shock and a great, great joy’.41 Here, the object of wonder, as George concedes, is not nature itself but the mind brilliant enough to have bridged the gap between its own inner workings and the structure of reality beyond. ‘One might object that what the physicists end up admiring is not the structure of the world, but products of the human mind’, she notes.42 We see here an internalised form of wonder, or at least the beginnings thereof: the inner world, the secret knowledge, of the scientist is made manifest externally, as the scientist himself is rendered larger than life, a god-like entity projected onto the landscape. Oppenheimer was moved to quote another line from Hindu scripture: ‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One’.43 But who is the Mighty One? Does this refer to a divine being or to the atomic scientist himself? Of course, atomic bombs, however much they are based in natural laws, are – thankfully – not ‘something that happens in nature’, as Kadanoff puts it. Their un-naturalness enhances our awe at the mind that could conceive their
37 Quoted in Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 672. 38 Quoted in Reg Saner, ‘Technically Sweet’, The Georgia Review 42, no. 4 (1988): 729. 39 Saner, ‘Technically Sweet’, 725. 40 Marie George, ‘Wonder as a Source of Philosophy and of Science: A Comparison’, Philosophy in Science, 6 (1995): 116. 41 Quoted in George, ‘Wonder as a Source’, 117. 42 Quoted in George, ‘Wonder as a Source’, 117. 43 Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 183. 92 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred creation and bring them into existence; here the scientist does more than merely discover correspondence or accurately predict. He creates from nature something previously unknown in nature … like god, in a way. At the same time that the brilliant mind asserts itself as the object of wonder, the scientist’s responsibility for his creation recedes into the background, or becomes diffuse and scattered, in some very interesting ways. In his analysis of the ‘atomic sublime’, Peter Hales argues that the first photo-essays of the bomb struggled with how to present the bomb’s strange quality as somehow in but not of nature.44 ‘The written descriptions in general focused on the visual. They were profoundly aesthetic, rather than ethical, moral or religious in tone’.45 Hales describes not only the aestheticisation of the mushroom cloud but the naturalisation of the bomb, the bomb as something part natural and part human. Naturalisation undermined the impression that humans – any human – could really be responsible for it.46 Publications like Life juxtaposed the mushroom cloud with pictures of electrons slamming into atoms, suggesting a kind of natural outcome, a ‘“natural” consequence of “natural” phenomena … and a “natural” extension of normal wartime weaponry’.47 The only thing missing, Hales notes, was the person who points and shoots the gun, so to speak. These portraits ‘bridged a previous gap between what was human and what was natural – the atom bomb became a man-made marvel of nature, and thereby the question of responsibility for the effects of the explosion remained slippery’.48 Put differently, the mushroom cloud appeared spectacular but essentially natural – something akin to an extraordinary sunset, a massive storm at sea, a funnel cloud or other wondrous phenomena that might be categorised as acts of god. Eventually, as the bomb moved to Pacific paradise test sites – places like Bikini island – and then again to desert locales, an even closer association formed between the bomb and an Edenic paradise – or between the bomb and the desert as a proving ground to be crossed before reaching paradise. The naturalisation of the mushroom cloud effectively elides differences between nature/natural landscapes as mere metaphor for physics in the scientist’s mind (the sublime scenery of subatomic physics), and real natural landscapes in which the bomb could be viewed and admired in all its terror and beauty. On the one hand, as Hales notes, naturalisation removes any particular culpability for the bomb by framing it as a natural event; on the other hand, the suggestion of the mushroom cloud as something like an ‘act of God’ (not Hale’s phrase, though it seems fitting) also elides differences between humans and
44 Peter Hales, ‘The Atomic Sublime’,American Studies 32, no. 1 (1991): 5–31. 45 Hales, ‘The Atomic Sublime’, 9. 46 For another perspective on the perceived naturalness of human creations such as geoengineering, see Forrest Clingerman’s chapter in this volume. 47 Hales, ‘The Atomic Sublime’, 11. 48 Hales, ‘The Atomic Sublime’, 10. Emphasis mine. Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 93 the divine. An act of God is an occurrence that no one could have reasonably predicted and that greater foresight could not have prevented – an unavoidable catastrophe. Yet, of course, the bomb was not unavoidable. The mythological motifs serve, nevertheless, to heighten the sense of inevitability, even as they point to something paradoxical – contradictory – in the scientists’ rationales.49 Prometheus, we should remember, means ‘forethought’. As Celia Deane-Drummond argues, wonder without an accompanying capacity for wisdom and discernment ‘is in danger of becoming unhinged, especially where wonders are sought for their own sake’.50 In the absence of such wisdom, wonder is particularly liable to vices such as self-deception and grandiosity such as we see in the scientists’ eager turn to narratives that effectively release them from accountability. Whether the myth is one of manifest destiny, Greek tragedy or a Biblical fall, a common cluster of narratives helped to reinforce the idea of the inevitability of the bomb’s creation and detonation. The bomb is at once something that could not have been predicted and yet is essentially predetermined, foreordained, almost unsurprising; its creators – though powerless to stop it – are made all-powerful in the act of exploding it. Claims to childlike wonder and ignorance are interwoven with tales of overweening hubris and vaulting ambition. We are supposed to see the scientists as somehow both – that is, both innocent children at play, and crafty and intrepid demi-gods. The scientist is both a perennial child and a godlike or superhuman entity. Either way, he is someone unlike us – a breed apart – and thus someone who cannot be held accountable for his own behaviour, as regular mortals are. Perhaps, as Oppenheimer seems to have intuited, the narrative best suited to capture the scientists’ claim to innocence and their courageous daring is the Biblical fall. Oppenheimer appropriates this narrative in claiming that with the atomic bomb, scientists had now ‘known sin’.51 They had succumbed to the temptation of the technically sweet, and now they – and we – faced eternal punishment. Within a decade of the test, Oppenheimer would say that he and the other physicists had
49 James A. Hijiya discusses in precise and convincing detail the ways in which Oppenheimer’s fascination with the Bhagavad Gita affirmed his sense of duty to see the project to completion, as well as his sense of (karmic) detachment from the ‘fruits’ of his labour and a certain inevitability or fatedness of the project as a whole. Just as Arjuna performs his duty ‘out of love for Krishna’, so was Oppenheimer persuaded to do his duty. Curiously, however, there is no Krishna-like figure to whom Oppenheimer is bound by love and duty. Science, it seems to me, is itself the primary sacred authority to whom he answers – the bomb must be created because it can be created. See Hijaya, ‘TheGita of J. Robert Oppenheimer’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144, no. 2 (2000): 123–67. 50 Deane-Drummond, Wonder and Wisdom, 14. 51 J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘Physics in the Contemporary World’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4, no. 3 (1948): 66. 94 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred done ‘the devil’s work’ at Los Alamos.52 That the scientists had had their first encounter with sin also suggests their uniqueness vis-à-vis other mortals. This portrait of the scientist as untouched or untroubled by sin is also satirised by Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, though with a twist: ‘… do you know the story about Father on the day they tested a bomb out at Alamogordo?’ Hoenikker’s son relates. ‘After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, “Science has now known sin”. And do you know what Father said? He said, “What is sin?”’53
The Myths Compounded
The atomic scientists, like some scientists today, drew heavily on the language of myth to characterise the perilous but irresistible nature of their work. Their characterisations of their work, and accounts written about them, are replete with figures and symbols of religion and mythology – not only sinful humans but Icarus (who flew too close to the sun), Prometheus (variously, the bringer of fire and one who fashions humans from clay) and of Pandora’s jar that released all evils, as well as hope, into the world. Historians of the bomb and popular science writers reflect these images back, often in surprisingly uncritical ways, in titles such as Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s American Prometheus (on Oppenheimer), The New Prometheans by Robert S. de Ropp and Jungk’s Brighter than a Thousand Suns. A chapter of Jungk’s personal history of the physicists is titled ‘For They Know Not What They Do’, an echo of Jesus’ words on the cross, asking forgiveness from God for those who put Him to death. These narratives – not unlike the photo-essays analysed by Hales – function to shield the actors against culpability. Even the supposedly chastened attitude of the scientists after detonation, as well as their subsequent advocacy against further development of nuclear weapons, is prefigured in the narrative of the penitent seeking absolution for the sins he (unwittingly) committed. More than one account of the atomic scientists goes so far as to characterise them, and particularly Oppenheimer, as handwringing, Hamlet-esque victims of fate or ‘playthings of history’.54 Here the scientists are not even vested with the minimal accountability of children at play. They were, rather, played with. Some authors go on to suggest that Oppenheimer’s Hindu-like mode of ‘non-attachment’ – a lack of egotistic investment – understandably distanced him from his own
52 Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 298. 53 Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, 17. 54 Robert S. de Ropp, The New Prometheans: Creative and Destructive Forces in Modern Science (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972), 1, 31. Hijiya discusses (but does not endorse) these interpretations of Oppenheimer as a helpless plaything or Hamlet-like character. Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 95 actions, for ‘only he who is blinded by egotism thinks: “I am the doer”’. The truly enlightened understand that actions are brought about by ‘the play of … forces of nature’.55 The self has no reality. ‘The scientist’, in Oppenheimer’s view, ‘should not attempt to assume responsibility for “the fruits of his work” – a phrase with a very specific meaning in Hindu philosophy’, as Hijiya notes. By invoking the phrase, Oppenheimer indicated that he correctly understood ‘this teaching of the Gita’ regarding detachment from one’s own ends.56 Opting for a scientific metaphor, de Ropp also casts Oppenheimer in the role of ‘catalyst’. A catalyst, it is worth noting, is something that increases the rate of a reaction in progress, without itself being affected. While historians (including early historians) of the bomb are sometimes critical of the way in which the physicists sequestered themselves from the implications of their research, their appropriation of these same narratives perpetuates the idea of the scientists’ innocence and the bomb’s inevitability. Jungk characterises the bomb as ‘an act of collective abandonment of conscience, horrifying in its magnitude’, even while he keeps multiple motifs of the fall narrative firmly in place.57 Quoting a line from Feynman, he ventures that the scientist has ‘come to “fear his godlike character”’.58 A new intellectual humility, Jungk declares, was ‘grown from the tree of atomic research’; this he heralds as a novel path to salvation, a sort of undeserved grace for the trespassing sinner. The knowledge gained from partaking of the atomic tree has taught the scientist ‘to recognize a truth long ago proclaimed by religion but now also susceptible of scientific proof – that human capacity for observation and judgement has its limits’. This new modesty may point to ‘an inner way to salvation’ as an alternative path to the spirit of ‘overweening pride’ that is ‘now revealed to have been disastrous’.59 Yet, rather than serve as cautionary tales that might humble current generations of scientists, encourage sound judgment or dissuade hubristic overreach, these narratives have been eagerly appropriated by scientists inclined to broadcast, rather than temper, their immodest ambitions and their sense of wonder at their own scientific achievements. In their comprehensive history of wonder, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park note that few scientists today write openly about the role of wonder in motivating their research.60 Sociobiologist E.O. Wilson is one exception. Wilson often draws on Prometheus as a symbol of humanity, reason and Enlightenment values. He depicts the scientific enterprise
55 de Ropp, New Prometheans, 39. 56 Hijiya, ‘TheGita of J. Robert Oppenheimer’, 145. 57 Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 191. Emphasis mine. 58 Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 304. 59 Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, 304–5. 60 Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998). 96 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred in heroic, mythological terms – an ‘Ionian Enchantment’, as he calls it in the opening pages of Consilience, wherein he upholds Icarus as the fitting symbol of scientific progress: ‘Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings’.61 ‘All scientists’, he insists, ‘are children of Tantalus’, locked into a never-ending pursuit of what seems just out of reach.62 In his Pulitzer Prize- winning On Human Nature, Wilson sifts through a variety of mythological candidates – including, as it happens, Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita – in search of one who best symbolises the daring quest for totalising knowledge. Here he settles on Prometheus. ‘The true Promethean spirit of science’, he writes, ‘means to liberate man by giving him knowledge and some measure of dominion over the physical environment’ as well as ‘blind hope’ for a better future.63 At the same time, Wilson is fond of depicting himself as a perennial child, forever fascinated by the ants who have been the focus of much of his life’s work, and whose behaviour informed his highly controversial sociobiology – most kids have a bug phase, he often jokes, but ‘I never grew out of mine’.64 That there might be limits to human knowledge and judgment is precisely what Wilson contests with Consilience, a project aimed at mapping and unifying all branches of knowledge – even religion and ethics – under the banner of evolutionary biology. A similar celebration of hubris is evident in On Human Nature, where Wilson regales readers with an updated version of Job’s interrogation by God. ‘Recall’, he writes, ‘how God lashed Job with concepts to overwhelm the human mind’. ‘Have you comprehended the vast expanse of the world? [God demands of Job] Come, tell me all this, if you know’. Wilson’s response? ‘And yes, we do know and we have told. Jehovah’s challenges have been met and scientists have pressed on to uncover and to solve even greater puzzles’.65 Once our scientific knowledge is complete, ‘a true sense of wonder will reinvade the broader culture’, Wilson predicts.66 Wonder at what, exactly, we might well ask. Wonder at the completed project itself – at the unity of knowledge – but also at the human mind that plays the starring role in what Wilson calls the ‘epic of evolution … the best myth we will ever have’.67 Every epic needs a hero, he realises, and in the evolutionary epic, ‘the mind will do’.68 Wilson’s project of consilience, I grant you, is not the Manhattan project. But neither are Wilson’s aims wholly benign.69
61 Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Vintage, 1998), 7. 62 Wilson, Consilience, 5. 63 Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1978), 209. 64 Edward O. Wilson, Naturalist (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994), 56. 65 Wilson, On Human Nature, 202. 66 Wilson, On Human Nature, 204. 67 Wilson, On Human Nature, 201. 68 Wilson, On Human Nature, 203. 69 Numerous critics over the years have charged that Wilson’s project entails an imperialist takeover of the humanities by the sciences, as well as an attempt to recast science Wonder, Religious Narrative and the Quest for the Atomic Bomb 97
In hyperbolic wonder-rhetoric such as Wilson’s, we see an instance of what Daston and Park call a ‘reversed dynamic of wonder’, wherein wonder is ‘the reward rather than the bait for curiosity’.70 Wonder is the endpoint of inquiry, rather than the beginning point it formerly was held to be. One’s painstaking work pays dividends in wonder at the completed project, and in the eradication of the categories of the mysterious or unknown – and of wonder itself.
Conclusion: Wonder and Curiosity
On this note of wonder and curiosity, I want to return to the question of whether we ought to understand the Manhattan Project as something like a failure of wonder or – conversely – the outcome of wonder followed to its logical conclusion. I would argue that Fiege’s account does not adequately distinguish many different dispositions that, rightly or wrongly, have been associated with wonder. Even aside from the fact that these scientists invoke wonder as an excuse or rationale for problematic lines of research, I would also point out that these are inherently insidious expressions of wonder. Upon closer inspection, the objects of wonder turn out not to be the natural world – as for example, the nature- study movement would have insisted – but human achievements or creations. As is most clearly shown in the recourse to mythology and fall narratives, what these scientists are describing is more akin to curiosity than wonder, as these two dispositions have often been delineated historically. Theorists of wonder routinely contrast it with curiosity. Curiosity has age- old connotations of prying into secrets of the universe or acts of appropriating, mastering, domesticating, that which appeared initially wondrous. In other words, while genuine wonder presents itself as a response to that which cannot be fully appropriated or assimilated, curiosity moves directly toward appropriation and mastery and/or the attainment of a ‘solution’ that allows the thinker to move on from the (now explained) phenomenon, in an insatiable quest for the next puzzle to be solved. Curiosity sees knowledge as a kind of possession – ‘a tick on a tourist’s place-list’ in R.W. Hepburn’s words.71 Wonder, in contrast, retains a certain ‘irreducible anteriority’.72 It dwells. as a sacred enterprise that will displace religion with its own compelling mythology. I agree with these charges. See Lisa H. Sideris, ‘Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age’, in Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action, edited by Ricardo Rozzi, S.T.A Pickett, Clare Palmer, Juan J. Armesto and J. Baird Callicott (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 147–62. 70 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 323. 71 Ronald W. Hepburn, ‘Wonder’ and Other Essays: Eight Studies in Aesthetics and Neighboring Fields (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1984), 134. 72 Rubenstein, Strange Wonder, 189. 98 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
In theological traditions, curiosity has been associated with avarice, lust, idleness and vainglorious pursuits. Thus, it makes sense that scientists would turn to fall narratives in which both pride and curiosity play a central role. What makes little sense is the alignment of wonder with pride. Curiosity readily engenders, and is engendered by, pride or arrogance. Augustine, for example, linked curiosity and pride with the fall – the soul’s sinful movement away from God. Curiosity, he worried, prevented the curious from feeling appropriate wonder when confronted with the marvels of creation; worse yet, curiosity led the curious, and encouraged them to lead others into error, usurping for themselves the wonder humans ought to feel for God. Augustine considered it an idle and perverted form of inquiry that probes nature’s secrets simply for the sake of knowing them – or thereby glorifying the self.73 Wonder, on the other hand, has ethical affinities with attitudes of modesty, compassion, empathy and caution – virtues that are largely absent from curiosity. Humility is the hallmark of wonder; it is not merely wonder’s remorse-ridden afterthought. Certainly, Carson thought so. So did nature-study advocates who sought to cultivate these dispositions in children by means of nature-education. While it lays claim to childlike wonder, the form of scientific wonder that often motivates ambitious projects such as the atomic bomb, or the consilient quest for totalising knowledge, too easily shades into a pernicious disposition that aims to liquidate wonder, solve all puzzles, and thereby gather the applause. Yet, as critics such as Rubenstein and Carson warn, wonder never is eclipsed entirely, but may turn dangerously inward toward the human agent who becomes its source and object – and again outward in displays of shock and awe violently imposed upon others. As the dust settles, the scientist stands before us as the ultimate object of wonder: a hybrid of God and human, a creature answerable to neither.
73 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 123. Chapter 6 Technology and Iconography: Minding the logoi Francis Van den Noortgaete
A renewed attention to the ‘iconic’ character of nature has over the last decades been re-emerging in Eastern Orthodox ecotheology. In different addresses by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and in the writings of John Chryssavgis, the theme has been recurrent.1 According to Michel Quenot, the icon’s very materiality attests to its marked embeddedness in nature. The traditional form of icon painting employs only natural substances: wood, oil, egg yolk and pigments are brought together within the icon, relating the mineral, vegetal and animal (including the human in its being handled and joined by the iconographer). For Quenot, an icon brings one back ‘to an awareness of the divine presence in creation, along with what this implies for our relation to nature’.2 From a phenomenological viewpoint, Bruce Foltz, in his 2001 article ‘Nature Godly and Beautiful’, highlighted several similarities between a profound connection to nature, as found in the writings of figures such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir or Wendell Berry, and the contemplation of an icon in the Eastern Christian tradition.3 Rather than a form of aesthetic experience, the iconicity of nature is considered as an encounter with alterity in nature. Chryssavgis likens earth to a face, like the image of God – seen and yet also unseen, sketched but not completed.4 Painted icons in Orthodox churches form part of an iconostasis, a screen of icons, which in an Orthodox church building ‘connects (rather than separates)
1 See, for instance, John Chryssavgis (ed.), Cosmic Grace, Humble Prayer. The Ecological Vision of the Green Patriarch Bartholomew, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009); John Chryssavgis (ed.), On Earth as in Heaven. Ecological Vision and Initiatives of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012); and John Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image. Insights into an Orthodox Christian Ecological Worldview, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing, 2007). 2 Michel Quenot, The Resurrection and the Icon (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 49. 3 Bruce V. Foltz, ‘Nature Godly and Beautiful: The Iconic Earth’,Research in Phenomenology 31, no. 1 (2001): 128–44. 4 Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image, 177. 100 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the sanctuary and the nave, as a window that connects earth and heaven, the spiritual and the material’.5 Different metaphors for the icon (and the iconostasis) have been used, describing it as a ‘bridge’, a ‘window’ or a ‘door’ onto the transcendent. But more than just a static passageway, it is actually the equivalent of a liturgical celebration.6 Already in the seventh century, Maximus the Confessor understood the whole world in terms of a ‘eucharistic cosmology’ or a ‘cosmic liturgy’,7 whereby the cosmos is called to become an icon, a space for God’s indwelling.8 So the iconic and the liturgical views on nature appear inherently intertwined. The central question of this chapter will be how such an ‘iconic-liturgical’ perspective on nature shapes human attitudes toward it and how this might translate in the way one devises and employs technology. In order to assess this, we first need to explore some crucial aspects of the underlying anthropology and ontology.
A Ministry for Creation
Maximus the Confessor’s worldview is inexorably linked to a specific concept of humanity, considered to be ‘priests’ of creation.9 Given Christian church history and its struggle with power issues, this is a term which can easily give rise to misinterpretation and even aversion, hinting at clericalism or strong anthropocentrism.10 To Kallistos Ware, rather than some kind of ‘office’ humans should exercise, the Greek patristic idea of being priests of creation is a crucial
5 Andreas Andreopoulos, Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), 36. 6 Placide Deseille, ‘La confession de foi dans la tradition iconographique orthodoxe’, Connaissance des Religions (hors série): Lumière et Théophanie: l’icône (1999), 182. 7 Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Creator and Creation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, (ed.) Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 73. 8 Daniel Munteanu, ‘Cosmic Liturgy: The Theological Dignity of Creation as a Basis of an Orthodox Ecotheology’, International Journal of Public Theology 4 (2010): 333. 9 The perspective on the human being as a ‘microcosm’, including his or her vocation to mediate between the sensible and the intelligible world, reaches back to the Cappadocian Fathers. See, for instance, Lars Thunberg,Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 135–6. Regarding the origins of the notion of humans as ‘priests’ of creation in Gregory of Nazianzus, see in particular Sigurd Bergmann, Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 101. 10 Elizabeth Theokritoff,Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), 218. However, Bergmann has argued that suspicions of anthropocentrism or hierarchical thinking are alien to the patristic worldview Technology and Iconography 101 element of Christian anthropology.11 It is an integral part of what humans are called to be. It therefore relates to a more universal notion of human priesthood, as mentioned in the first Petrine Epistle (2.9) or in Exodus (19.6): ‘but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom’. John Zizioulas sees the priest as the one who freely takes the world in his hands to offer it to God, and who, in return, brings God’s blessing to what he has referred to God. Through this act, creation, recognised as belonging to God, is brought into communion with the divine.12 This lifting up in praise, this offering and receiving back the gift of creation from God is not seen as an isolated act, but as part of a continuous ‘eucharistic cycle’. Creation, including humans in their priestly role, is continually transformed into a bearer of life13 through this dynamic of offering-receiving.14 All creatures’ final fulfilment lies in union with God, or deification theosis( ).15 Torstein Tollefsen underlines that for Maximus the Confessor, this deification pertains to the entire creation and is not limited to human beings.16 Non-human participants play an active and essential role in the cosmic liturgy.17 Already in the Old Testament, like in Psalm 148, non- human creation at times is described as even taking the fore in praise and in pointing and guiding humans to God.18 Basil Osborne poignantly makes a case for human modesty: ‘for us to preach the Gospel to every creature would appear to be to preach to the converted: the material world in its very createdness is turned towards God, points towards God’.19 Even prior to human presence, the universe existed and already stood in relation to God. There is continuity from this notion finds its origins in. Indeed the human role is one of service, subordination even. See Bergmann, Creation Set Free, 98–101. 11 Kallistos Ware, Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2012), 43. 12 John Zizioulas, ‘Proprietors or Priests of Creation?’ (Baltic Sea RSE Symposium Keynote Address, 2 June 2003), III, http://www.rsesymposia.org/themedia/ File/1151679350-Pergamon.pdf (accessed 31 May 2014). 13 John Zizioulas, ‘Preserving God’s Creation: Three Lectures on Theology and Ecology III’, King’s Theological Review 13 (Spring 1990): 5. 14 K.M. George, ‘Towards a Eucharistic Ecology’, in Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation – Insights from Orthodoxy, (ed.) Gennadios Limouris (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), 53–4. 15 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke & Co. Ltd, 1957), 99. 16 Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, ‘The Mystery of Christ as a Key to the Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor’, Studia Patristica XLII (Leuven: Peeters, 2006): 258. 17 Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image, 117. 18 Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Creation and Priesthood in Modern Orthodox Thinking’, Ecotheology 10, no. 3 (December 2005): 347. 19 Basil Osborne, Speaking of the Kingdom: The Coming of the Eighth Day (Witney: St Stephen’s Press, 1993), 52–3. 102 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the pre-human state of creation to its ultimate, eschatological goal. Within this continuum, humans were called upon to guide creation to its final destination: to unite the world and bring it into harmonious being within God.20 However, humans forsook their task. Instead of mediating unity, they contributed to the divisions within the world. What has been called the fall has implications for the whole of creation. Anthony Bloom uses the image of nature as a good horse with humanity as its drunken rider.21 The original human vocation remains, to refer the world back to God, letting the communion be re-established by bringing the cosmos to final unity in God. In this light, the human priesthood of creation should be seen as a humble ministry that humanity up to now has been unwilling to assume. The theological ground for this priestly anthropology is found in Maximus the Confessor’s doctrine of the logoi, which provides the basis for his liturgical cosmology. God’s will is present in his creation through the divine words, the logoi, in all created entities, who exist both through and toward the Logos of God, in which these creaturely logoi are contained.22 So in all created entities we encounter what Elizabeth Theokritoff calls a ‘wordless word’,23 an expression of the divine will for that creature, and the being’s natural response, which is its own ‘praise’ in both a metaphorical and a real sense. Seen in this way, creation as a whole becomes like a concelebration of beings, praising God intuitively.24 Only humans have the freedom of conscious choice and, as ‘eucharistic’ animals, the ability to assemble the praise of all creatures in their own thanksgiving. However, it is important to note that through the logoi every being has a unique and direct relationship with God. No creature, even human, has an exclusive bond that would render those of the rest of creation subsidiary.25 All creatures have
20 Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 139–40. 21 Anthony Bloom, cited in Theokritoff,Living in God’s Creation, 237. 22 Munteanu, ‘Cosmic Liturgy’, 334. 23 Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Embodied Word and New Creation: Some Modern Orthodox Insights Concerning the Material World’, in Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West. Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos Ware, (ed.) John Behr, Andrew Louth and Dimitri Conomos (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 231. 24 Eric Daryl Meyer’s reading of Gregory of Nazianzus and Evagrius of Pontus even leads him to suggest that ‘The saintliest humanity … may be found in themoral and spiritual animal, who – like the ants and the bees – participates in the order of justice, love, beauty, and humility instinctively, not because these are the products of her own reason, but because she is interpellated, subjectivized within an external rationality, the rationality of God’. Eric Daryl Meyer, ‘“Marvel at the Intelligence of Unthinking Creatures!”: Contemplative Animals in Gregory of Nazianzus and Evagrius of Pontus’, in Animals as Religious Subjects. Transdisciplinary Perspectives, (eds) Celia Deane-Drummond, Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser and David L. Clough (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 204. 25 Theokritoff,Creation and Priesthood, 351–2. Technology and Iconography 103 their being from God and therefore participate in Him, whether by intellect, perception or vital movement or other aptitude.26 According to Theokritoff, the response of beings is addressed to their Creator, not to humans. Our conscious response does not create cosmic worship, even if we have a specific role in it.27 So Maximus’ doctrine of the logoi provides a foundation for a communality of beings, contained within the divine Logos: ‘when we offer, we are ourselves part of that which we offer. As cosmic priests, we stand in nature, not above it’.28 Instead of using the term ‘priest of creation’, Alexander Schmemann’s alternative formulation ‘priest for creation’ or even ministry towards creation seems more appropriate.29 The question remains, however, just how humans are supposed to fulfil this ‘ministrant’ role. It is in the person of Christ, theLogos become incarnate, that Christians find the prototypical priest of creation, the true model for human relation to the natural world.30 His example shows an attitude which is essentially kenotic, characterised by humble love, compassion and self-sacrifice.31 For Ware, thanksgiving and offering, eucharist and sacrifice even constitute a single reality, an ‘undivided action’.32 In Christ, being becomes a ‘dialogical gift’,33 through his example of agapeic love, offering all to the Father. The whole of creation is intended for a dialogue-in-freedom which discloses as its eschatological vocation, as its actual being, a becoming-in-communion, in likeness of its Creator.34 In this transformative process, by opening up to selfless eucharistic love, one becomes part of the universality of being-as-gift in Christ.35
26 Nikolaos Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010), 59. 27 Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Liturgy, Cosmic Worship, Christian Cosmology’, in Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation, (ed.) John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 305. 28 Kallistos Ware, Through the Creation to the Creator (London: Friends of the Centre Papers, 1997), 21. 29 Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 83. Radu Bordeianu uses the similar expression ‘priesthood towards creation’. Radu Bordeianu, ‘“Your Own of Your Own We Offer to You”: Priesthood Towards Creation’, in To Discern Creation in a Scattering World, (ed.) Frederiek Depoortere and Jacques Haers, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 262 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 461–75. 30 Zizioulas, Preserving God’s Creation III, 5. 31 Ware, Through the Creation to the Creator, 21. 32 Ware, Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century, 48. 33 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 145. 34 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 215. 35 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 148. 104 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
This enables the actualisation of thelogoi , realizing being as gift-sharing.36 A proper use of the world is a question of trying to grasp the divine intention for created beings, God’s will for them to flourish.37 Maximus the Confessor holds a dynamic ontological view, as a triadic movement from creation to its intended goal in deification – from the logos of being that defines the nature of creatures to the logos of wellbeing that indicates their orientation toward God – and eventually to the logos of eternal wellbeing as the final deified state which brings them to rest in God.38 So this movement forms the path for an ontology in realisation.39 Humans, with their inherent freedom, must choose to participate in God in order to actually be.40 Only in receiving and responding to the call for deification can one come to be; the alternative is ‘nothingification’.41 Theethos , the disposition and the path of action chosen is a prior condition for this particular ontology to realise itself. The fall is first of all moral, ‘the irrational choice of non-being over being, love of dust instead of love for God’.42 As a consequence of this, humanity lacks the means to fulfil its mediatorial vocation, which has consequences for the rest of creation. By choosing not to participate in God, creation falls toward non-being. Nature, in this specific ontological sense, ‘has never existed’.43 The human task therefore consists in mediating its coming into being. It is precisely moral action that leads to the Christian’s ever deeper incorporation in being, within the Logos.44 The ontology and ethics involved, and their interrelationship, clearly are very different from those in modern philosophy. There is no question of deriving ought from is. Instead there is a continuous choice for a certain ethos, like a bifurcation, opening up a trajectory to truly be or one leading to a fall into nothingness. Nikolaos Loudovikos speaks of an ‘ontological ethics’, an internal dialogue between the human free will and divine logoi.45 However, this choice is not an individualised, autonomous one for humans to make. For Maximus the Confessor it is precisely refusal of communion that indicates separation from God and therefore amounts to non-being. Only in
36 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 126. 37 Theokritoff, ‘Creation and Priesthood in Modern Orthodox Thinking’, 349. 38 Torstein Theodor Tollefsen,Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 123. 39 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 114. 40 Eric Perl, Methexis: Creation, Incarnation, Deification in Saint Maximus Confessor (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1991), 242–3. 41 Perl, Methexis, 247. 42 Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 114. 43 Perl, Methexis, 249–50. 44 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 85. 45 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 85. Technology and Iconography 105 communion can being be actualised, whereby love is the ‘true, authentic, and sole mode of existence’.46 The human task, the ministry toward creation, can therefore be described as a universal ‘personalisation’ of the cosmos, mediating the unity of beings by offering them to God, ‘within a nexus of relationships of communal reciprocity’.47
The Liturgy after the Liturgy
For almost every Orthodox writer on the subject, eucharistic worship cannot be separated from an ascetic attitude. It flows naturally from the cosmic liturgy.48 Ascesis is not to be reduced to forms of mortification, subduing or yoking the body, tinged by contemporary demands of bodily fitness or dietary rigour, but essentially as a manner of letting oneself be liberated from predatory and addictive relations to the world.49 It is being released from a self-centred focus, opening up the possibility of being-in-communion. Renunciation for Maximus the Confessor is thus not a matter of negation, thereby hoping for some form of (later) compensation, but actually enables one to freely assume the human task within creation.50 Asceticism is considered to be intrinsically eucharistic and the eucharist as intrinsically ascetic. Considered separately, asceticism is merely a tour de force of the human will, while liturgy without asceticism amounts to aesthetic enjoyment.51 It is only through their mutual synergy that humans become able to perceive the logoi of beings.52 The ascetic holds back, wants to see beings’ inner principle actualised in agapeic communion.53 It implies assenting to God’s intention for creation’s deification.54 So, when taken in its literal sense as a ‘practice’, the ascetic struggle is directed toward a growth in love aimed at the truth of creation.55 Therefore, the ministry it helps foster, in Christ’s example, can only be kenotic. Without sacrifice it will be impossible for humans to act
46 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 142. 47 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 150. 48 Theokritoff, ‘Embodied Word and New Creation’, 235. 49 Theokritoff, ‘Creator and Creation’, 75. 50 Kostake Milkov, ‘Renunciation According to Maximus the Confessor’, Studia Patristica XLVIII (Leuven: Peeters, 2010): 71. 51 Eric Bradshaw, ‘TheLogoi of Beings in Greek Patristic Thought’, inToward an Ecology of Transfiguration. Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation, (ed.) John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 21. 52 Bradshaw, ‘TheLogoi of Beings in Greek Patristic Thought’, 21. 53 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 147–8. 54 Milkov, ‘Renunciation According to Maximus the Confessor’, 71. 55 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 142. 106 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred as priests of creation and address the current environmental crisis.56 It is telling to note that the original meaning of the Greek word for liturgy, leitourgia precisely is a ‘public service or work’, performed at one’s own expense. Ware sees the ministrant ethos as a ‘Liturgy after the Liturgy’, interweaving the ascetic and eucharistic way of life.57
Steward, Co-creator and/or Priest?
In Christian ecotheology, different underlying anthropologies can be discerned and which to a certain degree overlap. Best-known and probably most easily grasped is the human ‘stewardship’ of creation. Economical in origin, the concept has in the last quarter of the twentieth century been adapted to a more ecological use. However, some argue that it is an adaptable and elusive concept, subject to contrasting interpretations,58 with a biblical basis that has been questioned.59 Despite its attractive straightforwardness, it ‘resists normative theological definition’.60 An inherent vulnerability of the Christian stewardship concept is that it considers nature as some kind of property or resource, ‘owned not by us but by God, but all the while given into our hands for efficient and productive use’.61 So the risk of a managerial, utilitarian approach looms, potentially leading to forms of enlightened human despotism – even if benign – over the rest of creation.62 To Zizioulas, however, the human being is related to nature not functionally, as the idea of stewardship would suggest, but ontologically. By being a steward, the human being relates to nature by what he does, whereas by being the priest of creation he relates to nature by what he is.63 In view of Maximus the Confessor’s
56 Chryssavgis (ed.), On Earth as in Heaven, 225. 57 Ware, Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century, 48; Bordeianu, ‘“Your Own of Your Own We Offer to You”’, 474. 58 Peter Bakken, ‘Stewardship’, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, (ed.) Bron Taylor (London: Continuum, 2009), 1598–9. 59 Margaret Barker, Creation. A Biblical Vision for the Environment (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 199–200. 60 H. Paul Santmire, ‘From Consumerism to Stewardship: The Troublesome Ambiguities of an Attractive Option’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology 49, no. 4 (2010): 333. 61 Paulos Gregorios, The Human Presence: An Orthodox View of Nature (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1978), 84. Stewardship is often claimed by companies to justify allegedly sustainable policies and activities. But as Richard Dahl points out, many companies lay rather vague and dubious claims to environmental stewardship. Richard Dahl, ‘Greenwashing: Do You Know What You’re Buying?’ Environmental Health Perspectives 118, no. 6 (2010): 247. 62 Zizioulas, ‘Proprietors or Priests of Creation?’, I. 63 Zizioulas, ‘Proprietors or Priests of Creation?’, IV. Technology and Iconography 107 doctrine of the logoi, this fundamental distinction becomes clear. For Zizioulas, even scientists are called to carry out a para-eucharistic work, aimed at ‘the freeing of nature from its subjection beneath the hands of modern technological man …, making him aware that … the communion with the divine life (II Peter 1:4), extends to “all creation” and not just to humanity’.64 K.M. George even goes so far as to state that any Christian ecological stance can only attain its proper meaning when seen from this ontological, priestly perspective. When stewardship is connected to the priestly anthropology, it is transformed: ‘The true steward offers himself up for the total life of that which is entrusted to him. He is not simply a custodian’.65 So becoming a priest of creation raises the stakes substantially. Through its prototype in Christ, this priesthood can only be deeply kenotic. The ability to experience the ‘Godwardness’ of all creatures66 precludes seeing them as entities to be managed or tended. This ministry also appears fundamentally distinct from Philip Hefner’s anthropological concept of the human being as the ‘created co-creator’, which sees as his/her assignment the ‘stretching’ or ‘enabling’ of nature, ‘calling forth the new’ as a ‘liberation’ of the systems of nature.67 This proposes a much more active role for humans as ‘the agent for a new level of the creation’s freedom’.68 Hefner tends to strongly emphasise a ‘creative’ task for the human being. Even if his views explicitly refer to the example of Christ and sacrificial love, his created co-creator tends toward becoming a ‘self-created creator; the being that is now transcending and directing the evolutionary processes from which it has emerged’.69 In contrast, Maximus the Confessor saw the human task as – finally – taking to heart the primeval vocation of reconciling and unifying creation in God, a task still unassumed. This does not primarily rely on creative sophistication or technological advancement. The looming self-confidence of the co-creator in Hefner’s work also seems to contrast with the fundamental element of humility in Maximus’ anthropology. One can only guess how he would have read Hefner’s statement that:
64 John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), 120. 65 George, ‘Towards a Eucharistic Ecology’, 54. 66 Theokritoff, ‘Liturgy, Cosmic Worship, and Christian Cosmology’, 306. 67 Philip Hefner, ‘Biocultural Evolution and the Created Co-Creator’, in Science and Theology: The New Consonance, (ed.) Ted Peters (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 185; Philip Hefner, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 250. 68 Hefner, The Human Factor, 48. 69 Brent Waters, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 103. 108 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Industrial or technoscience, technology, and engineering are paradigms of how we relate to the world – that is one reason they are so powerful. Their very existence and their flourishing express something very real and true about the fundamental nature of being human. They make an anthropological statement. … When we engage the world with a view to improving it, we reveal the kind of creature we are.70
λειτουργία, εἰκών, and τέχνη
So what light does this human ministry toward creation, embedded in the iconic- liturgical view on nature, shed on technology? Chryssavgis points out that ‘the present ecological crisis is a result precisely of our activity, of the considerable human effort to “change” or “better” the world’.71 He sees ascesis not primarily as another or a better way of acting but as vigilance, a form of attentiveness instead of wanting to cast reality into the moulds shaped by human intentions. He questions the strong human inclination toward intervening, by a thought- provoking reversal of a well-known dictum: ‘Don’t just do something, stand there’.72 The priestly ministry, however, is not to be seen as a path of inaction.73 Nevertheless, beings reveal their logoi only when they are treated as ‘self- expressive entities worthy of being heard and seen’.74 This requires receptivity to the ways in which they actualise their essence. The material world for Maximus the Confessor is essentially dialogical, both between God and creation as between creatures.75 Matter is not seen as a barrier, but called to become a field of agapeic exchange and communication.76 Elizabeth Theokritoff sees the painting of an icon as a paradigm for human activity. Drawing on Basil Osborne, she holds that humans should aim at creating forms that enable God to be present in this world, forms that do not shut the divine intention (logoi) out.77 This calls for a different stance of
70 Philip Hefner, ‘Embodied Science: Recentering Religion-and-Science’, Zygon 45, no. 1 (March 2010): 257. 71 John Chryssavgis, ‘The World of the Icon and Creation: An Orthodox Perspective on Ecology and Pneumatology’, in Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred, (ed.) Barry McDonald (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2003), 263. 72 John Chryssavgis, ‘A New Heaven and a New Earth: Orthodox Theology and an Ecological World View’, The Ecumenical Review 62, no. 2 (July 2010): 219. 73 Ware, Through the Creation to the Creator, 15. 74 C.A. Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 187. 75 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 92. 76 Munteanu, ‘Cosmic Liturgy’, 343. 77 Theokritoff, ‘Embodied Word and New Creation’, 229. Technology and Iconography 109 humans vis-à-vis nature. For the position of the icon painter is not external but internal to the representational space he renders.78 Clemena Antonova talks of an inner perspective, drawing on Oskar Wulff ’s notion ofinnere Anschauung.79 So both in Maximus’ communal ontology as in the icon, there is no subject- object scheme operative, rather the icon invites, even demands participation.80 The icon painter operates as a member of a community (the church, seen in its cosmic dimension). It is the vision and the action of this church, as the body of Christ, which passes through him or her.81 The iconographer is called to an exercise in selfless activity, to be un-original in the eyes of the world (not being the actual origin, which lies beyond) in order to retrieve the image ‘from within’, as it was originally intended.82 It is not about the creation of novel forms, but about the logoi of beings becoming heard. The inversion of perspective found within icons thus reflects a reversal of the wisdom of this world.83 The usual tendency towards control and mastery shifts to participation in mystery and kenotic abandonment. This ‘iconic’ world is not seen as an unreal world but rather, in accordance with Maximus’ particular concept of ontology-to-be- realised, as the actual real world which is enabled by the icon painter ‘to ingress upon, and to spill over into, this world’.84 So the challenge faced is how to approach technology from this view on human activity that takes icon painting as its exemplar. How can technology not obscure the iconic character of nature, but rather assist in revealing it?85 Nature thereby would be seen as a living, ‘performative’ icon, wherein every part of the being-in-community matters and each intervention to a certain degree affects the entire picture.86 For Theokritoff, ‘there needs to be a certain sacrifice of our individual preconceptions out of respect for the nature, the logos of the materials we are working with’.87 That we do not fully know the divine intentions for beings should not be reason to dismiss this perspective as too vague or even impossible
78 Boris Uspensky, The Semiotics of the Russian Icon (Ghent: The Peter De Ridder Press, 1976), 35. 79 Clemena Antonova, ‘On the Problem of ‘Reverse Perspective’: Definitions East and West’, Leonardo 43, no. 5 (2010): 464. 80 Charles Lock, ‘Iconic Space and the Materiality of the Sign’, Religion and the Arts 1, no. 4 (1997): 8. 81 Deseille, ‘La confession de foi dans la tradition iconographique orthodoxe’, 182. 82 Milica Bakic-Hayden, ‘The Aesthetics of Theosis: Uncovering the Beauty of the Image’, in Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western Christianity, (eds) William Peter van den Bercken and Jonathan Sutton (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 34. 83 Quenot, The Resurrection and the Icon, 53. 84 Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image, 121. 85 Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image, 140. 86 Chryssavgis (ed.), Cosmic Grace, Humble Prayer, 25. 87 Theokritoff,Living in God’s Creation, 231. 110 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred to operationalise. Agapè, as selfless love, does not perfectly know what to ‘do’ with the ‘other’. It takes the other into account, knowing when to retreat, pause, come back again, in a reciprocal learning process.88 Human responsibility, explicitly considered in its constitutive parts as response-ability, could therefore be described as ensuring that human technological interventions are a response to the call made by the logoi of beings, reflecting the divine wish for them to flourish and to become what they were intended to be. Osborne phrases it as a bringing of the gospel to creation:
we preach the good news to the inanimate world through what we make of it. We preach to plants by the way we grow them, to animals by the way we treat them, to children by the way we raise them, to adults by the way we meet their spiritual, psychological and material needs.89
But given the inherent difficulty of comprehending nature’s iconicity, the divine intentions within the logoi, or the final deification the ministry should be directed at, the notion that seems to be most readily applicable is the communality of being as gift-giving. This provides a more maniable touchstone for human action, including the technology we choose to develop and the manner in which we apply it. The central question from the iconic-liturgical perspective will be if, and how, it can be considered as a gift to other beings? Or, framing it eucharistically: will we be able to see our technological advances as ways to enhance creation’s being- as-community? To Alexei Nesteruk, a quantum physicist with a pronounced interest in Orthodox cosmology, ‘all aspects, including technology, need to be reinstated to their proper relationship to the eucharist, understood in cosmic terms as the offering of creation back to God’.90 Both the iconic and the liturgical perspective moreover are clearly not limited to an evaluation of the present situation of the world, but are in essence future oriented. Nature’s becoming iconic is an eschatological vocation, both already there but not yet fulfilled. Thelogoi of beings are teleological per definition. Even future creatures, whose logoi are contained within the Logos beyond time but await their appropriate moment of coming into this world, cannot be discounted. So both the iconicity of nature and the logoi of all its component beings point ahead in time, toward deification. This, in turn, fundamentally orients the vocation of humans toward creation.
88 Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology, 7. 89 Osborne, Speaking of the Kingdom, 51. 90 Alexei V. Nesteruk, Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003), 2. Technology and Iconography 111
In a quite rare example of casuistry, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew made a formal statement in the aftermath of the tsunami that flooded the Japanese coastline and led to the explosion of part of the Fukushima nuclear plant:
Our Creator granted us the gifts of the sun, wind, water and ocean, all of which may safely and sufficiently provide energy. Ecologically-friendly science and technology has discovered ways and means of producing sustainable forms of energy for our ecosystem. Therefore, we ask: Why do we persist in adopting such dangerous sources of energy? Are we so arrogant as to compete with and exploit nature?91
The discourse of gift-giving is only partially developed in this message, and one could even argue that nuclear fuel (and fossil fuels) could also be considered a gift of the Creator. But thecrux of the issue seems to be whether the use of all that is given to us, in casu the uranium ores that can be transformed into nuclear fuel and hence into electricity, can as a whole be seen as exemplary of our being- as-gift to others. Is using a source of energy that has the inherent potential risk of spreading toxic isotopes over a large area, remaining within the biosystem for a long period thereafter, a gift to the current ecosystem and/or future human generations? What about the waste it generates in normal operation, the remaining activity of which is expressed in quasi-geological timescales that can span 106 years? In a similar vein, in what way is using fossil fuels at current rates, thereby potentially causing a major disturbance in the earth’s biosphere through abrupt climate change, gift-giving? Would focusing efforts on the improved capture and storage of the renewable flux of solar, wind and tidal energy be different in this regard, as a daily receiving, offering and distributing of what is readily available, even if this implies accepting limits to current first- world modes of living? Being-as-gift and being-in-communion might offer an interesting criterion to frame technological and environmental issues, both on a global and a local communal scale.92 It seems to provide a key to the human vocation within an iconic-liturgical perspective on nature. Approaching technology in this manner enables questions like ‘why?’, ‘to what end?’ to be brought to the fore. For there is a continued risk of confusion, even downright substitution of ends and means in modern (and post-modern) society.
91 Patriarch Bartholomew, ‘Message on the Nuclear Explosion at Fukushima’, The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, http://www.patriarchate.org/documents/ fukushima (accessed 31 May 2014). 92 One interesting attempt to apply a related approach to engineering can be found in W. Richard Bowen, ‘Ethics and the Engineer: Developing the Basis of a Theological Approach’, Studies in Christian Ethics 23, no. 3 (2010). However, in this article as in most similar attempts, the emphasis is predominantly or even solely on the consequences for the human community. 112 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
In The Imperative of Responsibility Hans Jonas describes how an ‘intoxication’ has taken place, with a technological drive that seems to have provided its own autonomous impetus.93 Even thirty years on, this observation has only increased in poignancy. He considers our present technological condition as ‘walking a ridge’, where the means could even destroy the end.94 Jacques Ellul also stresses the need for a reuniting of ends and means. He is convinced, as is Nesteruk, that what we can do is of no importance unless we can offer it with a good conscience toward God.95 Jonas’s thought on responsibility resonates in an interesting way with Maximus the Confessor’s doctrine of the logoi. According to Jonas, the intent is not so much to determine as to enable.96 Care links the primary ‘ought-to-be’ of the cared-for to the ‘ought-to-do’ of the carer, calling him or her to responsibility.97 Jonas posits the parent-child relation as the archetype of responsibility. One can read in this a remarkable analogy to the ontology-in-realisation of Maximus the Confessor. Jonas describes how the newborn ‘unites in himself the self- accrediting force of being already there and the demanding impotence of being- not-yet; the unconditional end-in-itself of everything alive and the still-have-to- come of the faculties for securing this end. The need to become is an in-between, a suspension of helpless being over non-being’.98 To him, it is the ‘pure being’, the ‘best being’ that parental care is about.99 Such an ethics of responsibility and prudential care accords well with the eucharistic ontology, with humanity called to kenotic ministry. In an attempt to envisage a future ethic, Barbara Adam and Chris Groves argue that to care ‘means to take on a nonreciprocal responsibility for performing a particular task because it falls uniquely to us to perform it’.100 They stress the importance of precaution,101 a critical inquiry into the purposes
93 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 203. See also Celia Deane-Drummond’s chapter in this volume. 94 Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 139. 95 Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (New York: The Seabury Press, 1967), 79–80. 96 Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 107. 97 Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 93. 98 Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 134. 99 Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 101. This even invites a meditation on Romans 8.22: ‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now’ (NRSV Catholic Version). 100 Barbara Adam and Chris Groves, ‘Futures Tended: Care and Future-Oriented Responsibility’, Bulletin of Science Technology & Society 31, no. 1 (2011): 22. 101 This is fundamentally different from an expanded form of risk analysis in the so- called ‘precautionary principle’, as applied in international (environmental) legislation and policy. Technology and Iconography 113 which technologies are intended to serve.102 For Jonas what is required is a new kind of humility in the face of the ever-growing magnitude and power of our interventions: ‘in the face of the quasi-eschatological potentials of our technological processes, ignorance of the ultimate implications becomes itself a reason for responsible restraint’.103 The question raised by Maximus’ eucharistic ontology is whether our acting in the world, including technology, enables being-in-communion as gift-sharing and contains a similar (heteronomous) end-oriented, precautionary restraint, aimed at taking the logoi within other beings duly into account. For Ellul, technical phenomena have lost their ‘dialectical character’: no longer recognising ‘the need of things to speak’.104 William Klink made a recent proposal to consider our interaction with the environment as a way of listening to and talking with nature, via the medium of technology,105 with the former listening aspect most in need of re-emphasis. For Ellul, there appears a clear need to take leave of our technical constructions in order to (re-)engage the other.106 Through the reduction of the environment to what can be quantified (monetised), there is a tendency to ignore vital knowledge pertaining to the realm of the uncertain, as the Fukushima incident has underlined. Precisely because of our inability to fully grasp the logoi (the divine intentions for beings), a heeding of the uncertain and unknown, from within agapeic love, is part of our responsibility toward the irreducible O/other.
Conclusion: An Unconventional Appeal
Klink rightly points out that ecologists are exemplary ‘primary listeners’, working closely with the environment and sensitive to the way in which nature responds to human technological interventions.107 Even if their underlying worldview might not be a traditional religious one, they embody at least one of what Ware sees as the required qualities for the human vocation to be priests toward creation. In their attentiveness, they acknowledge nature’s being as community and the unique value of each being in itself. The iconic-liturgical perspective calls humans to go even further, discovering in all being a presence and purpose
102 Christopher Groves, ‘Future Ethics: Risk, Care and Non-Reciprocal Responsibility’, Journal of Global Ethics 5, no. 1 (2009): 28. 103 Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 22. 104 David Lovekin, Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jacques Ellul (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1991), 114. 105 William H. Klink, ‘Nature, Technology, and Theology’,Zygon 27, no. 2 (June 1992): 207. 106 Lovekin, Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness, 114. 107 Klink, ‘Nature, Technology, and Theology’, 208. 114 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred that is beyond itself. As a consequence, every created entity, every blade of grass becomes a means of communion with the divine,108 and thereby acquires an irreducible value that defies quantification. Re-engaging with the iconic and liturgical perspectives on nature, drawing on patristic sources in an attempt to recontextualise their unusual insights, could illuminate our present condition, worldview and ethical approaches. Maximus the Confessor’s doctrine of the logoi appealingly but radically challenges conventional notions of ontology and ethics by considering ‘being’ as a responsive movement to a call, as a communal becoming through a befitting ethos. According to Maximus the Confessor, it all comes down to a simple question that is put before us as humans: to be or not to be.
108 Ware, Through the Creation to the Creator, 13–15. Chapter 7 ‘Millions of Machines are Already Roaring’: Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit Sigurd Bergmann
Power as Technology
In an enthusiastic tone, artists at the beginning of the twentieth century celebrated the development of modern technology:
We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicoloured, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.1
At the same time as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the Italian Futurist movement praised the progress towards the new world shaped by machines, they rejected all adoration of the past and encouraged the destruction of libraries, museums and academies. The movement fought moralism, feminism and utilitarian cowardice‚ it glorified war and hymned the beauty of speed, best represented in the roaring racing car.2 By millions of machines ‘already roaring’,
1 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, original publication in French: Le Figaro, Paris (20 February 1909) www.italianfuturism.org/ manifestos/foundingmanifesto/ (accessed 15 January 2014). 2 Marinetti, Founding and Manifesto of Futurism. 116 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the Italian nation, regarded as dead, would be new-born; in the age of the machines technology could help to overcome the ‘cult of the past’.3 It is still impressive to consider the clarity of the Futurists’ analysis of their culture and their consciousness about the enormous potential of social change that would result from their perception of the progress of technology. Their glorification of the machines has by no means been overcome, even if it was attacked immediately by the Dadaists, and even if well-grounded criticisms, for example by Weber, Marcuse and Habermas,4 have been formulated. It seems as if we are still caught in the same kind of enchantment that the Futurists grasped so strikingly:
Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday.5
What makes futurism still highly relevant is not so much the early declaration of a fascist European worldview or the glorification of war and speed, but its clear acknowledgement of the symbolic and bodily power of technology and its deep impact on our perception, feeling, thinking and action.
3 Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini, Manifesto of Futurist Painters, originally published in Italian as a leaflet byPoesia (Milan) (11 February 1910) www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/futuristpaintersmanifesto/ (accessed 15 January 2014). 4 For Max Weber, the individual was reduced to a cog in a machine and trapped in an ‘iron cage’ (stählernes Gehäuse) that formal rationalisation has made efficient, which he, in his Protestant Ethic, circumscribed as ‘mechanized petrification’. While the bureaucratic iron cage is only one side of modernity’s rationalisation, the ‘polytheism’ of value fragmentation is the other. Herbert Marcuse calls for a fundamental re-orientation of science and technology which need to be developed with a ‘new sensibility’ toward the living world, instead of contributing to the further exploitation of life. A radically different ‘rationality’ for technology is demanded. Jürgen Habermas criticises Marcuse for this point, claiming that only consensus-building political discourse can rationalise science and technology. With regard to technology’s ‘scientification’ Verwissenschaftlichung( ) we can ask with Habermas whether science has critically reflected upon technology’s embeddedness in social contexts over time, or whether the scientification process has intensified the mystery around the alliances of power and technology. Should technology, in general, be accepted as science without establishing the self-criticism and public transparency needed in a democracy? Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (London: Routledge, [1904–05] 1992); Herbert Marcuse, Der eindimensionale Mensch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967); Jürgen Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als >Ideologie< (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968). 5 Marinetti, Founding and Manifesto, 8. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 117
Figure 7.1 Umberto Boccioni, Visioni simultanee, 1911, oil on canvas, 70 x 70 cm Source: Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.
In his piece ‘Simultaneous Visions’, Umberto Boccioni illustrates a central thought of the Futurists’ ‘Technical Manifesto’: urban life compresses events and experiences, and place and space are gone. He expresses the synchronicity of our seeing when all is in movement and everything rotates.6 What the artists at that time were clearly aware of still appears as a socially constructed lacuna, namely the capacity of technical artefacts and systems to exercise power over nature and social life. Their pompous declarations did not so much glorify the artefacts themselves but praised their impact on our
6 For an interesting musical interpretation of this painting, and further classical and modernist works from Bosch, Rousseau, Degas, Picasso and others, in the genre of jazz, see the tune ‘Visioni simultanee (Boccioni)’ by The Framers on their album The Framers, Label Auand, 2013. 118 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred bodily senses and their capacity to change both our perception of the world and ourselves within it. Totally new perspectives, insights and experiences became possible. Life ‘in turmoil’, as Rilke so strikingly summarised it,7 received a deep intrinsic value through the artefacts that were equipped with internal magic powers to change our eye, to move our bodies and to shape our future. Futurism’s focus was on the change of ‘our day-to-day-world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science’.8 Late-modern capitalism instead still proclaims the dogma of technology’s so-called value neutrality, also described as ‘technological somnambulism’.9 Technology is in this mythical thinking simply regarded as a relation of making and use. While technicians produce tools for purposes others just use them; technology is morally and ethically neutral as everything depends on how it is used. Such an understanding simply neglects the fact that technology provides meaning and structure for human life, which it affects deeply – an insight which Marx especially had clearly emphasized. However, it is precisely such an understanding that enables the irresponsible use of technology for all sorts of purposes. The assumption that technology is value neutral is wrong and nothing more than a propagandistic claim to protect decision-making processes about technology development from critical investigation. Engineers cannot be acquitted from responsibility – they should be held just as accountable as the users. Technical systems are developed by and provided to those who would like to use them for their own benefit. Thereby, technology does not remain neutral at all in conflicts between social interests; on the contrary, it is an object of power. Power eternalizes and expands itself today not just with the help of technology but as technology, as Herbert Marcuse stated back in 1967.10 The idea that technology is a tool for humanity’s ‘salvation’ falls in line with Western history, in which culture has for the past thousand years
7 Rainer Maria Rilke, Das ist die Sehnsucht, in Sämtliche Werke Band 1: Gedichte, Erster Teil (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1955), 145 (English translation by Michael Northcott). See also Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space and the Environment (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2014), chapter 1, 19–47. 8 Boccioni et al. Manifesto of Futurist Painters. 9 Bryan Pfaffenberger elaborates the thinking following Langdon Winner. Bryan Pfaffenberger, ‘Fetishised Objects and Humanised Nature: Towards an Anthropology of Technology’. Man, New Series 23, no. 2 (1988): 238ff. 10 Marcuse, Der eindimensionale Mensch. ‘Today, domination perpetuates and extends itself not only through technology but as technology, and the latter provides the great legitimation of the expanding political power, which absorbs all spheres of culture’. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, 116 (1964), www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-dimensional-man/one- dimensional-man.pdf (accessed 15 January 2014). Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 119 tried to achieve salvation through technological innovations.11 Men and women, who were created in God’s image, are supposed to achieve a godlike existence on Earth by using their creative, practical skills. Today, it is hard to agree with such a view of technology. Too many projects aimed at world improvement have, at best, done nothing; at worst, they have increased violence and destruction.12
Purgative Machinery
The Futurist–Fascist alliance of arts, technology and the dominating elite met an intense opposition in its own time, mainly through the understanding of life and arts among Dadaist artists, who were succeeded by a historical stream of civilisation critique. The painting of Hannah Höch offers us a contrasting view, where the technical space of modernity looks more like a scrapyard. The symbols of modernity rust into ruins, the rails do not lead anywhere; paradise has been transformed into a mechanical garden, a dead territory where nothing can grow. The depression of the post-war period is already anticipated here. Machines are buried in a lifeless cemetery. It is interesting to ask why the conflict between two contradictory views of technology and its significance for modern society, as they have been expressed in Futurist and Dadaist conceptions, never has been resolved.13 Before we dive deeper into the anthropological depths of regarding technology as a symbolic power shaped by processes of animation and fetishisation, I would like to maintain the insights from the first decade of our last century in order to carry further the critical awareness about what artefacts can do to us. While the Futurists made us aware about the deep impacts of technology on our bodily being through perception and action, the Dadaists made us
11 Noble has shown that technology cannot be understood as analogous with religion, but as a religion in and of itself. David F. Noble. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin, 1999). See also Bron Szerszynski, Nature, Technology and the Sacred (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 12 See Bergmann, Religion, Space and the Environment, chapter 16. For a critique of theologies of technology of redemption see Peter Manley Scott, Anti-Human Theology: Nature, Technology and the Postnatural (London: SCM, 2010), 111–17. 13 For a detailed discussion of the philosophical discourse on ‘motion’ in the antiquity see Sigurd Bergmann, Geist, der Natur befreit: Die trinitarische Kosmologie Gregors von Nazianz im Horizont einer ökologischen Theologie der Befreiung (Mainz: Grünewald, 1995; Russian ed.: Arkhangelsk: Arkhangelsk University Press, 1999; rev. English ed. Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005). 120 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Figure 7.2 Hannah Höch, Mechanischer Garten, 1920, watercolour, 73.5 x 46.4 cm Source: The Museum of Modern Art, New York © Hannah Höch/BONO, Oslo 2014. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 121
Figure 7.3 Paul Klee, Die Zwitscher-Maschine (Twittering Machine), 1922, watercolour and ink, oil transfer on paper with gouache and ink on border, 63.8 x 48.1 cm Source: Museum of Modern Art, New York, reproduction: Wikimedia commons,
Figure 7.4 Raoul Hausmann, The Spirit of our Time, 1919, wood and other materials, 32.5 x 21 x 20 cm Source: Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris © Raoul Hausmann/BONO, Oslo 2014. explain the function and relation between man and woman, the blue wheel at the bottom and the red funnel at the top.14 In an article concerning his series of absurd fantasies named ‘portraits mécaniques’, he stated:
14 See William A. Camfield, ‘The Machinist Style of Francis Picabia’,The Art Bulletin 48, no. 3/4 (1966): 318. 124 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Figure 7.5 Francis Picabia (1879–1953), Parade amoureuse, 1917, oil on cardboard Source: © Francis Picabia/BONO, Oslo 2014. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 125
The machine has become more than a mere adjunct of life. It is really a part of human life … perhaps the very soul … I have enlisted the machinery of the modern world, and introduced it into my studio.15
Similar to Klee, his machine intended to awake the sense of sounding and listening in the frame of what they called a sonorous sculpture. The purposelessness of music could in that way underline the concept of an alternative human artefact. While Dadaists like Futurists acknowledged the power of technology, and visualised either critically or positively its central significance for modernity, Dadaist Marcel Duchamp circumscribed the dada machinery as a ‘purgative’. Nevertheless, one might wonder if the medical treatment has been successful, in the sense that it has freed us from the diseases of internalised machines, or if it could only help us to achieve a consciousness of its ambivalent and autocratic power over life. I tend to think the latter, even if Dadaist purgatives and antidotes of all kinds are without doubt still needed.
Machine Fetishism
Long before the machines, either gloriously roaring or purgative, took over the power over our daily life, Karl Marx acknowledged the power of technology as a central force in the emerging capitalism of his time. In the commodified relations between humans and things, such as those between the worker and his products, technical artefacts played an important role. Technology, he wrote:
discloses man’s mode of dealing with Nature, and the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.16
According to David Harvey, Marx was able to place technology at the nexus between the material reproduction of our daily life, our relationship to nature, our social relations and our mental worldview. Technology should therefore reveal all these four relations.17 For Marx, the process of commodification and alienation of the relations between humans and things became understandable as a process of fetishisation. As he showed clearly, modernity builds on the commodified relations between humans and things, including the alienating
15 Francis Picabia in ‘French Artists Spur on American Art’, New York Tribune (24 October 1915). 16 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (New York: [1867] 1976), 352. 17 David Harvey, ‘The Fetish of Technology: Causes and Consequences’, Macalester International 13 (2003): 4. 126 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred split between human workers and the products of their labour. According to Marx, the shift from the perception of the ‘physical relation between physical things’ to fetishisation has its roots in the accelerating trading system:
This Fetishism of commodities has its origin … in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them.18
For him, fetishism was ‘the religion of sensuous appetites’,19 and the analogy between modern commodification and religion was striking:
The relationships between the producers … take on the form of a social relation between the products of labour. … It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.20
The superior fetish object in capitalist economy is for Marx money, which is nothing other than a particular material commodity that has been elevated into the stand-in for all other possible commodities, serving as ‘the commodity par excellence’.21 Modern monetary systems of exchange presuppose an alienating split and operate through a commodification of things which are treated as objects with a borrowed life on the one side and an adoration of money as the highest object with an intrinsic value on the other. The theory of commodification and fetishisation is of course also relevant for Marx’s view of technology, which at his time accelerated in the innovation of machines for industrial production. According to Amy Wendling, for Marx the machine fetishism endowed by the capitalist mode of production comes to symbolise the fundamental separation of human beings from the potentially actualising nature of labour itself.22 Machines alienate humans from their
18 Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, chap. 1, sec. 4. 19 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Religion (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982), 22. 20 Marx, Capital, Vol. 1. 21 Adrian Johnston, ‘The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Žižek and the Dynamics of Belief ’, International Journal of Žižek Studies 1, no. O (2007): 75. 22 Amy E. Wendling, Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 60. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 127 products. Reification, alienation and machine fetishism characterise the central function of modern capitalism. The context for the quotation above, where Marx placed technology in the nexus of material reproduction, daily life, nature, social relations and mental conceptions, was a comparison of the history of technology and the history of nature, where technology was made by man while nature in the process of evolution was not.23 The question of how machinery interacts and operates in human relations with nature appears here as a central challenge for the analysis of modernity. Karl Marx and Paul Klee, in company with other Dadaists, come surprisingly close to each other in exploring the essence of machines and the human bodily physiology and their impacts on each other. From both we can learn that machines are not simply dead artefacts to be used for purposes but that we need to acknowledge them as agents in the whole nexus of relations within society and nature. In such a view, machine fetishism dispossesses the machines of their potential independent meaning of a cooperation between humans and nature. Following another quote from Marx, it is the ideological imagination of a technical structure and architecture that differentiates the human being from nature:
… what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.24
Obviously the idea of constructing a machine is a part of its materiality. Should we therefore strongly focus our criticism on the interpretation of the desires and ideas that affect and shape the conditions for the material realisation of technology? Are fetishised artefacts to be regarded as materialised dreams and desires? One must not at all follow a strict idealistic worldview in order to mine such an idea deeper; rather it is the interconnectivity of ideas, desires and dreams and the physical process of technical materialisation that makes it intriguingly exciting to apply Marx’s thoughts to modern technology. In short, it is the entanglement of nature, subjectivity and culture which needs to move into critical focus, especially if we regard our world, with Henri Lefebvre, as an ‘urban form’, where multiple technological worlds are perceived, conceived and lived as wholes.25 In the envisioned nexus of technology all parts are impacting on each other. If modes of production change, also worldviews and identities as well as
23 Marx, Capital, Vol. I, chap. 15, fn. 4. 24 Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pt. 3, 178. 25 See Stephen Read, Martine de Laat-Lukassen and Tadas Jonauskis, ‘Revisiting “Complexification”, Technology, and Urban Form in Lefebvre’,Space and Culture 16, no. 3 (2013), 381–96. Lefevbre’s search for a new urban praxis opened for new forms of social relations and inspired the theory of urban form and planning and design disciplines. 128 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred our environmental embedding will change. And as technology appears as a new force, the fabrication of meaning, our production, the reproduction of our daily life and our self-understanding within it will change. In allusion to Habermas,26 the ‘system’ colonialises the life worlds through alienating, fetishised machines.
Expanding the Concept of Fetishism
Strong reasons can be adduced to expand the concept of fetishism as Marx has conceived it, and to apply it to the abyss of modern technology. One reason is the need to unmask the capacity of technology to obscure inequalities of global society. According to Alf Hornborg, modern technological objects are basically inanimate things attributed with autonomous productivity or even agency, obscuring their own foundation in asymmetric global relations of exchange.27 The underlying social relations in modern technology must therefore be addressed with regard to the machine production of inequality. For him, modern technology can be regarded as an ‘index of accumulation’, where saving time and space takes place at the cost of time and space at other places elsewhere in the world.28 Global differences in the prices for labour and resources are part of a globally unjust asymmetry, where trade and economic exchange and the technological transfer of work and material into products to be traded represent a central driving force. So-called economic growth assisted by technological development must therefore in itself be unmasked as a part of unjust resource flows and global power relations. The fetishisation of machines appears in such a view rarely as an accidental emergence but fits perfectly well into the construction of global power alliances who execute power not with but over life-worlds, things and human beings. Technology mystifies unequal exchange with fatal consequences for the diversity of human cultural and biological diversity. Another consequence of machine fetishism is the technocratisation of governance, which leads to social disintegration, the ‘corrosion of character’ (Richard Sennett) and the ‘rule of no-man’ (Hannah Arendt) – that is, the disabling of the economic and political actors embedded in a technological system, in which individual action does not count.29
26 See Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Zweiter Band: Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft, 4th ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 522. 27 Alf Hornborg, ‘Technology as Fetish: Marx, Latour, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism’, Theory Culture Society, 3 (10 June 2013), http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/ early/2013/06/09/0263276413488960. 28 Hornborg, ‘Technology as Fetish’, 4. 29 Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958), 40. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 129
A second reason to expand the concept of fetishism lies in the power of financial markets that have succeeded in elevating money to the so-far highest value and rank of fetishised superiority. Money is not simply an artefact, but represents in itself ‘the commodity par excellence’ with a remarkable potential to impact on the production of life. It was the invention of money-based abstract tools that related humans, lands, works and things to each other. From the history of economy we can learn how this innovation allowed the accelerating asymmetry between poor and rich, which is reaching a planet-destroying scale at present. Introducing the relationship of guilt and debt – which by the way Nietzsche linked closely to each other so that guilt derived from financial debts30 – through systems of financial accountancy into the human community, it established a system where owners became masters over others. Those who were indebted had to sell their land and work as ‘debt slaves’. As Ulrich Duchrow has shown, religions of different confessions initially resisted this production of inequality between humans and groups, but once capitalism developed into its present form of a global turbo-capitalism, Marx’s view of money as the steering superior fetish became true in an uncanny way. Most likely, one should understand the spiritual, religious and juridical innovations of the axial age,31 which led to a search for new answers in the Jewish, Christian, Greek, Islamic and Buddhist faiths, as responses to the dangerous social developments that resulted from the introduction of a money- and property-based economy.32 Money’s potential to provoke greed and to impact more generally on our spiritual life seems to be fatally unreflected upon, but it becomes obvious that such a mechanism lies deep at the heart of the process of handing over life-giving power to the agency of man-made artefacts through fetishisation. Money indeed works over a long historical period as the dominant fetish, one which reifies our social relations, our relation to nature, our reproduction of daily life and our ideas about the meaning of life and human existence. The old and wise personification of this power in the figure of Mammon serves as an intriguing visualisation of a force with incredible skill to obscure its own efficiency over our life. Christ’s clear unmasking statement that belief in money (mammon) is repugnant to belief in God the Creator seems self-evident in this context.33 However, it is startling that
30 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, Second Treatise: ‘Guilt’, ‘Bad Conscience’, and the Like (1887). 31 Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, 1st ed. (München: Piper, 1949). 32 Ulrich Duchrow, Gieriges Geld: Auswege aus der Kapialismusfalle, Befreiungstheologische Perspektiven (München: Kösel, 2013), 55. See the English edition: Ulrich Duchrow and Franz J. Hinkelammert, Transcending Greedy Money: Interreligious Solidarity for Just Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 33 Matthew 6.24 (NIV): ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money [mammon].’ 130 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred faith communities have seldom re-imagined their own social architecture and mission in the light of this insight. Criticism of fetishised financial and machine systems therefore needs to move onto the spiritual and ethical agenda for religions of all kinds. Andrew Feenberg points to the fact that capitalism is the first system to oppress populations with technology instead of religion, ritual, or violence. The so-called ‘neutrality’ of technology is an excellent politicised instrument that can be used without mystification.34 An inescapable task for faith communities therefore is to deconstruct and replace this allegedly rational mode of oppression. A third reason for expanding our understanding of fetishism can be found in the concept of animism which underlies Marx’s use of the concept. If fetishism is regarded as an attribution of agency and power to a lifeless object which then executes influence over all dimension of the nexus of life, it must be regarded as a form of animation, where especially technology develops as a form of spiritual power-transfer from the human artisan to the constructed artefact, which is uploaded with physical as well as with symbolic spiritual agency. Anthropology has for a long time debated how traditional animism has been converted into capitalist fetishism of the kind that Marx observed and analysed. Such a historical hypothesis makes it necessary to explore so-called traditional animism and how it could have been transformed into practices of fetishisation. And, further on, such a line of reasoning would take us to the question of whether there might appear something like a life-enhancing animism which could overcome the unjust and life-colonising power of fetishisation and transform it into a new entanglement of the artisan and the artefact, the engineer and the machine. Can there emerge life-enhancing technologies beyond machine fetishism? What role might animism play in this? And what might the Christian belief in the Holy Spirit contribute? While Bruno Latour accused the anti-fetishists, both in religion and Marxism, for keeping alive the fetishes and sustaining the problematic distinction between facts and fetishes,35 it would be a mistake to interpret my argument so far in an anti-fetishist light. What bothers me is not fetishisation per se, but the problematic and obscuring form of fetishisation critiqued by Marx and others. My proposal is therefore not to eliminate the fetish in favour of the fact, or to follow Latour’s obfuscation of factish-talk, but
34 Andrew Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (New York: Routledge, 2005), 106. 35 Latour suggests instead the neologism of factish in order to escape the dilemma, but his discussion is scarcely constructive as he is not at all considering the obscuring life-destructive modes of fetishisation and thereby tends to ensure the dangers of techno- fetishism’s obscureness. For a more detailed criticism, see Hornborg, ‘Technology as Festish’, note 27; Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010), 2ff. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 131 that we experiment with alternative animistic ways of attributing meaning and power to our homemade artefacts.
Animism and the Holy Spirit
Animism represents an essential human capacity to perceive and interact with non-human life forms as living beings with unique and individual, person-like identities that are rooted in invisible but fully experiential life forces.36 Without speculating much about animism as the origin and source from which all types of religion evolve, as Tylor once (falsely) claimed, we can regard animism as an essential human skill. Piaget’s insights in developmental psychology about children’s necessary skills to animate objects and treat them as living beings also confirm this capacity.37 Could animism, or better neo-animism, constitute a countervailing power of resistance against fetishism as a central cultural force in late modern capitalism? How are animism, fetishism and pneumatology connected? Inspired by the rich discussions of social anthropologists Nurit Bird-David and Alf Hornborg,38 I assume the hypothesis that modernity and its capitalist economy is anchored in the Cartesian dichotomy of humans and others that is mainly possible through the historical repression of animist worldviews and practices. As we have seen in Marx, modernity builds on the commodified relations between humans and things, including the alienating split of human workers from the products of their labour.
36 Hereby it is important that ‘animism’ covers a wide range of cultural phenomena and that it, as Harvey reminds us meritoriously, is used as ‘a label for a range of phenomena’, which can aim at identifying characteristics of a religion, point at interior components of living beings or cognitive evolutionary-based mechanisms affecting human behaviour, enlivening aspects such as souls and spirits within (human and other) persons. Harvey, ‘The Fetish of Technology’, 6. It can further aim at the continuous interrelation of all beings and of matter, and can be used to describe performative acts ‘in which people engage with other species or with material things’. Harvey, ‘The Fetish of Technology’, 6; Graham Harvey, ‘Introduction’, in Handbook of Animism, edited by Graham Harvey (London: Acumen, 2014), 1–12. My own definition above, in the thematic context of this essay, uses animism as an ‘essential human capacity’ but this is not to exclude also an understanding of animism as an acknowledgement of all life forms and matter’s interior and communicative soulfulness, to which I am deeply sympathetic. 37 On the history of the theory of animism see David Chidester, ‘Animism’, Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Vol. 1 (New York: Continuum, 2005), 78–81. 38 Nurit Bird-David, ‘“Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment and Relational Epistemology’, Current Anthropology 40, no.1 (1999): 67–91; Alf Hornborg, ‘Submitting to Objects: Animism, Fetishism, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism’, in Handbook of Animism, edited by Graham Harvey (London: Acumen 2014), 244–59. 132 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Modern monetary systems of exchange presuppose an alienating split and operate through a commodification of things which are treated as objects on the one side and an adoration of money as the highest object with an intrinsic value on the other. Put briefly, traditional animism is replaced with fetishism. While traditional animism regards animations as embedded in a larger relational system of interconnections between things, perceived as personal beings, and humans, fetishism moves the skill to animate to the human him/ herself. Fetishism makes it possible to decontextualise and delocalise objects, natural objects as well as artefacts, and to reconnect them anew across local and historical borders. In science this is fatally catalysing the reification of life forms and their transformation into objects, which the Cartesian observer’s eye, the monetarian subject, studies in the lens of empiricism.39 Oil, for example, emerging from the planet’s long natural history, can be turned into a commodity and traded and transported trans-locally through money and technology. African lands can be cultivated by local farmers who turn their fruits and work into objects managed by Chinese land-owners who transfer profits and products to other parts of the world, enriching their bank accounts but draining the land and spoiling the population’s conditions for self- subsistence. If relations between humans and objects are fetishised in the modern way, the relational epistemology of animism is replaced by a hierarchy of relations and asymmetrical trans-local processes of exchange that are defined and managed through the fetishisation of money and commodities. Value is attributed to lifeless money, things and machines – and nowadays one can add also to experiences produced by the entertainment industry – in a fetishising way. All these mystify unequal processes of exchange where local, historical and individual identities are destroyed for the sake of a decontextualised system of asymmetrical and de- localised relations. Both technology and monetarism thus become immune to political critique.40 Falsely, they are regarded as value-neutral entities that are vital for our modern life.41 In her widely discussed essay, Bird-David has shown how animism in hunter- gatherer cultures nurtures an ecological perception of the environment through a relational personhood which is attributed to all beings. After a convincing critical analysis of earlier modernist concepts of animism in cultural and religious studies, she consequently demands a revisiting of animism as a ‘relational epistemology’. Here Descartes’s ‘“I think, therefore I am”’ stands against the
39 See Duchrow, Gieriges Geld, 221. See also the critique of the object as a distinctly modern invention by Alf Hornborg, ‘Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism as Strategies for Knowing (or not Knowing) the World’, Ethnos 7, no. 1 (2006): 27. 40 Alf Hornborg, ‘Submitting to Objects’. 41 On the deconstruction of technology’s supposed value-neutrality, see Bergmann, Religion, Space and the Environment, chapter 16, note 7. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 133 animist’s ‘“I relate, therefore I am”’.42 Animism can in Bird-David’s view not be rejected as ‘simple religion’ and failed epistemology; instead, perhaps the repression of animism was a precondition for modernist dualism, suggesting a radical reinterpretation of the latter. Hornborg supports such a view, but rightly questions Bird-David’s all too generalised observation of modernity’s estrangement from the tendency to animate things.43 He takes the discussion further by relating animism to fetishism and shows how fetishism after the replacement of animism turns into a crucial essential driving force of modern capitalism. Animated beings of different kinds are turned into lifeless objects that are attributed value in the process of fetishising money, things and technologies.44 One would be terrified to imagine what such fetishisation has meant and means for the world of lived religion. Can the movement of the life-giving Spirit still take place in such a world of fetishes?45 Can she blow new life into enslaved life forms and things? The challenge to revisit animism touches the heart of modernity itself, and the cultural capacity of fetishisation appears as a central method in the on-going globalisation which perverts and damages inter-subjective relations as well as human-natural relations. While fetishisation is a human process that transforms an unanimated being into an animated one, one which is attributed with power over others in a larger cultural system of perceptions, beliefs and practices, classical faith in the Holy Spirit is not situated in a man-made environment but in a world characterised by divine gifts and God-givenness. While a fetish receives its ‘life’ through the action of man, the all-embracing Spirit breathes life. Fetishism on the one hand, and faith in the Spirit on the other, which follows the older paths of animism, perform with contradictory codes. While the fetish is enchanted by humans, the created life is breathed by the Holy; when she sends her ‘life-giving breath, they are created’ (Ps. 104.30). While the fetish works as an instrument for the power of the one over the other, the life-giving Spirit embraces all in one common world and history and nevertheless respects the face of every individual identity. While fetishism turns given nature into a lifeless world where only the useful is animated, traditional animism and Christian pneumatology perceive the
42 Bird-David, ‘“Animism” Revisited’, 76. 43 Alf Hornborg, ‘Comment on Bird-David’, Current Anthropology 40, no. 1 (1999): 80–81. 44 See Alf Hornborg, The Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology, and Environment (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2001); ‘Symbolic Technologies: Machines and the Marxian Notion of Fetishism’, Anthropological Theory 1, no. 4 (2001): 473–96; ‘Machine Fetishism, Value, and the Image of Unlimited Good: Towards a Thermodynamics of Imperialism’,Man 27 (1992): 1–18. 45 See Sigurd Bergmann, ‘Life-Giving Breath: Ecological Pneumatology in the Context of Fetishization’, Ecumenical Review 65, no. 1 (2013): 114–28. 134 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred intrinsic value of all beings in their specific environments. While fetishism aggravates spatial and environmental injustices, faith in the Holy Spirit reveals the perfect, just and true community of the Trinity and opens a path to walk towards the (not yet seen) ‘land that I will show you’ (Gen. 12.1). An animist pneumatology enhances the circles of life, which indigenous theologians have helped us to recognise. As I have argued elsewhere, the doctrine of the Spirit can in such a context be revisited and reconstructed as an animistic eco-pneumatology where Christian belief is inspired by indigenous animist wisdom.46 The challenge to an ecological pneumatology, which wants to drink from its own classical wells and respect its synergies with traditional animism in the history of mission, is to resist the authority of life-threatening animations and to overcome the power of fetishisation. Faith in the Holy Spirit as an all-embracing life-giving and liberating movement can break down belief systems where fetishised commodities, money and technologies turn the gifts of life into instruments for dominion. Anthropogenic climatic change represents in such an analytical horizon nothing more than the outermost consequence of fetishisation as a cardinal human sin: the disenchantment of sacred earth and life as a gift of the Spirit and the unjust fragmentation of its life forms and artefacts into tools for power over each other. Following Foucault’s understanding of power rather than that of Weber can teach us not to regard power as a chance to realise one’s own will but rather as a relational nexus.47 In the lens of a Christian eco-pneumatology such a view allows us to perceive the Holy Spirit at work in the struggle of fetishised and animated life forms in our manifold environments, a work that generates power with each other. Crucial in such a life-giving and liberating inhabitation of the Spirit with the spirits in creation is the understanding of our neighbour, human and non- human, as the other. God’s Holy Spirit takes place when the other appears not as a commodity to animate but as an equal subject to love, as a ‘Thou’ in Martin Buber’s sense. A philosophically clear expression of the Spirit may be found in theologian Eckhard Lessing’s definition of the Spirit as ‘the being of the one at or
46 Sigurd Bergmann, ‘Fetishism Revisited: In the Animistic Lens of Eco-pneumatology’, Journal of Reformed Theology 6 (2012): 195–215. 47 Foucault defines power as ‘die Vielfalt von Kräfteverhältnissen, die ein Gebiet bevölkern und organisieren’ (the manifold of power relations which populate and organise an area), while Weber determines it as ‘jede Chance, innerhalb einer sozialen Beziehung den eigenen Willen auch gegen Widerstreben durchzuführen, gleichviel worauf diese Chance beruht’ (the probability that one actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests). See Michel Foucault, Sexualität und Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 113; Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972), 28. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 135 with the other’.48 The most violent consequence of fetishism, as it is practiced in capitalism, is the reduction of the other to a commodity. When poor global citizens in the South are excluded from human dignity, value and rights that are taken for granted among the rich of the North, the Spirit who dwells with the other is violated. When natural life processes are treated as resources for the accumulation of capital, for obtaining wealth and power by some, the Spirit, who embraces all, and the Creator, who bestows rain and sunshine on all, is rightly offended. When human skills, such as the artistic and innovative capacity to produce artefacts, are abused for the animation of things and machines in a fetishised way so that their function and intention is blurred, the creator Spirit is humiliated. In earlier days such humiliation of the Spirit would be condemned as heresy, which we can see from the Christian critique of the financial usury system through the ages. According to Luke 6.35, one should love one’s enemy and lend money without hope to receive a profit. According to Cappadocian theologian Gregory of Nyssa, the life of the one who lends money for profit is useless and insatiate; interest taking is therefore attacked as pure robbery.49 Thomas Aquinas simply describes usury as sin,50 while profiteering is for Martin Luther simply against nature because money is by nature unfertile and cannot increase as a tree or acre carrying fruits.51 Quotations like these show how deeply one could respond to the slowly increasing, but in modernity rapidly accelerating, fetishisation of money. Valuing money as a fetish in Marx’s sense represents a central sin against the Creator and against creation as the gift of life. Using machine fetishism as a power to increase one’s power and accumulate one’s capital represents a cardinal sin against the gift of life. Pneumatology must in such a context necessarily resist the fetishising commodification of the other, where the other includes human as well as non- human neighbours. Mark I. Wallace follows Martin Buber, who located the Spirit ‘not in the I but between I and You’.52 In his performative approach Wallace
48 Eckhard Lessing, ‘Entry “Geist V, Dogmatisch und ethisch”’, in TRE 12 (Berlin and New York, 1984), 218–37. 49 Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio Contra Usurarios: ‘Whoever receives money through usury takes a pledge of poverty and under the pretence of a good deed brings ruin on someone’s home’, PG 44, 433–52. 50 See Thomas Aquinas,Summa Theologica – Secunda Secundae Pt. 2, Question LXXVIII: Of The Sin Of Usury That Is Committed In Loans, from 1274. Accessed 30 July 2014. http://www.egs.edu/library/thomas-aquinas/articles/summa-theologica-part-ii-ii- secunda-secundae-translated-by-fathers-of-the-english-dominican-province/treatise-on- the-cardinal-virtues-qq-47–170/question-78of-the-sin-of-usury/. 51 See at length Luther’s work On Trading and Usury/Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher (Wittemberg: Gedruckt durch Hans Lufft, 1524). 52 Quoted in Mark I. Wallace, Fragments of the Spirit: Nature, Violence, and the Renewal of Christianity (New York: Continuum, 1996), 10. 136 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred formulates practical ethical criteria for theological truth claims about religion that ‘is deemed valid whenever the belief or practice enables commitment to the welfare of the other’.53 Wallace appropriately regards ‘the Spirit as the breath of God who animates all life … present in the spaces opened up between persons who risk themselves for the other’.54 Sociologists of religion have shown how such a critical neo-animistic approach quickly develops in social movements, even if this is seldom connected to a clear critique of fetishism. In green worldviews the belief in the spirituality of non-human beings can function as an implicit force where the commitment to embody empathy for non-human life forms and to perceive the personhood of others is clothed in the language of what one could call soft animism. Explicitly it can also appear as a distinct characteristic for environmental groups who identify themselves as eco-pagans.55 Animism can further be used as an analytic term to distinguish different modes of ‘dark green religion’, as Bron Taylor has circumscribed some forms of eco-spirituality.56 Unfortunately, environmentalists as well as some of their scholarly counterparts in the academy, often undermine Christian practices and beliefs, by neglecting large parts of Christian history and forms of inculturation from below where synergies rather than contradictions between traditional animism and Christian spiritualities have been at the core. My intention here is to focus on a common challenge for both confessional and non-confessional understandings of the Spirit and animism. In the context of fetishising capitalism where human ideologies and activities continuously increase their damage on life systems, the revisiting of animism in all its forms can be helpful. Christian pneumatology, fertilised through its classical roots, has an enormous and still not yet fully exhausted potential to contribute to the emergence of an animistic driving force that can resist and overcome the dominant world system of fetishisation. Faith in the Holy Spirit as the life-giving breath of the world to come – a world beyond the power of the fetishes – allows the perception of our environment as a space populated by a manifold of created spiritual beings, a perception that is open for its own transformation towards a new creation. As a crucial pathology in our perception of the environment, a reflection and revisiting of animism can assist our striving for an alternative future, one that we may have in common for many ‘others’. If the Holy Spirit reveals the face of the Trinitarian Creator on Earth, she also performs in synergy with us as the one who brings the new world to come. As a liberating movement she takes place
53 Wallace, Fragments, 8; see also 213. 54 Wallace, Fragments, 10, 40. 55 Graham Harvey, ‘Animism – A Contemporary Perspective’, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Vol. 1 (New York: Continuum, 2005), 81–3. 56 Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 15. Fetishised Technology Encountered by the Life-Giving Spirit 137 today in the struggle against fetishist idolatry at those places on the planet where creatures groan and suffer from environmental and spatial injustice fuelled by the sin of modern fetishism. While fetishism turns the Earth, our home, into a commodity for trade and consumption, animistic pneumatology mirrors the world not as commodity but as gift.57 The brushes of Christ and the Spirit can then clean the house obsessed by the demons. Householding in the ecology of the world demands for a technology that is animated by visions of environmental justice, conceiving persons and organisms as equivalent images of the trinitarian God58 and nature as a lived space of gift. Such a process can rightly be imagined as ‘a continual re-enchantment’ as Harry Garuba circumscribed his concept of material animism.59 Enchantment means thereby a radically different symbolic meaning of technology than machine fetishism, which overcomes Cartesian dichotomies as well as mammonistic fetishisations of objects from within the iron cages of our time. Animistic re- enchantment with and through the Spirit restores the nexus of life in the whole of its entanglement of nature, culture and religion. Not the roaring machines are the life-givers of modernity but the life-giving Spirit and the spirits are enchanting and empowering environments and believers with divine breath.
57 See Sigurd Bergmann, ‘Die Welt als Ware oder Haushalt? Die Wegwahl der trinitarischen Kosmologie bei Gregor von Nazianz’, Evangelische Theologie 53, no. 5 (1993), 460–70; Bergmann, ‘Energy as Gift or Commodity? The Ambivalence of Growth, Markets, and Technology in Climatic Change’, chapter 13 in Religion, Space and the Environment. See also Duchrow, Gieriges Geld, 222. 58 See Scott, Anti-Human Theology, 103–6. 59 Harry Garuba, ‘On Animism, Modernity/Colonialism, and the African Order of Knowledge: Provisional Reflections’, e-flux (2012), www.e-flux.com/journal/on-animism- modernitycolonialism-and-the-african-order-of-knowledge-provisional-reflections/ (accessed 15 January 2014), 07/09. See also Harvey’s excellent continuation of Garuba’s thinking about animist materialism and his reflections about different ‘realisms’. For a continued elaboration of my rethinking of Christian eco-pneumatology in the lens of new animism, Garuba’s animist materialism would offer rich inspiration. Especially his circumscribing of animist thought’s ‘almost total refusal to countenance unlocalized, unembodied unphysicalized gods and spirits’, and its capacity to spiritualise the object world, ‘thereby giving the spirit a local habitation’ (267), resonates wonderfully with my emphasis on the Holy Spirit inhabiting and giving life to Creation. Along which paths will the Spirit and the spirits further on converge, and how will their synergy emerge? Harry Garuba quoted in Graham Harvey, ‘Animist Realism in Indigenous Novels and Other Literature’, in Handbook of Animism, (ed.) Graham Harvey (London: Acumen, 2014), 454–67; Harry Garuba, ‘Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, Culture, and Society’, Public Culture 15, no. 2 (2003): 261–85. This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 8 The Technologisation of Life: Theology and the Trans-Human and Trans-Animal Narratives of the Post-Animal Celia Deane-Drummond
The Technologisation of the Human
The category of ‘human nature’ is not only extremely difficult to define but among some scholars, it is even denied existence. Such denial can come from some evolutionary discourses about ‘species’ reliant on modernist philosophy or through cultural resistance in postmodern discourse, where the idea of human nature or even any natural kind is regularly subject to semantic challenge. Where human nature is granted a hearing, the category is ambiguous and reflects broadly (a) attempts to define human uniqueness over against other animals, or (b) mapping a particular set of common behavioural characteristics that are for the most part found among human beings, that is, human universals, or (c) what might be termed the inner biological endowment of human nature or so-called ‘innate’ characteristics.1 All three meanings have variously been used by and at the same time challenged by different evolutionary and biological sciences, leading to a degree of philosophical confusion. To make matters more complicated, different meanings of human nature overlap in a given field. For example, some evolutionary psychologists may use category (b) human universals in order to argue for (a) human uniqueness compared with other animals and seek to discover a particular human mental endowment across different cultures, including (c) ‘innate’ characteristics.2 Those evolutionary biologists influenced by studies in animal behaviour, on the other hand, stress the continuum of characteristics and fluidity of boundaries across
1 Jonathan Jong and Aku Visala, ‘Three Quests for Human Nature: Some Philosophical Reflections’,Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1, no. 2 (2014): 146–71 2 Robin Dunbar, ‘Mind the Gap: Or Why Humans Are Not Just Great Apes’, Proceedings of the British Academy 154 (2007): 403–23. 140 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred different species and tend to resist the category of innateness even while affirming human distinctiveness.3 The category of the ‘human’ also faces sharp challenges from the humanities. Post-human is often shorthand for a post-humanism that wants to undercut pre-conceived and often normative notions of what humanity is like.4 When human nature is used in a theological setting it tends to point to the special place of human beings in the order of creation and is associated with divine image-bearing. This would fall under the critical lens of post-humanity, in so far as standard theological positions defend human dignity and are humanistic almost as a matter of course. So, when a scientific or post-human critique challenges normative accounts of human nature, theological reactions may be either conservative in that they seek to retain the traditional view, or react more strongly by becoming hostile. Technological innovations by human beings in specific cultures, in as much as they reflect human natures, intersect with this discussion as particular inventions of material culture that are uniquely human. In some cases, such innovations are universal across different human societies and cultures, and the processes towards their development may also be subject to ‘innate’ and biologically pre- programmed patterns of action and interaction. But such characterisation of technology assumes a polar and distinctive relationship between human beings and their technologies, with technologies appearing in the guise of inert objects that then help shape the environment in which human beings then act through either positive or negative feedback loops. What if technological artefacts are not only perceived through an external lens, but also perceived as integral to the human person? In this case, the human becomes in some manner mixed up with the technological in what is named a cyborg. So, is what is arrived at a part-machine-part-human complex or is this characterisation just a new way of being human that defies previous humanistic categories, a corrective post-human? The boundary between the human and the artificial begins to seem more porous than previously thought. While Hans Jonas anticipated to some extent the degree to which technology impacted on the human social sphere, including his proviso that ‘Novel conditions and perils
3 Patrick Bateson and Peter Gluckman, Plasticity, Robustness, Development and Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 4 When using the language of posthuman I am generally referring to the posthumanism category that has been identified among literary critics. The term posthuman is also used by transhumanists as a way of expressing a new humanity following various enhancements, but unlike the critical posthumanism that often eschews scientific discourse, for transhumanists, posthumansim is more commonly wedded to a modernist philosophy. See, for example, Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). The Technologisation of Life 141 demand novel answers’, he failed to anticipate the extensive undermining of human normativity in post-human deconstruction.5 When placed in a historical context, such a shift towards post-humanism is viewed by Donna Haraway, drawing on Jacques Derrida, as part of a wider challenge to human exceptionalism that she believes (a) began with Copernicus, (b) deepened with Darwin and (c) became inward in Freud.6 By exceptionalism she means the view that humans are not deeply entangled with the natural world around them and therefore radically stand apart from that world. But her arguments in this case are weak, or at least deserve further elaboration. Regarding (a), the view that Copernicus succeeded in de-centring the Earth from its central position is actually misleading. Before Copernicus, the common view of the Earth was that it was made from very heavy material that dragged down forces into itself; it was thus a negative centre rather than a positive centre, and it took Copernicus’s genius to introduce the heliocentric view in a positive light.7 His success largely meant that subsequent readings of history have now presumed the Earth had been viewed positively as the centre around which the sun orbited. Her position with respect to (b), that Darwin dethroned human beings from their central place has a little more substance, but also has to be viewed in the light of at least one of Darwin’s possible intentions, which seems to have been anthropological, namely, that his Descent of Man was intended to provide a material basis for resistance to slavery. This albeit controversial thesis argues that there is a historical case to be made that he viewed his work as part of an effort to put human beings on an equal footing with each other by showing common ground between different human beings and their distinctiveness in comparison with other animals.8 Haraway’s third example, (c) that of Freud, who explores the hidden dimensions of human psychology through the unconscious, certainly
5 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), xi. 6 Donna Haraway cites Jacques Derrida, see Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 11–12. 7 Ronald Numbers, ed. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 8 James Moore and Adrian Desmond’s book attempts to show how much Darwin’s motivation was bound up with his detestation of slavery. Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). While this book is admittedly highly controversial among more traditional historians of science, the point of mentioning it in this context is that debates about the motivational basis for Darwin’s theory are still continuing, and there is at least an argument to be made that there were complex reasons why he chose to publish his work when he did in a way that resists the simpler interpretation that it was purely a reaction to human exceptionalism. 142 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred shows up latent forces at work in the human person, but does not, it seems to me, provide any real evidence either for or against human exceptionalism. The final case that Haraway adds over and above that of Derrida is the cyborg, and it is this which is particularly relevant to this chapter, for it speaks of humanity with a capacity to re-invent itself through a blurred boundary with the very machines of its own making. But the very fact that humans are capable of such re-invention could also be interpreted as providing evidence for human exceptionalism, for no other social animal has the capacity to re-invent itself through its own mechanistic devices or incorporate them into itself so as to effect an ontological change.9 The question that arises, then, through the cyborg, is whether this is a post-human or super-human achievement. And it is the latter interpretation that is most common among transhuman philosophers, who are generally less squeamish about adopting a modernist philosophy and naming science in a positive light as a vehicle for radical change.10 Their historical predecessors are most likely the Futurists, who saw fit to glorify the machine.11 The means to effect such change in transhuman projects are predominantly technological innovations, including, among the large repertoire of possible techniques, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, neurochemical interventions and microchip interfaces with the human body. Hence, cyborg manifestations in one philosophical trajectory of the post- human amounts to an undercutting of perceived essentialised and normalised interpretations of the human, but in another becomes the basis for yet more celebration of human assertiveness over the ‘natural’ limitations of finitude and mortality. And if the latter super-human version predominates, then there is a distancing from the organic, from animality, in a way that amounts to a dualistic separation.12 But whereas theologians such as Ted Peters seem to think such a transhuman view can in many cases be accommodated within a Christian perspective of the human, I am highly sceptical of the claim that transhuman technologies can be so amiably incorporated and even endorsed theologically, not least because of the way they split off human beings and societies from their conscious or unconscious involvement with the natural world, of which they
9 See also Sigurd Bergmann, in this volume. 10 For definitions of transhumanism see Ronald Cole-Turner, ‘Introduction’ in Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement, edited by Ronald Cole-Turner (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 1–18. 11 Sigurd Bergmann discusses the significance of the futurist approach to technology in his chapter for this volume. 12 Celia Deane-Drummond, ‘Taking Leave of the Animal? The Theological and Ethical Implications of Transhuman Projects’, in Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement, edited by Ronald Cole-Turner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 115–30. The Technologisation of Life 143 are an integral part.13 They amount, then, to adis- incarnation of the human person in the phenomena of life. In the light of futurist glorification of the machine, Sigurd Bergmann raises the possibility of fetishisation, following in the wake of the collapse of animism.14 If this is the case, then more radical forms of transhumanism, it seems to me, are not simply disincarnate, but potentially idolatrous.15 I am not suggesting by this critique that all such technologies suffer from such a problematic teleology, just those that are aggressively transhumanist and, as I will elaborate further below, allow deep and intrusive interventions into animal others through post-animal and trans-animal practices.
Nature-Cultures
Donna Haraway is much more convincing in her argument against human exceptionalism when she develops a positive case for entanglements between humans and other species, or naturecultures. This approach is also important for understanding not just the relationships between human beings and other social animals, but also the wider ecological relationships that are relevant to the theme of this book. So, Haraway begins with a grounded approach and her starting point is practical rather than theoretical; her self-identity is as ‘a creature of the mud, not the sky’.16 And it is significant, too, that the animals within each and every person that have taken up residence in the long dark path of evolutionary history also speak of close entanglements of humans with other kinds at the organism level. So, the symbionts that occupy each and every living human cell remain a fascination for her; there is a vivid and real sense in which human bodies are pulsating with tiny companions. Haraway herself denies the label ‘post-human’, on the basis that many humanist concerns, particularly feminist ones, are still crucial to her, and that she believes, probably correctly in my view, that cultural fashions such as ‘post-humanism’ will pass.17 She is rightly critical of Derrida’s provocative essay on his encounter with a cat, The Animal that Therefore I Am, on the basis that he fails to give enough attention to what
13 I discuss Peters’ work in more detail in Celia Deane-Drummond, ‘Remaking Human Nature: Transhumanism, Theology and Creatureliness in Bioethical Controversies’, in Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement, edited by Calvin Mercer and Tracy Trothen (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2014), 245–54. 14 Sigurd Bergman, this volume. 15 I am, however, far more reluctant than Bergmann (this volume) to incorporate the action of the Holy Spirit. 16 Haraway, When Species Meet, 3. 17 Haraway, When Species Meet, 17. 144 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the cat might actually be doing, thinking and feeling; he failed, in other words, to map out what it might mean to live ‘inter-sectionally’.18 Haraway is using the term ‘inter-sectional’ to refer in the primary sense to feminist critical theoretical interpretations of overlapping asymmetrical categorisations of women and humans, an analysis used in the first instance by women of colour. Feminist inter-sectionality when applied to other animals resists setting up some sort of analogous relationships with other groups of oppressed humans; rather, it teases out culturally interlocking systems of power and dominance, and the web-like character of all relationships.19 Most importantly for the present discussion, it is the patterns of interactions that are analysed in inter-sectionality, rather than just shifting to yet another troubled category that itself is then rendered obsolete – as Karen Barad puts it, a worse category that is even more likely once again to go ‘postal’. Barad presses for intra-action to be explored and for close entanglement between diverse sets of relationships, rather than viewing each in additive terms as analogies.20 Inter-sectionality, then, it seems to me, explores wider political and societal interlocking relationships, premised on the entanglement that is in evidence between biological and cultural relationships. Haraway carves out a space for not just a new way of thinking for the humanities, but in the sciences as well. So, ethnoprimatology, for example, is an emerging field, one that explores the anthropology of the human-primate interface.21 However, this is not, as we might think from a Western perspective, an exotic or theoretical treatment; rather, humans have interacted with other primates for the entire period of Homo residence in most of Africa, East, South and South East Asia, and Central and South America.22 Ecological changes wrought by human presence are happening faster than they can be studied. Significantly for my argument, ethnoprimatology marks both humans and other primates as co-participants in shaping social and ecological space, rather than viewing the interface in terms of conflict and competition for resources. It also rejects the idea that ecosystems exist which are entirely free from human interference, or that study of ostensibly wild systems give better insights compared with studies where primates live alongside technologically advanced human communities. The inclusion of the nonhuman other as central in the examination of being human offers a distinct way of approaching anthropological studies and theological anthropology.
18 Haraway, When Species Meet, 18–23. 19 Haraway, When Species Meet, 309n. 22. 20 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 21 Agustín Fuentes, ‘Ethnoprimatology and the Anthropology of the Human-Primate Interface’, Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012), 101–17. 22 Fuentes, ‘Ethnoprimatology’. The Technologisation of Life 145
Relationships between humans and other native animals range from being benign to more violent, such as chimpanzee use of human crops in Bossou, Republic of New Guinea. A close study of behavioural and ecological factors allowed a suite of practical recommendations to be made in order to ameliorate the potential for violent interspecies interactions.23 Further, alongside shifting economic, ethnic and technological changes, human perceptions of other primates and the mythos surrounding them have significant impact on the concrete ecology and behaviour of other primates.24 Viral pathogens such as simian foamy virus and parasitic pathogens such as malaria have a complex and shared ecology between human and other primate species. But human technological alteration of a shared ecological niche also has a significant impact on the evolution of other sympatric species. Agustín Fuentes argues that given the dominance of human beings globally, there is selection for those primates that are best able to co-exist with humans, such as macaque monkeys in South and South-Eastern Asia or baboons in sub-Saharan Africa. Apes and leaf monkeys, on the other hand, seem less able to adapt to a shared living space with humans, so the outlook for the great apes is really bleak. In Asia, the dominant Hindu, Buddhist and Shinto religious traditions and popular mythos create a baseline for sustainable relationships between macaques and humans. While a detailed treatment of such relationships would be of interest, the point of raising this issue is to show that human technological systems have co-evolved alongside the companion creatures sharing the ecological space with humans. More recently, anthropologists have stressed that the blurring of the boundary between nature and culture occurs in the case of relations not just between humans and other allo-primates, but also between humans and other social animals, including elephants. Elephants have a long history of association with humans, through their technologisation as weapons of war, prestige, even symbols of divinity, entertainment, icons of conservation, vehicles for labour, as well as companion animals. As Piers Locke suggests, elephants are ‘caught up in human enterprises of power, wealth, worship, pleasure and preservation. Feared or worshipped, killed or conserved, captured or maimed, appropriated for stories and symbols, they are animals with whom humanity is profoundly entangled’.25 The point of such a characterisation of nature-cultures is that it is
23 Fuentes, ‘Ethnoprimatology’. See K.J. Hockings and T. Humle, ‘Best Practice Guidelines for the Prevention and Mitigation of Conflict Between Humans and Great Apes’ (Gland: IUCN/SCC Primate Spec. Group, 2009). 24 Agustín Fuentes, ‘Naturecultural Encounters in Bali: Monkeys, Temples, Tourists and Ethnoprimatology’, Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 4 (2010), 600–24. 25 Piers Locke, ‘Explorations in Ethnoelephantology: Social, Historical, and Ecological Intersections Between Asian Elephants and Humans’, Environment and Society: Advances in Research 4 (2013): 80. I also discuss ethnoprimatology further in Celia Deane-Drummond, ‘Evolutionary Perspectives on Inter-Morality and Inter-Species Relationships Interrogated 146 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred not enough to view technology as simply a cultural innovation; rather, human technologies are inter-woven and embedded in the natural and cultural lives of both other human beings and those of other animals. The binary division between nature and culture breaks down, and with it the binary division between nature and technology.
Post-Animal Discourses
I am now going to turn to more explicit use of technologies by human beings: the attempt to turn the life-world of another animal into a technological commodity to be used for human benefit. This process, I suggest, removes the category of the animal from view, both for humans and other animals, arriving at the category of the post-animal. The development of genetically modified animals for agricultural purposes, for example, has slipped into place in the European Union, including the UK, ironically perhaps with even less public discussion and outcry than that over GM crops a few decades prior. Domestic animals that are deliberately bred to withstand crowded conditions show that the intensification of agriculture is growing apace, reinforced by genetic modification. Sociologist Richard Twine gives a number of examples of genetic enhancement of domesticated animals, including those related to agricultural use, as well as production of medicines for human use in ‘pharming’. Such enhancement is achieved through the modification of genomes through targeted selective breeding, or in some cases further enhancement through genetic modification. Targeting is the term used to identify those characteristics that are most likely to be beneficial to the breeder and has been a common practice in animal breeding programmes. I would agree with Twine that to assume selective breeding is always benign from an ethical point of view is problematic, trans-genetic modification speeds up the process of change and allows for bizarre practices, such as attempting to solve diseases caused by intensive agriculture through genetic enhancement.26 Twine also raises the disturbing prospect of a slippery slope: that enhancement of domestic animals might make human experimentation more likely, with social groups deemed less rational most likely to be specifically targeted. Such a prospect reinforces the idea of inter-sectionality raised earlier: that abusive practices in one social realm intersect and overlap with, and potentially reinforce, those in another, rather than simply being related in analogical ways. Precision animal breeding aims to have even greater technological control in production, but like GM crops, is less sustainable. Or rather, to be more accurate, in the Light of the Rise and Fall of Homo sapiens sapiens’, Journal of Moral Theology 3, no. 2 (2014): 72–92. 26 Richard Twine, Animals as Biotechnology (London: Earthscan, 2010), 53–5. The Technologisation of Life 147 the rhetoric of sustainability that is used in order to promote such practices is narrowly conceived in terms of specific economic gain.27 The developing world is experiencing an exponential increase in livestock production, with many countries, like China, opting for intensive methods based on the Western model. Factory farming perhaps reaches its zenith in the USA, with cruel practices of confinement for utilitarian human ends such as cutting off chicken beaks without anaesthetic in order to prevent pecking from overcrowded factory farm conditions.28 Unfortunately, those that are most impoverished in US society are both less informed and cannot afford the kind of food that is ethical in terms of animal practice and is more sustainable. The radical re-description of animals as tools for human use amounts to a re-definition of the animal, a post-animal and trans-animal world. By post- animal, I mean the disruption of traditional meanings of what it is to be an animal with a creaturely life of its own and its own telos. By trans-animality I mean that manipulative trajectory where what were once thought to be natural capacities of other animals are superseded through technological means. But post-animality has a more sinister and offensive twist and expresses total technological dominance of animal natures, inter-sectioning with the post- human and the transhuman categories already discussed. So, it is in the guise of the post-human demise of the category of human that the motivation surfaces to render life as such in animal and human animal forms under technological control. Post-human now appears in a new guise in the form of post-animality and trans-animality. What I am suggesting, therefore, is that post-humanity, for all its protestations to weaken human exceptionalism, and overt resistance to alternative seemingly scientifically driven transhuman philosophies, may ironically open the door for technological manipulation of the human, and ultimately the loss of animality, as there are no longer any normative concepts of the human that could potentially act to curb such developments.29 Post-human fails to prevent the in-human and the door is left ajar for the post-animal.
27 Twine, Animals as Biotechnology, 124–5. 28 Charles Camosy, Peter Singer and Christian Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 86–90. 29 An argument against this position is that there might be other concepts of the normative in a posthuman world that would prevent the technologisation of other animals. While this is theoretically possible, the kind of norms that seem to be presupposed in versions of posthumanism expressed in transhumanism are those that affirm technologies to the extent that social relations are dis-embedded from any bodily contexts. It seems, therefore, unlikely that greater protection will be given to other animals in comparison to humans. Further, the de-constructive task of those forms of posthumanism that resist humanism resists the normative as such, and in this sense is unlikely to come up with explicitly alternative norms; or at least, if such norms exist they will be unacknowledged. 148 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Hans Jonas on Life and Technology
This is where Hans Jonas’s philosophy of the phenomenon of life shows up elements of the debate that are, on the one hand, extremely helpful to the discussion but, on the other hand, also highly ambiguous.30 His particular approach to the philosophy of biology is relevant in this context because of the particular role he attributes to freedom and his attempt to extend freedom beyond narrowly human terms.31 My own preference is to speak of other-animal agency, rather than freedom as such.32 Jonas’s quarrel with Heidegger is about the way Heidegger’s existentialism seems to desacralise the concept of nature through uncritical acceptance of the claims of the physical sciences.33 More explicitly, he believes that the root of Heidegger’s existentialism amounts to a loss of eternity, one familiar in the nihilism of Nietzsche’s disappearance of the world of ideas and ideals. This ‘spiritual denudation’ of nature has profound moral consequences, for ‘There is no point in caring for what has no sanction behind it in any creative intention’.34 It is Jonas’s more constructive task that is particularly pertinent. If we allow for the possibility of the border between humans and other animals being more porous, and for genuine agency in other creatures, as Jonas indicates, can we push this further open and ask metaphysical questions about life itself and of other animals in particular and how this might impinge on human technologies? Derrida is a highly influential postmodern philosopher who has written an intriguing book about other animals and the complex human/ animal boundary. The book,The Animal that Therefore I am (Following) was published posthumously and therefore was left unfinished.35 Against historical denial, Derrida raises the issue of animal subjectivity. He also, significantly in
30 See also Walther Zimmerli’s chapter in this volume. 31 The Phenomenon of Life has been described as ‘the pivotal book of Jonas’s intellectual career’. Lawrence Vogel, Foreword to Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, [1966] 2001), xi. 32 I take this aspect up in more detail in Celia Deane-Drummond, The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 89–121. 33 How far Jonas is correct in his critique of Heidegger is outside the scope of this chapter. For a discussion of Heidegger, see Fionn Bennett’s chapter in this volume. 34 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 232. 35 It is perhaps unfair to criticise Derrida for a work he had not intended to publish, but his central arguments were likely to have remained intact, even if this manuscript had matured into a fully polished version. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, edited by Marie-Louise Mallet, translated by David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). For more detailed commentary on Derrida and animals see, for example, Matthew Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New The Technologisation of Life 149 my view, named the excessive manipulation of other animals that is present in contemporary Western culture as a historical turning point of ‘unprecedented’ proportions, and one that could be traced to prior philosophies that detached the human subject from other animals and denied their capacity to suffer.36 He also acknowledges the role of human beings in animal genocide, so that the number of species lost ‘takes one’s breath away’.37 There are facets of his argument that are more problematic in as much as they fail to take sufficient account of the actual lives of other animals.38 Indeed, the ashes left by such forceful postmodern deconstruction of humanism does not, in my mind at least, take us far enough, other than leaving us in an existential question mark that itself needs to be subject to a stronger critical appraisal. The existential abstraction that characterises Derrida’s work makes it difficult to come to a clear conclusion that there is a porous boundary between humans and other animals, even while he flags up some of the more important historical aspects of the philosophical origins of human exceptionalism. Indeed, if he had paid rather more attention to animal minds, even while acknowledging the limitations of a scientific account, it would have become obvious that distinctions between humans and among different animals remain and are not necessarily offensive to human-animal relations. I suggest that an outline for such a critique of existentialism has already been fleshed out in Jonas’s engagement with Heidegger, for his challenge to existentialism prefigures a challenge to postmodern theory. The basis of Jonas’s understanding of freedom is premised on the idea that all organic life forms prefigure the mind, and the mind remains rooted in the organic.39 He does not attempt to level out the distinctions between humans and other creaturely forms, but believes that a contemporary way of interpreting Aristotelian ideas of ‘stratification’ is indispensable.40 Making the higher retain all that is in the lower could lead Jonas to a denigration of the lower forms if the
York: Columbia University Press, 2008). I cannot do justice to Derrida’s contribution in this chapter, suffice it is to say that his work has already received considerable attention. 36 Derrida does name genetic forms of knowledge as inseparable from intervention techniques that transform their object, namely the living animal as part of an ‘unprecedented subjection of the animal’. Derrida, The Animal, 25. 37 Derrida, The Animal, 26. 38 He also, significantly, rejects animal rights discourse as still hanging on to a version of the human subject that takes its bearings from Descartes, thus ultimately undermining the case for animal protection. Derrida, The Animal, 88–9. This may be one reason why authors such as Peter Singer resist his work and in much of animal rights literature more generally, Derrida has been overlooked. Ironically, perhaps, Derrida has attained almost a cult status among those postmodern writers who admire his work. 39 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 1. 40 This stratification is the dependence of the ‘higher on the lower’ and the ‘retention of all the lower in the higher’. Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 2. 150 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred higher forms are thought to be complete expressions of the lower, since once higher forms appear, then lower forms would no longer be strictly necessary; they have served their purpose by integration into the higher form. Furthermore, the language of higher/lower like that in Aquinas and Augustine, implies a strong sense of human superiority. Mind prefigured in the organic goes right down to the level of ‘metabolism’ that he understands as the most basic level of all organic existence.41 The core of his argument, therefore, is to show that ‘it is in the dark stirrings of primeval organic substance that a principle of freedom shines forth for the first time within the vast necessity of the physical universe – a principle foreign to suns, planets and atoms’.42 For Jonas, grounding such ‘freedom’ in the organic as such is not unrelated to meaning in the human sphere in as much as it provides the ontological grounding for phenomena at higher levels, and constitutes a breakthrough, even while not yet having conscious ‘mental’ connotations. He is ready to admit that the origin of such a capacity for freedom is unknown and remains a mystery. For Jonas, it is the transition from inorganic to organic, the emergence of life, that is the most significant step, and is capable of bearing the term ‘freedom’. With this shift to life comes the tension between being and not being because of an independent identity assumed from material origins. The possibility that this life might not exist shows that ‘its very being is essentially a hovering over this abyss, a skirting of its brink’, so becoming a ‘constant possibility rather than a given state’.43 The polarity that exists between being and non-being is also characteristic of other basic polarities of self and world, form and matter, freedom and necessity. Jonas believes that, as these polarities are expressions of relationship, they also imply forms of transcendence, a ‘going beyond itself ’.44 Life shows both a separate identity from lifeless matter, yet is still dependent on it, hence displaying freedom and necessity. Yet accompanying the appearance of life is an ever-present fear of death, sounding like ‘a never-ending comment on the audacity of the original venture’ of becoming organic.45 Jonas’s elevation of the category of life is important since it shows how destruction of forms of freedom in other agents is ultimately destructive to the human self. Technology, then, directed towards manipulation of life forms in post-animal constructions denies the very agential life that they might lead and pushes them from organic life further towards forms of material non-existence. More destructively, it undermines the human by blocking off the life forms from
41 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 3. 42 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 3. 43 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 4. 44 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 5. 45 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 5. The Technologisation of Life 151 their telos of mortal life such that the abyss is distorted in a manner not intended by Jonas’s philosophy, where for him the possibility of death is constitutive of being alive. Post-animal creatures now exist as a pale shadow of what they might have been. Here human technology has overstepped its limits, but it is ultimately destructive, not just for other animals, but for human beings as well, as Derrida indicated in the analysis discussed above. Jonas’s position bears some resemblance to Alfred N. Whitehead’s process philosophy where mental processes reach down to material being, but there is a crucial difference in that Jonas insists that the non-life to life transition is significant in a way that Whitehead ignores.46 In Jonas’s narrative, the earlier pre- modern world viewed everything as alive, and death was a fundamental mystery of non-existence. In the post Renaissance period, the mechanical universe presented life as the problem to be solved. Jonas’s philosophy also speaks into the modern situation that puts more weight on sheer matter and a mechanical, technologically based universe, in which he believes ‘death is the natural thing, life the problem’.47 Jonas therefore tracks the shift from the acceptance of life in and the mystery of death an animate universe to the naturalness of death and the mystery of life in an inanimate universe. This ‘ontology of death’ as appropriated into transhumanism, becomes the quintessential characteristic of the post-animal world where living creatures are dispensed with as if their being alive was merely inconsequential, and so they are treated as mere means for human ends. At the same time, I suggest that transhumanism expresses an implicit even earlier deeper transcendent memory of stubborn refusal to accept death, in this case projects for human life extension amount to resistance to an ontology of death. Hence, the absolutisation of a resistance to the naturalness of human death leads to transhuman projects that aim to extend life indefinitely, but such refusal to accept death is done at the expense of other creatures. There is also a significant difference between the eschatological orientation of an ancient theological transcendence that aims for perfection according to virtue and that directed towards the denial of death in transhuman projects.48 Jonas anticipated such a transhuman move in his discussion of the way technology has turned towards the human and attempted to control its own mortality. He challenges the desirability of such a shift for both individuals and
46 Jonas comments on this himself in an appendix in The Phenomenon of Life, 95–6. 47 Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 7–9. Bronislaw Szerszynski argues that the memory of an ontology of death is still present, so ‘Nineteenth-century thought may have moved away from narrow mechanism, and given us the concept of life in the modern sense, but we are still haunted by that difficulty of thinking life’. Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘Life in the Open Air’, in What is Life?, edited by Dirk Evers, Michael Fuller, Antje Jackelén, Knut Willy Saether, (forthcoming). I would like to thank the author for access to his script prior to publication. 48 See further discussion of this aspect of transhumanism, in Celia Deane-Drummond and Peter Scott (ed.), Future Perfect?: God, Medicine and Human Identity (London: T & T Clark/Continuum, 2009). 152 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the species as such.49 He also challenges the utopian dream of humanity that seeks to work out its vision on human and non-human nature, both as planned and unplanned.50 But what is interesting, further, is that Jonas noticed the difficulty that occurs once ‘norms’ are no longer accepted leading to an ethical vacuum; in his case, he named science, but the same could be said of the intersectional practices that I suggest can be stretched to apply to postmodernity, transhumanism and posthumanism.51 He also believes the ‘materialistic monism of science’ broke new ground once it included within its explicative power the living kingdom.52 For Jonas, the organic powers that culminate in human creativity form ‘a scale of freedom and peril’, beginning with metabolism but gradually shifting to movement, desire, sensing, perceiving, imagination, art and eventually mind. Technology could be added in here, and it is significant that his more explicit work on ethics that was published a little over ten years later, deals with technological inventions.53 Of particular significance to the discussion of transhumanism and post-animal is his idea that this human progression is not inevitable, but rather is like an experiment accompanied by increasing risks where the freedom of humanity may end in either success or disaster.54 But the cultural dominance of an evolutionary view of the world through natural selection remains, even though the science of evolution is more complex than this. It is perhaps the reaction to an absence of teleology that leads to both a desire for control in the human sphere, hence transhumanism, and a diminishing of the animal through manipulative projects that both attempt to bring evolutionary processes under human control. In such a context, where evolution by natural selection has come to dominate contemporary views of life, Jonas’s proposal for a strong metaphysical version of freedom as the characteristic of life pointing towards a common transcendence is daring and provocative and, I have argued, challenges the philosophy of transhumanism and post-animal. But there are crucial problems with Jonas’s view that need to be faced. He runs the risk of being accused of reviving a vitalism that envisages particular energetic powers existing in life forms.55 But this risk, perhaps, can be avoided if he rests his claim on a metaphysical position that eschews vitalism. More serious is the risk that by making the language of freedom a common denominator of life, it begins to lose its more explicit and specific demand in the human
49 Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 18. 50 Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 21. 51 Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 22–4. 52 Jonas, Phenomenon of Life, 42–4. 53 Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility. 54 Jonas, Phenomenon of Life, preface, xxiii–iv. 55 Matthew Wood, Vitalism: The History of Herbalism, Homeopathy and Flower Essences, 2nd ed. (North Atlantic Books, 2000). The Technologisation of Life 153 sphere. In other words, what is the point of such extension, other than putting emphasis on the shared mortality of humans with other creatures, the common struggle to sustain life in the face of death? Furthermore, if freedom becomes such a fundamental category of being, of life, then ethical reflection is in danger of becoming at times constricted rather than enabled by such a category. The ambiguity that is raised by his lack of attention to human distinctiveness can be addressed by allowing for distinctions between humans and other animals, while acknowledging each as subjects with their own agency. The question of scale of being, therefore, is not sufficiently addressed in Jonas, so it is not clear where mind ends or begins. But with that qualification in mind, his philosophy opens up a helpful critique of over-extensions of technology into the human and animal. A further critical aspect relates to how far Jonas is wedded to a humanistic naturalism that does not allow sufficient space for transcendence. Gerald McKenny, drawing on Charles Taylor, rejects the idea that every aspiration towards transcendence leads to diminishment of the human, but finds in transhumanism a latent philosophy of transcendence over against humanistic naturalism. He associates the latter with Jonas and with Hannah Arendt.56 The crucial difference, as McKenny is sharply aware, relates to the particular vision of the good life characterised by transhumanists and humanistic naturalists, with the former resistant to human frailty and vulnerability. The point, then, for McKenny, is not so much a rejection of any forms of transcendence in the human person, but a recognition of which ones lead to human diminishment and which do not. I agree with McKenny that Jonas’s approach lacks an obvious transcendent dimension, though Jonas’s metaphysical understanding of the organism’s relationship with its milieu constitutes a kind of transcendence that is more implicit rather than explicit. I also agree that resistance towards any latent fatalism in naturalistic approaches and protestations against some limitations in human life are justified. However, the transcendence that surfaces for the most part in more rampant transhuman projects is not the kind of transcendence that fosters Christian virtue; in its more extreme renditions it amounts to a secularised eschatology, seeking to fill the void once occupied by Christian theology. Bergmann has noted the fetishisation of the machine in the wake of animism. Transhumanism is perhaps the fetishisation of new technologies in a post-Christian cultural context. Furthermore, the contrast now visible is not simply between transhumanism and humanistic naturalists in the way McKenny
56 Gerald McKenny, ‘Transcendence, Technological Enhancement and Christian Theology’, inTranshumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement, edited by Ronald Cole-Porter (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 177–92. 154 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred articulates, but now includes Haraway’s post-humanistic forms of naturalism that are quite prepared to alter the human.
Theological Anthropology and Technologisation of Life
Given the above, it is worth asking what kind of theological anthropology can respond adequately to a post-human, post-natural and post-animal world in which transhumanism and trans-animality dominate. While Jonas believed that metaphysics could found an adequate view of the human and human duties, secularisation has not removed religion from view in the way that he anticipated.57 But might it be possible to revise theological anthropology so that it speaks into the situation, rather than reinforces unwelcome dichotomies? One of the most widely read theological anthropologies of recent years is David Kelsey’s Eccentric Existence. To be clear, the word ‘eccentric’ is used by Kelsey as he wants to stress that the real value of human beings and their identities are ‘grounded outside themselves in the concrete ways in which the triune God relates to all that is not God, including humankind’.58 Kelsey is critical of a negative form of anthropocentrism cast in terms of human superiority over other creatures.59 He is sharply critical of placing human beings on a continuum of degrees of value, which ends up in his view with a ‘conflation of human stewardship with human self-interested exploitation and devastation of fellow creatures’.60 He rejects comparisons with other creatures that consider them to be lesser, and similar comparisons between mental and bodily processes.61 In particular, he resists the idea that human dignity comes from the distinctive array of powers and capacities by which we are able to respond to God, or even in their exercise in acts of response to God. Rather, for him human dignity ‘is inherent in the sheer gift-character of creation’.62 It is one reason why he is so reluctant to use the term imago Dei, which is somehow tainted from its history
57 He claimed, for example, that with the eclipse of religious views of the image of humanity opened up room for a secular concept of a doctrine of general being. Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, x. The problem he did not anticipate sufficiently was thatany normative concepts about humanity would come to be formally rejected, but their rejection is never complete, since aspirations about what is an ideal human are still latent even in posthuman discourses. 58 David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, Volume 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 1008. 59 David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, Volume 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 29. 60 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, I, 30. 61 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, I, 31. 62 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, I, 278. The Technologisation of Life 155 of use in terms of capacities or even functions. The conventional way of using imago Dei to structure theological claims for him ‘systematically will not do’ for other reasons, for it relies on what he perceives is a ‘single narrative logic’, and he wants to replace this with a three-fold, triple-helical approach that weaves together creation, eschatological and redemptive themes.63 In his rejection of the way that anthropocentrism seems to have crept into discussions of image-bearing in a negative, exploitative sense towards other creatures, and in his view of the quotidian as inclusive of other creaturely agency, Kelsey is affirming of the significance of the lives of other creatures in shaping human identity from a theological perspective, and so his approach would resist post-animal and transhuman articulations of technology. He is also insistent on the loving generosity of God as engaged and present to creation in a manner that affirms creaturely life. But then we are left with this question: has Kelsey, in developing the notion of the quotidian as a short hand to describe human situatedness, not muted the significance of other creaturely lives for theological anthropology? For he takes the scientific account to be summarised thinly in physical sciences of human bodily existence, preferring to use terms like ‘energy systems’ to describe the way in which humans are situated in this world. Jonas was more aware of the actual significance of life as such in a way that Kelsey seems to ignore.
Conclusions
I have argued in this chapter that the cultural fashion for post-human discourse needs to be taken seriously when considering the relationships between human beings and their technological inventions, but there is a clear need to be aware of posthumanity’s ethical trajectories. Haraway is cautious about posthumanity in as much as it detracts from feminist concerns, but she is correct to point to the benefits of intersectional analyses that seek to cross over between different discussions of difference and to see their interlaced character. Nature-cultures challenge the binary between nature and culture, and by implication, nature and technology, or even nature and the Divine Technology, when viewed in this light, impinges not just on human attempts to avoid immortality through an extension of modernist transhuman projects, but also on ways in which technologisation invades all life forms, including animal others. I have argued that transhumanity represents a loss of appreciation for animality as ontologically constitutive for the human. This bears on Jonas’s metaphysical philosophy of life, which could be seen as a sharp corrective to transhumanism, where non-living information-bearing forms are the residual
63 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, II, 896–8. 156 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred remnant of human being and becoming. Further, the application of technologies that radically transform animal natures raises the prospect of a post-animal and even trans-animal society where the category of animal being is lost through gross manipulation. Another corrective to such a trajectory comes through pondering actual encounters between a human being and another when species meet, showing up both distinctive but common characteristics between humans and other agents, and their joint impacts on ecological and social landscapes. In developing a theological anthropology that is adequate to the task of ethical and social challenges, I suggest that Kelsey’s approach is insufficient in that it refers simply to the created natural world as the quotidian in which humans and other creatures are placed. Rather, the wisdom that he points to as a basis for theological anthropology is best expressed in practical terms through prudential reasoning. Jonas’s philosophy raises important issues that Kelsey fails to address, but it too fails to address how far and to what extent there might be distinctions in human responsibility for different life forms. Practical wisdom or prudential reasoning might help in this respect.64 Working out what that wisdom might mean in an age of technology requires vigilance and, in the case of transhuman projects, in most cases requires strong resistance.
64 I have used practical as a basis for ethical decision making in genetic modification elsewhere, such as Celia Deane-Drummond, Genetics and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Practical wisdom draws on the concept of prudence, which in the classic tradition broadly follows an Aristotelian approach to virtue ethics. Part III Practices This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 9 Re-Inventing Homemaking: A Necessary and Ethical Means of Production in a Post-Growth, Ecologically Sustainable Economy David Gormley-O’Brien
Let us [for the sake of the argument] accept the idea that women should stick to their own jobs – the jobs they did in the good old days before they starting talking about votes and women’s rights … It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and … the whole of the nation’s brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. Here are the women’s jobs – and what has become of them?
They are all being handled by men. It is all very well to say that woman’s place is the home – but modern civilisation has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organised by men at the head of large factories. Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone, to be replaced by a male mechanic in charge of a mechanical milking plant.1
Dorothy L. Sayers, one of the first women to graduate from the University of Oxford, was amongst several things a Christian humanist. She penned an essay titled ‘Are Women Human?’ towards the end of her life in the 1950s arguing that each woman ought to be judged in the workplace on the individual basis of her merits and capabilities rather than being dismissed simply on account of her gender. The topic of this chapter was largely spawned by Sayers’s comments on the enormous changes that occurred in the homes of all classes in England during the industrial revolution. In this chapter, I will be arguing that the changes to home-life brought about by technological development during the industrial period have continued in the post-industrial era to the point where
1 Dorothy Sayers, Are Women Human? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 31–2. 160 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the consumption of the average suburban home today is unsustainable both for economic and ecological reasons. I suggest that there is a need to re-visit aspects of homemaking prior to the industrial period. Also, just as importantly, I suggest that we need to re-invent them in light of subsequent technological developments in order to adapt to the modern phenomenon of suburban life, which is the prevalent habitat for many in developed nations today, at least in the English-speaking world. I shall also be arguing that a wholesale rehabilitation of homemaking requires a cultural shift in worldviews, and I will try to lay the ethical basis for this new way of life that will also provide the guidelines for developing and using technology in the home in the future.
The Role of Technology in Changing the Home from a Place of Production to a Place of Consumption
Prior to the industrial period in the United Kingdom and United States, people mostly lived in villages or small towns, and homes were in varying degrees places of production where most of the household’s food, clothing, energy, water and education needs were provided, and extra income derived from cottage industries. Each parent and child had an important part to play in the ongoing economic concern of the household, each being involved in a wide range of highly skilled tasks including sewing, spinning and weaving, growing vegetables, animal husbandry, wood-working, tanning, food-preserving, threshing and milling, baking bread and brewing ale, milking and cheese-making.2 Due to the rapid technological advances during industrialisation in striving for ever greater efficiencies to maximise profit, many of the tasks traditionally performed in the household became mechanised, outsourced to specialist technicians, and eventually became the province of large companies.3 Numerous changes occurred along gender lines. A feature of the second industrial revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included men leaving home to work in the factories or office buildings, often involving long commutes to the cities. This phenomenon continued well into the twentieth century. Aside from the brief period during mobilisation in the early 1940s when women took the place of men in the workforce, married women tended to stay at home and focus
2 On the ‘proto-industrialisation’ of the cottage economy prior to the Industrial Revolution, see David Levine, Reproducing Families: The Political Economy of English Population History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 94–159. 3 For impacts on social life during the industrial period, see Roger Millar, ‘Household Activity Patterns in Nineteenth-Century Suburbs: A Time-Geographic Exploration’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 72, no. 3 (1982): 355–71; Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). Re-Inventing Homemaking 161 on child-rearing, cleaning and cooking. The housewife, targeted as a consumer, became the focus of an unrelenting marketing campaign for modern labour- saving technological devices. Homemaking, which during the pre-industrial and early industrial periods supplied many of the chief needs of the household, requiring a diverse range of skills and expertise, within a few generations became relatively deskilled. Homemaking depreciated to home-duties. With industrialisation came urbanisation and eventually a comparatively higher standard of living. The innovation of mass transit systems, the mass- production of automobiles, federal subsidies for the construction of highways, and the availability of cheap oil, made possible the suburban sprawl and the homogenisation and replication of many amenities. Clothing, furniture, and food, packaged and prepared, transported from all corners of the earth, could now be bought abundantly, conveniently and cheaply from the local supermarket and shopping mall. In this relatively rapid transition, the home changed from a place of production to a place of consumption. Since the 1970s the trend of increasing household consumption, fuelled by the availability of easy credit, has continued to the extent that it is now quite common for both partners to work full-time in the market economy in order to finance the concomitant increase in expenditure.4
The Need to Curtail Consumption and Contract the Market Economy in Order to Promote Ecological Sustainability
There are three arguments why it is important to reverse the consumption spiral of the home and rehabilitate homemaking as a productively sustainable enterprise in the suburbs: the global-ecological, the domestic-economic, and the personal-psychological. These arguments are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they do all require a massive cultural change in terms of human values and approaches to technology.
The Global-Ecological Argument
Technological advances and the availability of cheap oil in the industrial and post-industrial periods have led to the rise of a centralised market economy that is global in scale, providing an unprecedented increase in living standards
4 The median income for married couples with children in the United States rose 25 per cent between 1969 and 1996, of which 23 per cent is attributable to the earnings of the wives. John McNeil, ‘Changes in Median Household Income: 1969 to 1996’, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Current Population Reports, Special Studies, P23–196 (1998), www.census.gov/ prod/3/98pubs/p23–196.pdf (accessed 3 June 2014). 162 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred in the developed nations which has had a trickling effect even to the poorest nations. The so-called Green Revolution, for example, allowed cheap oil-driven technological developments in agriculture and, when applied particularly to developing nations, brought about a manifold increase in grain production. This enabled the world to sustain a population that has exploded from 2.5 billion in 1950 to around 7 billion in 2014, forestalling predictions of global famines in the 1970s and 1980s.5 Nevertheless, since the 1970s there has been a growing number of economists, scientists and environmentalists who have become alarmed at the side effects of the successful growth of the market economy, and they question whether we can, or even if it is desirable to, carry on business as usual, that is, a global economy predicated on indefinite continual growth. Ecosystems of all kinds are under threat with deforestation, fish depletion in the oceans, biodiversity loss, water shortages and excessive carbon dioxide emissions from human activities leading to climate destabilisation. According to the Global Footprint Network, these are the costs of our ecological overspending. At some point in the mid- 1970s, we crossed a critical threshold where human consumption of renewable ecological resources began outstripping what the planet could produce. Today, human consumption of renewable resources and services is equivalent to that of more than one and a half earths and is on track to require the resources of more than two earths by the 2050s.6 Foreshadowed by John Stuart Mill over 150 years ago, critics of mainstream economics are insisting that there are indeed limits to growth in terms of human population and per capita resource use.7 The market economy is seen to be a subsystem of a larger ecosystem (the natural world), which is finite, non-growing and materially closed. There are thus limits to which the finite ecosystem is able to absorb wastes and replenish raw materials in order to sustain the market economy. Herman Daly talks about there being an optimal point after which economic growth becomes uneconomic growth, producing ‘bads’ faster than goods. This is when losses incurred from the depletion and deterioration of the
5 See John Pollock, ‘Green Revolutionary’, MIT Technology Review (18 December 2007), www.technologyreview.com/review/409243/green-revolutionary/ (accessed 3 June 2014). 6 ‘Earth Overshoot Day’, Global Footprint Network, www.footprintnetwork.org/en/ index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/ (accessed 3 June 2014). 7 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, 7th edition (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909), bk. 4.6, www. econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP61.html (accessed 3 June 2014); John P. Holdren and Paul R. Ehrlich, ‘Human Population and the Global Environment’, American Scientist 62 (June 1974): 282–92; Herman E. Daly, Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development, Advances in Ecological Economics (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2007). Re-Inventing Homemaking 163 more valuable natural capital (fish, air, minerals, water) exceeds the man-made capital produced (such as roads, appliances and cars). According to Daly, the economies of most, if not all, developed nations have already gone past this optimal point and are thereby in a stage of producing more ‘illth’ than wealth.8 Clearly to address this uneconomic growth there is a need for adjustments to the economy to make it more ecologically sustainable. Ecological sustainability here needs to be understood in terms of the environment’s capacity for supplying the natural resources necessary for production and its capacity for absorbing the end waste.9 This raises the question of what we can adjust to reduce the environmental impact to an ecological sustainable level. In 1974, Holdren and Ehrlich put forward the case that population growth, rising per capita consumption and disruptive technologies each contribute to make human civilisation a global ecological force;10 thus, environmental impact is a function of population, affluence and technology.11 Politicians understandably prefer to focus on the technological part of the equation and neglect the sensitive and potentially unpopular factors of population control and reducing affluence. However, there are many reasons why techno-optimism is unfounded and that improving technology efficiencies alone, while necessary, will not be sufficient to lead us to ecological sustainability.12 Population control is a serious factor that can no longer be avoided and has become complicated by the obesity pandemic in many of the affluent and developing countries of the world. The global ecological footprint of the human species is not solely due to rising population but also to the increase in average body mass.13 The focus of this chapter is on the other politically sensitive issue, the second parameter on the right hand side of the IPAT function: the need to scale back
8 Daly, Ecological Economics, 4–17. 9 Ibid., 17–23. 10 Holdren and Ehrlich, ‘Human Population and the Global Environment’. 11 See Daly, Ecological Economics, 18; Samuel Alexander, ‘A Critique of Techno- Optimism: Efficiency without Sufficiency Is Lost’, Working Paper Series, www.sustainable. unimelb.edu.au/files/mssi/PostCarbonPathways_WP1_Alexander_Critique-of-Techno- Optimism_2014.pdf (accessed 3 June 2014). 12 Alexander, ‘Techno-Optimism’, 1–21, refutes the Environmental Kuznet’s Curve argument with regard to global environmental problems in light of ecological footprint analysis. 13 David Gormley-O’Brien, ‘To Live the Good Life: An Early Christian Exhortation to Self-Sufficiency’, inClimate Change – Cultural Change: Religious Responses and Responsibilities, (ed.) Anne Elvey and David Gormley-O’Brien (Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 2013), 102–3; Sarah Walpole et al., ‘The Weight of Nations: An Estimation of Adult Human Biomass’, BMC Public Health 12 (28): 439. www.biomedcentral.com/1471–2458/12/439 (accessed 3 June 2014). 164 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred our consumption or affluence in order to live in an ecologically sustainable way. There is an urgent need to reduce our consumption of renewable resources to pre-mid 1970s levels, in other words, to what one planet can sustain. It is also vital that we scale back the emissions from both renewables and non- renewables, such as fossil fuels, in both production and transport to ensure that the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are below the levels required to meet a specific warming target and in order to avoid catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.14 The most obvious way to cut down our consumption is a large-scale commitment to participate much less in what Juliet Schor calls the ‘business as usual’ economy by working shorter hours combined with lower income. Studies have shown a direct correlation between the number of hours worked in a household and the total consumption. Schor refers to an unpublished French study by François-Xavier Devetter and Sandrine Rousseau in 2009, titled Working Hours and Sustainable Development,15 which found that, after controlling for income, households with longer working hours tended to increase their spending on housing (buying larger homes and more appliances), transport (where the longer hours tended to reduce the use of public transport), and hotels and restaurants, these being identified as three of the most environmentally damaging expenditure areas in terms of carbon emissions and ecological footprint.16 Working shorter hours with less income and self-provision through homemaking is the Green solution. It leads to lower resource use and to changes in the types of goods and services that are consumed: luxuries like overseas vacation travel, restaurants, consumer electronics and other discretionary items will be less in demand. In turn, the home increasingly will be the locus for providing more of the household’s energy, shelter, food and clothing needs.17
The Domestic-Economic Argument
In 1996, the philosopher Frithjof Bergmann, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan and the founder and director of New Work, an organisation dedicated to exploring and promoting innovative technologies
14 See the ‘Summary for Policymakers’ in the Fifth Assessment Report accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 27 September 2013, www. climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf (accessed 3 June 2014). 15 Since published as François-Xavier Devetter and Sandrine Rousseau, ‘Working Hours and Sustainable Development’, Review of Social Economy 69, no. 3 (2011): 333–55. 16 Juliet Schor, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (New York: The Penguin Press, 2010), 114. 17 Schor, Plenitude, 112–16. Re-Inventing Homemaking 165 and enterprises for living in a post-employment world, published a paper, which he had written fourteen years previously and had wittingly only made minor adjustments prior to publication.18 In this paper, he proposed that with the current technical capacity half the sum total of all the currently existing jobs could soon be eliminated. Reading through the list of occupations threatened by the incursion of technology that he compiled over thirty years ago, it is impossible not to be impressed with his prognosis: price scanners doubling the output of the supermarket clerk; word processors reducing office work in much the same way that electrical devices compressed housework down to perhaps a tenth of what it was before; even skilled jobs like teaching were threatened with the introduction of classes taught via cable television; computers replacing the need for car mechanics, stock brokers, travel agents and so on.19 In each case, the impact of technology is the same: to deskill and dehumanise the work and make the worker redundant.20 Many people hold to the idea that enough jobs will be created to replace those lost to technology. Bergmann challenges this notion. The basic purpose of technology from its first beginnings was to reduce or eliminate human labour. Until the early 1800s, 90 per cent of the population lived and worked on farms and did not have jobs at all in our sense (that is, work that someone else is willing and able to pay for). During the industrial revolution, machines replaced the need for all but 5 per cent of these. For a time most people found space in manufacturing but this phase was short-lived. Technology further encroached in the area of manufacturing so people moved again, into service industries. The question arises: what comes after services? It is not at all obvious that there is such another fourth category.21 In this post-industrial period where more than 50 per cent of the workforce is in service jobs we need to put to rest the presumption that 40 hours of every week for 45 years of everybody’s life should be filled by a job. The phenomenon of close to full-time employment was an aberration; it was a wasteful and cumbersome transition during the industrial period while technology developed and became mature. Now that technology has arrived service jobs are particularly
18 Frithjof Bergmann, ‘The Future of Work – Part I’,Perspectives on Business and Global Change 10, no. 1 (1996): 7–22. 19 Ibid., 9–10; see also Schor, Plenitude, 163–4. 20 On the deskilling and dehumanising effects of work caused by the implementation of technology, see Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001). 21 Bergmann, ‘Future of Work’, 10–12; Schor, Plenitude, 163–4, raises an additional point that the market economy can no longer absorb jobs shed through the implementation of technology, due to the fact that we are now bumping up against planetary boundaries, meaning that there is no scope for growth as a way out of unemployment. 166 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred vulnerable. As people lose their jobs they are likely to forego many services, or at least perform these services themselves now they have more time.22 If Bergmann is right, then we could be confronted by a sudden drop in the demand for labour, reminiscent of the Great Depression, in which 30–40 per cent may be able to defend their jobs and 60–70 per cent may eventually be unemployed. A far more mutually beneficial approach, according to Bergmann, would be the cutting of every present job roughly in half, where one could progress from full time to a four day work week, and from there to perhaps three or two days of work each week. Other ways of halving work-time are to work on a six months on/six months off basis, or some other longer rotation period. In this way, jobs could be distributed and shared, there would be none unemployed, and everyone would have access to a certain amount of income.23 As Schor notes, the business as usual market, where job opportunities become more and more scarce due to the encroachment of technology, is becoming a losing proposition, especially over the long run. An intelligent response is to begin a shift out of the market and to cut losses by diversifying the ways to cover household needs.24 It could be that many households will find it necessary to adjust to one full-time or two part-time incomes in the future, thereby dropping back to a similar relative income prior to the recent dual-full-time-income-per- household period. This would lead to a lot more free time, but it will unavoidably also lead to a significant drop in net household income and the need to embrace frugality. Many will need to find alternate ways of providing for their needs, given a shortfall in income from the monetary economy. Homemaking seems to be the most promising way of providing for our food, clothing and shelter needs in light of reduced income and employment opportunities available in the business as usual economy.
The Personal-Psychological Argument
The third argument for rehabilitating homemaking hinges on the personal choice to cut back on participation in the current business as usual economy not primarily for ecological or economic reasons but rather with the idea that self- provisioning and working fewer hours could lead to greater happiness. In many ways modern technology when applied in the business as usual economy has deprived humans of the kind of work that we enjoy most: creative and productive work that uses both hands and minds. Technology’s drive for ever increasing efficiencies has led to a division of labour which makes for
22 Bergmann, ‘Future of Work’, 11. 23 Ibid., 15–18. 24 Schor, Plenitude, 111. Re-Inventing Homemaking 167 plenty of fragmented, joyless and boring work.25 Certainly, there has long been a certain amount of division in labour. In the 4th century BCE, Xenophon lauds the advantages of large cities where artisans have the luxury of being able to specialise in the various stages of shoemaking: one making his living merely by stitching shoes, the other by cutting them out, a third by shaping the upper leathers, and a fourth fitting them all together.26 However, there is still a sense that the contribution of the artisan in the large city, though specialised, was highly skilled, which is not generally the case today where the division of labour driven by machines tends towards mechanical activity and the loss of all the characteristics of art. As a result, the division of labour is alienating and cripples workers with devastating consequences for physical and mental health.27 The business as usual economy is predicated on the idea that material affluence or wealth brings people happiness. A growing empirical literature challenges this assumption. In striving for extra money, most people need to work longer hours, and evidence shows that working longer hours leads to lower happiness. Tim Kasser and Kennon Sheldon show from four studies that once material needs are met a more powerful determiner for subjective wellbeing was time-affluence, that is, the time outside of paid work where people could engage in activities that promote personal growth, connection with others especially their families and friends and community involvement.28 Time-affluence from paid work gives people the opportunity to participate in the more productive and creative work of homemaking. The more self- provisioning one can do, the less income one has to earn to produce an acceptable standard of living. Doing work in one’s own household is production, even if no wage is involved. Growing one’s own fruit and vegetables, sewing clothes and maintaining bicycles all have economic value, but more importantly they are enjoyable activities that can give people a sense of purpose in life.29
25 E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People Mattered (London: Abacus, 1974), 160–61. 26 Xenophon, Cyropaedia, trans. W. Miller, Loeb Classical Library, 52 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 8C2.5. 27 Volf, Work in the Spirit, 59–60. 28 Tim Kasser and Kennon M. Sheldon, ‘Time Affluence as a Path toward Personal Happiness and Ethical Business Practice: Empirical Evidence from Four Studies’, Journal of Business Ethics 84 (2009): 243–55. See also Schor, Plenitude, 105–7, who remarks on the unique American phenomenon in which, contrary to other similarly wealthy nations, the average annual hours worked per person actually increased between 1967 and 2006. Within this metric, employees with lower education attainment suffered more under- and unemployment, and those with higher education were more overworked. 29 Schor, Plenitude, 116, 126–7. 168 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
How an Early Alexandrian Christian Tradition of Self-Sufficiency can Provide an Alternative Ethic for Participating in a Post-Growth Economy
One thing shared in common with the global-ecological, domestic-economic and personal-psychological arguments on the desirability of lessening our dependence on the business as usual economy by working less hours and devoting ourselves to self-provisioning for our basic needs is the inescapable fact that we will be less affluent. Schor sees the need for frugality and devotion to self-provisioning or homemaking as an interim and necessary expedient during a time of transition while we wean ourselves from the dirty business as usual economy and move to a green economy where new green technologies will open up new markets. Undoubtedly the opening of new green markets will occur to some extent, but it is unlikely that we could ever attain the same present level of consumption and affluence in a sustainable economy in the future primarily because we will no longer have recourse to cheap energy from fossil fuels, of which there is no comparable substitute. Therefore, we may need to embrace frugality as a permanent fixture of an energy-descent future.30 In this present time, the voluntary act of embracing frugality for ecological, economic or psychological reasons is counter-intuitive in the prevailing economic culture characterised by what Daly calls ‘growthmania’.31 The current values underpinning the development and use of technology in the free market economy include continual growth, self-interest, gain and ever increasing efficiencies. Clearly, different values or ethics need to be embraced and inculcated if we are going to embrace a process of de-growth to a sustainable and effectively stationary state of the economy. This is not a new enterprise. In the mid nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill took to task his political economic predecessors like Adam Smith who, he insists, were overly fascinated with the moving state but neglected to explore the end goal of industrial progress for society. When this progress ceases, how will it leave humankind? Mill notes that the increase in wealth is not boundless, and that at the end of progression lies the stationary state. The best stationary state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer. No one needs to fear about being thrust back by the efforts of others pushing themselves forward. In this state there will be a better distribution of property, where an individual through prudence and frugality has access to the fruits of his or her own industry.32
30 David Holmgren, Retrofitting the Suburbs for the Energy Descent Future, Simplicity Institute Report 12i (Melbourne: Simplicity Institute, 2012), 1–8, http://simplicityinstitute. org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/RetrofittingTheSuburbsSimplicityInstitute1.pdf (accessed 3 June 2014). 31 Daly, Ecological Economics, 18. 32 Mill, Political Economy, bk. 4.6. Re-Inventing Homemaking 169
However, there is a far more ancient tradition that may be of even greater use in providing the theological and philosophical grounds for ethics in a de-growth and stationary state. In the late second century, the Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria set himself the task of convincing the wealthy elite of his city that salvation was still open to them, in spite of the rather hostile statements in the Gospels which seemed to point to the contrary, provided that they share their superfluous possessions with the needy and embrace moderation and a voluntary frugality.33 In doing this, he incorporated elements of the notion of self-sufficiency as understood in the major philosophical schools. In Antiquity, Stoics, Peripatetics and Platonists all shared a basic framework for their ethical theories, according to which all questions of value fall under the basic question of what brings happiness (εὐδαιμονία) to humans.34 For Plato, happiness has to do with the harmony and virtue of the soul, while for Aristotle, happiness as a moral virtue is living between the extremes, living in virtue but still requiring externals. The earlier Stoics rejected Aristotle’s understanding of externals, which they called indifferents, and claimed that happiness lay solely in living in accordance with virtue, which is the same as living in accordance with nature.35 According to the earlier Stoics, things which are morally indifferent, such as health, fame, wealth and strength, which neither promote nor hinder virtue, ought to have no bearing on the happiness of the wise person.36 This rigorous position of the earlier Stoics did not go unchallenged even within their own school. Some saw that some indifferent things could contribute positively to happiness. Certainly, the wise person can be happy without good health or a good family, but these things can also be aids to his or her happiness. Zeno himself distinguished between ‘things preferred’ and ‘things to be rejected’.37 A person’s very constitution has its place among sensible objects and thus is necessarily composed of things diverse but not opposite: the body and the soul. Likewise, for Clement, the soul of the genuinely advanced Christian
33 For more on this topic see my unpublished doctoral thesis, David Gormley-O’Brien, ‘Rich Clients and Poor Patrons: Functions of Friendship in Clement of Alexandria’s Quis Dives Salvetur?’ (University of Oxford, 2004). 34 T. Engberg-Pedersen, ‘Discovering the Good: Oikeiosis and Kathekonta in Stoic Ethics’, in The Norms of Nature, Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, (ed.) Malcolm Schofield and Gisela Striker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 146. 35 Stobaeus, Eclogue, in Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium, (ed.) Curt Wachsmuth and Otto Hense, 5 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884–1923), 2.77.16–27. 36 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. 184, 185 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 7.104–5. Cf. Clement, Stromateis, in Clemens Alexandrinus II: Stromata I-VI, (ed.) O. Stählin, 3rd edn rev. L. Früchtel, GCS 52 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1960), 3.7.58.2; 3.8.63.3. 37 J. von Arnim (ed.), Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903–24), 1.192. 170 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred neither denigrates the body nor succumbs to its inordinate affections; rather, it acts virtuously using the body in the knowledge that God has created it good but nevertheless as a sojourner preparing for its departure.38 The notion of self-sufficiencyαὐτάρκεια ( ) was important for most of the major philosophic schools. Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics and especially the Cynics, all agreed that a happy person was self-sufficient, in possession of all the goods he or she needs for happiness.39 Exactly what this meant differed slightly. For Plato, the Good is perfect and lacks nothing, and so, ideally speaking, the person who has attained to the Good needs nothing else, not even friends.40 The Cynic Diogenes claimed that freedom of speech and freedom of action were the most important things in life.41 To be free, a person needs to be completely independent (αὐτάρκης) of his or her society with all of its trappings of money, conventions of marriage, socially acceptable behaviour and so on, and in order to be completely independent of society one has to reduce one’s needs to a minimum. All that the Cynic requires is food, shelter and clothing of the meanest sort; his or her psychological needs can be satisfied by virtue alone. Therefore, the Cynic has no desire for wealth, knowledge, pleasure or friendship.42 Later Cynics reacted against the extreme position of Diogenes. For both Bion of Borysthenes and Teles, αὐτάρκεια was not so much a stern renunciation of the world as an attempt to adapt to the world and changing circumstances just as an actor adapts himself to the various roles that he has to play. Self-sufficiency is synonymous with being satisfied with what is at hand. It is not a withdrawing into oneself but an acceptance of one’s circumstances and a concern to discover value in them.43 Characteristic of Cynic attitudes is their individualism; non-Cynic philosophers stressed the social dimension of self-sufficiency. The Pythagorean
38 Clement, Stromateis 4.26.165; cf. Plato Phaedo, trans. H.N. Fowler, Loeb Classical Library, Plato, 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 82b–c. 39 See A.A. Long, Stoic Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 183. Clement is aware of the opinions of the various philosophers on self-sufficiency. Hecataeus is said to have called αὐτάρκεια the chief end (Clement, Stromateis 2.21.130.5). Polemo, a disciple of Xenocrates, held the opinion that happiness is sufficiency in all good things, or of the most and greatest (Clement, Stromateis 2.22.133.7). Epicurus regards sufficiency as the greatest of all riches (Clement, Stromateis 6.2.24.8). 40 Plato Philebus, trans. H.N. Fowler and W. Lamb, Loeb Classical Library, 164 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 20e6; Lysis, trans. W. Lamb, Loeb Classical Library, Plato, 5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 215a–b. 41 Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.69,71. 42 A.N.M. Rich, ‘The Cynic Conception ofAY TARKEIA’, Mnemosyne 9 (1956): 23–9; J.M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 58–63. 43 A.J. Malherbe, ‘Paul’s Self-Sufficiency (Philippians 4.11)’, inFriendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech, (ed.) J.T. Fitzgerald (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 133–4. Re-Inventing Homemaking 171
Ecphantus, in a tractate on kingship, describes the ideal king as the paragon of self-sufficiency. To be self-sufficient is to be like God: the king leads all things but is himself led by nothing. The ideal king is concerned with sharing, friendship and virtue, all of which stem from his self-sufficiency. He does not amass acquisitions for his personal service on account of any lack, but rather shares them with all.44 Clement’s understanding of self-sufficiency shares some traits with each of these sources and differs in others. He aligns himself with Plato and the Stoics in claiming that virtue is sufficient for happiness and that the happy person will be self-sufficient.45 The Saviour’s command: ‘Take no anxious thought about tomorrow’, signifies that a person who has devoted him- or herself to Christ ought to be self-sufficient so that he or she can be free and unimpeded to follow him.46 Self-sufficiency protects the psychological dimension of the believer against any threats from the irrational pleasures of the body and from the uncertainty concomitant with being a finite being.47 As such, it requires a person to reduce his or her needs. The passions, which would normally be inflamed from superfluous wealth, such as the constant desire for more wealth, are thereby bounded by living a life of self-sufficiency.48 To live self-sufficiently involves distinguishing between necessities and superfluities. Clement held that one could use some external ‘goods’ and still be self-sufficient, exploiting, as did the Stoics, the subtle difference betweenuse and need made possible by the ambiguity of the word χρεία.49 It was chiefly for humans that all things were made, yet that does not mean that it is ethically right to use all things, nor at all times. The occasion, time, mode and intention govern the ethical use of things, and invariably this means that people are to appropriate for themselves only the basic necessities for life.50 Although the whole of creation is ours to use, the universe is made for the sake of self-sufficiency, which anyone can acquire by a few necessary things.51 In this way, self-sufficiency becomes the means by which God extends his providence. That is, God provides just enough
44 Ibid., 134–5. 45 Clement, Stromateis 5.14.96–7. 46 Clement, Paedagogus (in Clemens Alexandrinus I: Protrepticus, Paedagogus, (ed.) O. Stählin, 3rd edn rev. U. Treu, GCS 12 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1972), 1.12.98.4. 47 The gnostic (advanced Christian) is lord and master of him- or herself. He or she is moderate and passionless, unable to be disturbed by pleasures and pains (see Clement, Stromateis (in Clemens Alexandrinus III: Stromata VII, VIII, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae Propheticae, Quis Dives Salvetur, Fragmente, (ed.) O. Stählin, 2nd rev. L. Früchtel and U. Treu, GCS 17. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970), 7.11.67.8). 48 Clement, Paedagogus 2.1.16.4. 49 Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 8–9. 50 Clement, Stromateis 4.26.163.1–2; Paedagogus 2.1.14.3–5. See 1 Cor. 10.23. 51 Clement, Paedagogus 2.3.38–9. 172 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred to meet everyone’s needs. No one should be poor provided that people are not greedy and appropriate more than what is necessary.52 In addressing the problem of the wealthy, Clement mines and adapts ideas from the philosophical schools to construct a Christian understanding of self- sufficiency, which he insists is the key to happiness. Rather than living a self- centred lifestyle of unbridled consumption, the wealthy are presented with an alternative path that involves contentment with few necessary things, in essence, a voluntary frugality. Instead of hoarding gold, wearing rich, gaudy clothes and hosting opulent feasts, people can imitate God in having few needs and focusing on supporting others, thereby cultivating true friendships.53
How Self-Sufficiency Informs the Way we Choose Technology in Homemaking in a Post-Growth Economy
It is necessary for those hastening towards salvation to anticipate beforehand that everything we possess is for use, and the use is for the sake of self-sufficiency, which one may attain by a few things.54
In the quest for self-sufficiency in the future we need to develop and adopt suitable technologies that address basic consumption needs – food, transport, energy, clothing, furniture and so on – so that people can reduce their dependence on the market economy by cutting back their work hours and providing for their needs through homemaking. When discussing technology, it is pertinent to distinguish between a tool and a machine. In some cases there may be a degree of ambiguity but generally speaking a tool transmits the activity of the worker to an object, that is, the worker remains the primary agent of production. In machine production the machine is the primary agent of production; the worker tends but does not use the machine.55 Ecological realities and rising transport costs will undoubtedly drive bigger centralised production towards smaller-scale, more localised production.56 The rehabilitation of homemaking will therefore also involve a reversal of the three stages of manufacture from craftsman to machine operator to machine overseer, which occurred in the agricultural, industrial and post- industrial ages respectively.57 That is to say that in many cases there will be a
52 Clement, Paedagogus 2.1.14.5. 53 Gormley-O’Brien, ‘Live the Good Life’, 95–8. 54 Clement, Paedagogus 2.3.39.1 55 Volf, Work in the Spirit, 31–3. 56 Schor, Plenitude, 125. 57 Volf, Work in the Spirit, 3–31. Re-Inventing Homemaking 173 preference for a tool over a machine, and for the homemaker to develop skills as a craftsman in using tools. This does not mean that other simple and robust technologies will not be useful in supporting homemaking in an energy-descent future. In suburban areas, it would make good sense to apply permaculture principles to food growing where, by careful selection and placement of animals and plants, the waste from one becomes the fertiliser for the next; the yield for a smallholding can be substantially higher than using conventional systems. This will involve a progressive ruralisation of our suburbs, focusing locally on the biological needs and functions of food supply, water and nutrient recycling. Such ruralisation will require the releasing of more public land for commons and garden allotments and foodscapes.58 The homemaker of the present and future will choose tools based on the ethical values inherent in self-sufficiency, namely, utility and frugality, rather than convenience and extravagance, using the following principles:
1. Tools that are durable: a sustainable economy that is in a stationary state requires that production rates of goods should equal depreciation rates. Lower rates are more desirable for the sake of greater sustainability. Therefore, longer-lived, more durable products can be replaced more slowly, thereby requiring lower rates of resource use.59 An example of this is our treadle-powered Singer sewing machine from the 1930s on which my wife does most of her sewing and makes many of our clothes. The spare parts are readily available online and the machine (properly the tool according to our definition above), besides being a technical work of art, is far superior to the modern electric computer guided machines (properly the machine according to our definition above) in terms of its stitching and the capacity for the worker to fine-tune its operation by hand. 2. Tools that are repairable and maintainable: extending a tool’s life through regular maintenance and reparations tends to make it more sustainable and less expensive in the long run in spite of the fact that it may entail paying more up front.60 This principle also implies that the tool be simple in construction so that the average skilled homemaker is able to maintain it him- or herself. An example of this is the choice of a scythe over an electric or petrol-powered brush cutter or lawn mower. A well-made scythe will last a lifetime, provided the user maintains it regularly with frequent honing and peening. It also provides an excellent and not over- taxing form of exercise for the worker.
58 Holmgren, Retrofitting the Suburbs, 2. 59 Daly, Ecological Economics, 12. 60 Schor, Plenitude, 130. 174 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
3. Tools that are multifunctional: Clement alludes to this principle directly when he encourages believers to possess inexpensive (i.e., non- ostentatious) utensils that are multifunctional so that a variety of things may be done away with.61 This principle can also be applied in urban homemaking through a collectivist approach of sharing tools between neighbours. Instead of each household purchasing a full complement of spanners, screwdrivers, saws, planes, hammers, cars, bicycles, sewing machines and so on, for its own use, a system of sharing could be put in place where a number of households share the use of the tools, thereby reducing the total number of tools required and also encouraging the acquisition of higher quality and possibly slightly more expensive tools that are in line with principles 1 and 2 above.
It would be understandable for the reader to infer that self-sufficiency, as we have defined it, is anti-materialistic. However, in reality, it is our consumerist culture that reflects an anti-materialism, where fashionable clothes can be bought by the kilogram, a cheap Chinese-made spanner can easily be replaced by another when it breaks, and cars can be turned over on a yearly basis. In contrast, self-sufficiency leads to a higher materialism, where tools are appreciated for their beauty in utility and simplicity.62 These tools are often works of art and are looked after with tender care over a period of many years, sometimes a lifetime, by homemakers, for upon such tools they know their quest for happiness through self-provisioning is dependent.
61 Clement, Paedagogus 2.3.36.3. See also Schor, Plenitude, 131. 62 Schor, Plenitude, 40–41. Chapter 10 Redeeming the Climate: Investigating a Theological Model of Geoengineering Forrest Clingerman
2012 saw an interesting convergence of fact and fiction related to the intentional modification of the climate to combat anthropogenic climate change, commonly called ‘geoengineering’. The fact was a well-publicised but controversial iron fertilisation of the ocean by a Canadian company.1 The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, funded with money from a small Canadian fishing village, released 200,000 pounds of iron sulphate into the ocean. The company stated that this was an attempt to promote the local salmon stock: the iron would cause an algae bloom, which in turn would increase the food sources for a wide variety of marine life. The head of Haida, however, was previously the CEO of Planktos, a US-based company that sought profits from carbon credits gained through this same process of iron fertilisation. The Haida project may or may not have been an attempt to rebuild the salmon fishery, but it was to be paid for by carbon credits – leading to accusations that this was the first illegal, large-scale testing of geoengineering. Around the same time as the Haida controversy came a work of fiction: Tobias Buckell’s science fiction novelArctic Rising, set in the near future of international competition for the oil and mineral rights under an ice-free polar region. Buckell’s novel seems to be the first science fiction novel centred entirely on geoengineering, and revolves around what some have termed a ‘Greenfinger’ scenario. In the novel a mysterious, wealthy corporation attempts to deploy geoengineering technology, but this technology also serves as a weapon. Arctic Rising builds upon some of the current US military and economic interests surrounding climate engineering, and places them into a narrative about optimistic environmentalists, pragmatic cosmopolitans and calculating agents of world governments. Part spy-thriller, part science fiction,Arctic Rising narrates a story of wealthy and powerful individuals who attempt to take control of geoengineering technology for dubious ends.
1 Jeff Tollefson, ‘Ocean Fertilization Project Off Canada Sparks Furor’,Nature 490 (25 October 2012): 458–9. 176 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
The Haida case andArctic Rising seem to signal a shift in popular culture in some way. Entering cultural consciousness at the same time, both are compelling stories, both are ethically disconcerting, and both generate conflicting models for approaching environmental problems surrounding climate change. What is more, they both illustrate a current unease with geoengineering: the press surrounding the Haida case and Buckell’s novel question how easily we can assess intentional attempts to manipulate the atmosphere and climate, given the dismal human record of unintentional influence on the climate and nature more generally. And while the scientific interest in geoengineering started much earlier, the Haida case and Arctic Rising show that geoengineering is poised to enter into wider public consciousness, leading us to ponder how people might debate the fears and hopes that surround geoengineering in the public square. In fact, it is no surprise that geoengineering is becoming a timely and urgent topic. Pessimism over political and economic inaction has resulted in calls for a more robust scientific and technological solution to anthropogenic climate change. One possible solution is geoengineering, but this solution is not without its critics. So we see ever-increasing encouragements for geoengineering, such as David Keith’s recent book, A Case for Climate Engineering.2 Yet others (one recent example is Clive Hamilton’s Earthmasters) are unsettled by these calls not simply because of the invasive ways the technology might work, but also because this technological intervention will affect the way we interpret the world and understand our place in it. Both sides of the debate use different departure points for describing the human responsibility toward the world, creating a dynamic that is analogous to the controversies over climate change Mike Hulme has documented so well in his book Why We Disagree About Climate Change. The present essay wishes to investigate the role of religion in this discussion, by reflecting on how geoengineering can be theologically modelled. Given its importance for many, religion has a role in the reacting to calls for geoengineering,3 causing us to ask: How might one’s response to geoengineering be investigated in order to uncover what Paul Tillich’s called our ‘ultimate concern’ (as we will see below, this is what one takes to be above all else, unconditional, total and infinite, and thereby at the heart of one’s sense of religion)?4 In Tillich’s sense, one’s ultimate concern serves as a lens for viewing the world, the self and the very meaning of being. This is an admittedly broad understanding of religiousness, insofar as it suggests that a religious worldview is not limited to traditional religious institutions. But is also a fecund one, because
2 David W. Keith, A Case for Geoengineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). 3 Forrest Clingerman and Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Playing God: Why Religion Belongs in the Climate Engineering Debate’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70, no. 3 (2014): 27–37. 4 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 11–15. Redeeming the Climate 177 it allows us to see all-encompassing conceptual systems work in ways akin to traditional religions, especially as they provide intellectual meaning, emotional coherence and justifications for action. If geoengineering is something that is influenced by our sense of what is ultimate, it is possible to uncover an implicit theological underpinning to one’s position on geoengineering. The conclusion that I draw is that theological reflection must assess geoengineering in terms of the ability to advance what David Klemm and William Schweiker call the ‘integrity of life before God’. This assessment allows for the possibility that some forms of geoengineering might be redemptive, but also provides a strong theological critique. In arguing that a theological voice is sorely needed to understand the complexities of geoengineering, this chapter will focus on introducing how theology might influence one’s understanding of geoengineering. While it won’t be attended to here, it also should be acknowledged that geoengineering has a complementary influence on religion. This is due to the fact that ‘climate change changes religion’.5 How? Certainly climate change has remade the material human world. When CO2 concentrations hit 400 ppm, scientist Ralph Keeling (who supervises the measurement of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii – records first started by his father in 1958 and now referred to as the Keeling Curve) wrote: ‘It feels a little bit like we’re moving into another era, in that somehow between 350 and 400 parts per million feels like a certain kind of range of CO2, and now we’re moving into a different range. It feels like we’re moving into the future’.6 In that near future, we find ourselves in an unknown environment, which is sometimes framed in terms of ‘climate catastrophe’ or ‘apocalypse’.7 This becomes the new material context of religion and theological reflection; religion must adapt and transform itself to this new, seemingly apocalyptic future. In turn, geoengineering (as an intentional manipulation of the climate) is an intentional human change to the context of religion and theology. Rather than accept with fear and trembling this unknown, inhospitable future, geoengineering proposals (or so the examples of Arctic Rising and the Haida case illustrate) emphasise the human yearning for a techno-fix, and a sense of confidence that human ingenuity is a way out of the chaos we fear. Geoengineering, in sum, remakes the context that allows us to understand the meaning of religious rituals and beliefs. Such a pervasive attempt to remake the world has implications on how we understand the ‘domain of the
5 Sigurd Bergmann, ‘Climate Change Changes Religion: Space, Spirit, Ritual, Technology – Through a Theological Lens’,Studia Theologica 63 (2009): 103. 6 Fen Montaigne, ‘Son of Climate Scientist Pioneer Ponders a Sobering Milestone’, Environment 360 (14 May 2013), (accessed on 15 May 2013), http://e360.yale.edu/feature/ keeling_curve_son_of_climate_science_pioneer_on_co2_milestone/2650/. 7 For instance, see Stefan Skrimshire, Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Continuum, 2010). 178 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred gods’, as humans step beyond the task of ‘co-creator’ to become an ‘architect’ of the climate.8 Geoengineering thus has the potential to change religion. While this is part of the context of the present inquiry, we now move on to ask: how does theology interpret and change our sense of geoengineering?
Geoengineering as a Domain for Theological Modelling
Theological Modelling
I wish to offer a theological model of geoengineering, which starts from the fact that geoengineering proposals recommend ways for the human relationship with the climate to be defined through technological mediation. Implicit in all geoengineering proposals is that human technological interventions are not passive or independent of our understanding of the climate; instead, geoengineering is predicated on the possibility that technology can define and facilitate the human relationship with the global environment. How might theological reflection provide a way to understand this dynamic? To begin, we must describe what is meant by a theological model. Robert Scharlemann, David Klemm, William Klink and William Schweiker have suggested the means through which to construct a theological model, and I will loosely follow their lead. Models are not mere observation, phenomenological description, or symbol. Instead, ‘what we mean by a model is a construct that provides us with a methodological way of dealing with an object being investigated’.9 Models are constructions – theoretical, material, or otherwise – that are purposely made to systematically investigate a domain or an object. Moreover, because models are designed to be provisional, they can be adapted, changed and discarded depending on utility and performance. A model is not the same as the thing itself, but this suggests the value of models: models ‘have the capacity to provoke the mind to think something new by seeing a resemblance previously unnoticed’ and that they ‘display humility of mind because they invite criticism and ask to be refuted in the name of a truth that the modelling activity imperfectly approaches and never actually reaches’.10
8 See Philip Hefner, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); Maialen Galarraga and Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘Making Climates: Solar Radiation Management and the Ethics of Fabrication’, in Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management, (ed.) Christopher Preston (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 221–35. 9 Robert Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), 130. 10 David E. Klemm and William Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological Humanism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 133. Redeeming the Climate 179
Given these qualities, models are useful for a wide array of disciplines, not just the natural sciences and engineering. This is because all models are founded upon the hermeneutical structure of experience – a structure that is particularly well studied in the social and human sciences. In all fields the knowledge of a thing does not arise from an immediate encounter with data, but through an interpretive mediation through structures such as language, concepts, metaphors, modes of perception and other forms of basic pre-understanding. As a method through which to systematically situate an object in the context of its hermeneutical mediation, models attempt to uncover ways of understanding otherwise incomprehensible ‘facts’ – evoking the ideas of facticity, Dasein and hermeneutical consciousness in the philosophies of Heidegger and Gadamer – while necessarily concealing others. Because of this, models are inevitably partial. Rather than concentrate on overcoming the incompleteness inherent in the model, it is more important to focus on how fruitful a model is for better understanding. Furthermore, models suggest that our interpretations of the world are necessarily inter-subjective; they must have some connection with states of affairs that exist beyond an individual, in such a way that it is possible to show how our subjective determinations might align with the experience of others – offering the possibility of dialogue and agreement. What this means is that a model is not a mere copy of an object, but neither is it solely a subjective impression. In turn, while there might be many models of something – other interpretations, as it were – not all interpretations are valid or equally successful. For the humanities (including theology), models allow for the possibility of firmer footing in dialogue with other disciplines, as well as more systematic reflection in our globalised, secular culture. In the present case, then, we seek to develop a model in order to uncover the implicit depth dimension of geoengineering, insofar as such technological interventions become unwitting claims to ultimacy. Klemm and Klink propose a process through which to develop theological models.11 The first steps of a theological model, they suggest, is to identify the domain of the model, and to analyse the structure of this domain. From there, we must identify and outline the depth of this structure. Klemm and Klink take the term depth from the theological work of Paul Tillich, as is evident when they write, ‘[b]y “depth” of the structure, we mean the standpoint from which the investigator can see the unity in difference of the structural elements’.12 Theologically thinking of the domain becomes explicit through the possibility of correlating this depth with the sacred. That is to say, the model becomes
11 David E. Klemm and William Klink, ‘Constructing and Testing Theological Models’, Zygon 27 (1993): 495–528. 12 Klemm and Klink, ‘Constructing and Testing Theological Models’, 37. 180 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred explicitly theological when we combine the theological conjunctive ‘God is …’ to the claim of depth. At this point the model is to be critically viewed and tested.
The Domain and Structure of Geoengineering
Following this method, a theological model must begin with a description of the domain and structure of geoengineering. In other words, to construct a model of geoengineering we must first ask: Whatis geoengineering? Initially seen more as science fiction than responsible policy, geoengineering – also called ‘climate engineering’ – recently became a serious proposal as a technological response to climate change. A 2009 British Royal Society report provides the commonly given definition for geoengineering: ‘the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change’.13 As David Keith points out, ‘[s]cale and intent play central roles in the definition. For an action to be geoengineering, the environmental change must be the primary goal rather than a side effect and the intent and effect of the manipulation must be large in scale, e.g. continental to global’.14 Because these acts artificially manipulate the climate, Keith further points out that geoengineering is a technological fix or ‘countervailing measure’, which reinforces the uniqueness of the scale and intent of geoengineering. Human intention and the unique scale of these proposals, I wish to argue, are the conceptual poles through which to model geoengineering for theological reflection. For starters, the difference between geoengineering and other human effects on the environment is that geoengineeringseeks to manipulate the climate – that is, there is a formative human intention. ‘People who use the term … seem to have in mind something intentional. Otherwise we are geoengineering right now: burning fossil fuels changes the atmosphere’s chemistry. To reduce fossil fuel combustion might be geoengineering because it is deliberately changing the chemistry of the atmosphere from what it was going to be …’15 For both advocates and critics, there is a significant difference between ‘global warming’ (itself something meaning many things, as Mike Hulme has examined)16 and what
13 Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance, and Uncertainty (London: The Royal Society, 2009), 1. 14 David W. Keith, ‘Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect’, Annual Review of Energy and Environment 25 (2000): 247. 15 Thomas C. Schelling, ‘The Economic Diplomacy of Geoengineering’,Climatic Change 33 (1996): 304. 16 Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially chapters 1 and 2. Redeeming the Climate 181
Dale Jamieson termed ‘intentional climate change’.17 Geoengineering research is oriented on finding and testing mechanisms to gain control over – or at least to exert significant influence on – the climate systems of the entire planet, with the aim of negating the worst effects of anthropogenic global warming. The proposals on which the present essay is focused are recent, but the idea of manipulating the climate for human benefit goes back for decades – if not centuries – and is often tied to military and agricultural needs.18 That humanity has the technical and scientific ability to embark on this type of planetary experiment is an extension of our ability to manipulate our environment more generally. Not only is geoengineering unique in its intent, climate change and geoengineering are novel situations due to the scale involved. Jacob Haqq- Misra comments, ‘[t]he ability for humans to use technology to modify their environment on a global scale is unprecedented in the history of life on Earth. Although climatic changes, such as the rise of atmospheric oxygen nearly 3 billion years ago, have occurred in Earth’s history, humans are the first organisms that can deliberately and collectively manipulate their home planet’.19 While other recent technologies might have similar global impact – as Hans Jonas wrote, this was particularly the case during the twentieth century, when ‘the nature of human action changed’ through technology20 – geoengineering is extreme in what we might call its atmospheric scope. Such scope is both literal and figurative, in that it suggests how geoengineering is focused on mastery of a seemingly untouchable context that is among the most basic structures that we rely on for continued existence. In attempting to gain control on an atmospheric scope, geoengineering follows a historical progression of human intervention that began with agriculture and animal domestication. But geoengineering takes this progression one step further to an altogether new scale: it is an attempt to gain control over the elemental, enveloping atmosphere, which has always influenced and challenged the machinations of human domestication of organic and inorganic existence. Without an amenable climate, prior forms of control (agriculture, domestication, civilisation itself …) cannot exist. To say that it has an atmospheric scope, therefore, means that geoengineering attempts to regulate one of the most basic contexts of terrestrial existence, which has always limited and influenced other forms of human control. Intent and scale do not limit the specific technologies that scientists speculate on how to achieve the common goal of global temperature reduction,
17 Dale Jamieson, ‘Ethics and Intentional Climate Change’, Climatic Change 33 (1996): 323–6. 18 Keith, ‘Geoengineering the Climate’, 249–54. 19 Jacob Haqq-Misra, ‘An Ecological Compass for Planetary Engineering’, Astrobiology 12 (2012): 985. 20 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1. 182 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred and thus there is no single technical paradigm for geoengineering proposals.21 A variety of proposals have emerged, which scholars usually divide into two categories. Clive Hamilton has noted that the two categories relate to whether the target is the cause of disease itself or simply a select symptom (the rise in temperature).22 Some proposals are classed ‘carbon dioxide removal’ (CDR) methods, and focus on the cause. CDR focuses on the reduction of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere, with the goal of reversing the gains in the rate that the planet retains or absorbs solar energy. Most of these proposals are attempts to recapture carbon dioxide in the ambient air. An immediate benefit of this approach is apparent: CDR addresses the issue of greenhouse gases (though actual emissions reduction is not required). But the technologies required for CDR expose a significant hurdle: this is more than simply ‘scaling- up’ current technologies such as carbon capture and storage because it involves removing large quantities of CO2 even though the gas is present in much smaller concentrations in the atmosphere than it is in confined industrial processes. CDR proposals often include methods that enhance or mimic natural processes: from massive reforestation and the promotion of algae through iron fertilisation of the ocean to artificial ‘trees’ or large-scale ambient air scrubbers to capture
CO2. Even though the technologies involved are uncertain, one of the suggested benefits of CDR is that the removal of CO2 will lead to the desired outcome without as many significant environmental effects as other forms of climate engineering (that is to say, proponents might argue that CDR is closer to ‘soft’23 or environmentally benign forms of geoengineering, but this is debatable). The second category of proposals is oriented toward the symptoms, by reducing the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the planet. These methods are referred to as ‘solar radiation management’ (SRM). Like CDR, SRM proposals vary greatly, from painting roofs white to thousands of small scale space mirrors placed between Earth and the Sun. The most commonly discussed SRM proposal is the introduction of particles into the upper atmosphere.24 The recent surge of interest in geoengineering, in fact, started with a 2006 paper that advocated research into SRM. Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen argued for the need for further research into the possibility of releasing sulphur dioxide
21 For recent overviews, see Keith, ‘Geoengineering the Climate’; Naomi E. Vaughan and Timothy Lenton, ‘A Review of Geoengineering Proposals’, Climatic Change 109 (2011): 745–90; Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), especially chapters 2–3. 22 Hamilton, Earthmasters, 21. 23 Robert L. Olson, ‘Soft Geoengineering: A Gentler Approach to Addressing Climate Change’, Environment 54 (2012): 29–39. 24 For further analysis, see Philip Rasch, et al, ‘An Overview of Geoengineering of Climate Using Statospheric Sulphate Aerosols’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 366 (2008): 4007–37. Redeeming the Climate 183 into the stratosphere in a manner mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption (a ‘Pinatubo event’, reminding us of the temporary global temperature reduction after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1992). Due to Crutzen’s stature, discussions of geoengineering – particularly SRM – thereby gained legitimacy. SRM proposals are frequently seen as economically cheaper (in some cases cheaper than the reduction of initial emissions or adaptation), as well as more quick in their effects. Further, they rely on novel applications of current technology rather than the invention of new technology. However, SRM has drawbacks compared to mitigation or the more costly CDR methods: ‘[w] hile SRM may be relatively cheap and fast, it is also imperfect’.25 SRM does not alleviate the problems of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, meaning that these proposals do not mitigate for things such as changes in plant growth, the effect of carbon dioxide on the oceans, and the like. In fact, a 2014 study reported that climate models indicate that while SRM models might actually have an impact on global warming (unlike, the researchers reported, most CDR methods), the unexpected and harmful consequences of SRM were severe.26 Regardless of what form of geoengineering we are discussing, what makes geoengineering culturally significant is how it constitutes a unique technological overlap of intentionality and scale. In fact, the differences between geoengineering proposals do not negate the commonality these proposals share. This is especially true insofar as the implementation of geoengineering will likely include a number of different technologies and processes including both CDR and SRM simultaneously. Because of the likelihood of such mixed, ‘cocktail engineering’,27 intentionality and scale present themselves as the overarching conceptual poles through which to structure our understanding of geoengineering. We can therefore suggest a summary statement of the structure of a model of geoengineering: geoengineering is the creation of a mediating technology to exert control over the Earth’s material climate as a whole, thus humanising the climate in its function as one of the basic contexts of human existence. What undergirds this structure is the pervasive context of technology in contemporary life: what Gernot Böhme refers to as ‘invasive technification’ and Taede Smedes calls the technosphere, ‘… which seems quite remote from
25 M. Granger Morgan and Katharine Ricke, Cooling the Earth Through Solar Radiation Management: The Need for Research and an Approach to Its Governance (Geneva: International Risk Governance Council, 2010), 5. 26 David P. Keller, Ellias Y. Fen and Andreas Oschies, ‘Potential Climate Engineering Effectiveness and Side Effects During a High Carbon Dioxide-Emission Scenario’, Nature Communications 5 (25 February 2014). 27 David G. Victor, ‘On the Regulation of Geoengineering’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 24 (2008): 326ff. 184 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the nature from which we emerged’.28 And in light of this human capacity for technological intervention and our ongoing manipulation of environmental context, it is unremarkable that we have reached to point of considering geoengineering. In its intent and scale, geoengineering appears to be a reflexive extension of earlier technological interventions that attempt to transform our material and cultural environments. But what is more significant is something that will occupy our theological reflections on this model of geoengineering: as a mediating technology that fosters the technification of the atmosphere, geoengineering is not limited to a single interpretation. Instead, we are presented with possibilities to assess geoengineering in its ability to define the human relationship with one of the basic contexts of material existence. For as Heidegger argued, human technologies are mediations through which we encounter the world, but we can balance Heidegger’s suspicion of technology by suggesting that the mediating qualities of technology offer – in some cases, at least – the possibility for humans to intertwine the natural and the artificial in unique and positive ways. In other words, human engagement with technology is a complex, multivalent hermeneutic. In the case of climate engineering, this dynamic is illustrated in the fact that it is not a single technological intervention, but the name for a variety of potentially ongoing human mediations into the earth system in order to intentionally create a humanised atmosphere. But no single geoengineering proposal is exhaustive in its interpretation, nor is it unequivocal in its moral valence. The problem and promise of any model of geoengineering therefore is uncovered in the ways that human beings seek ever-increasing mediation of the world through technology. Peter-Paul Verbeek writes: ‘The central hermeneutic question for a “philosophy of mediation” is how artifacts mediate human experiences and interpretations of reality’.29 This arguably was the insight of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. In ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ Heidegger explains that ‘[t]echnology is a way of revealing’30 and frames the encounter with the world. Heidegger is correct in saying that technology ought to be understood in terms of how humans are interpreting and involved in their environments. However, Verbeek correctly argues the need to move beyond Heidegger: ‘The technosciences are more than interpretations of reality; they act, even encroach, upon reality. We fail to understand technology adequately if we only characterise it in terms of interpretation, for this reduces it
28 Taede A. Smedes, ‘Technology and Imago Dei: Technology as a Focus of Theological Anthropology’, ET-Studies 1 (2010): 30. 29 Peter-Paul Verbeek, Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 8. 30 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, inBasic Writings, 2nd edition, (ed.) David Farrell (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 318. Redeeming the Climate 185 to the domain of the symbolic, which is what it precisely transcends’.31 This is the case with geoengineering, which proposes that we materialise a technological interpretation of a humanised environment. Defining geoengineering in this way allows us to more clearly see the connections between intention and scale. Every geoengineering proposal focuses on the intentional control of the climate. The climate is not mere ecosystem or object: it is the atmospheric milieu of life itself. Geoengineering advocates intend to remake the very basis of the material context of humanity: ‘Mankind has posited how to build a habitable planet for years, but the contemporary question has become how to maintain one’.32 Success, in turn, is not simply a matter of affecting the climate; it is about ‘controlling the thermostat’ of the planet. Moving beyond local or regional scales, geoengineering is successful only through the absolute domestication of the climate – the humanisation of Earth itself. Through the combination of intention and scale, geoengineering is an attempt to ‘play God’, insofar as geoengineering is an extension of human technological manipulation to the sky, the metaphorical realm of the divine. As Simon Donner reminds us, for many cultures and individuals, ‘the weather and the climate are beyond human control. … Whether intentional or not, the argument [of climate sceptics] taps into our pre-existing doubts that humans could disturb the domain of the gods’.33 To say that geoengineering is an attempt to intentionally ‘play God’ is not necessarily an argument against it. That is to say, to ‘play God’ is comprehensible only in terms of seeing how it provides a boundary for human action. In this mediation of the earth through technology, what accounts for a successful proposal is the self-conscious attempt to redefine what has been given and what falls under the domain of human responsibility. Willem Drees explains how technology forces such questions of the given and the domain of action:
Underlying our moral experience is a distinction between what has been given and what our responsibility is. What is given is the stable background of our actions. We cannot change those issues. Traditionally this has been referred to as fate, nature, or creation: domains of the gods or of God. When new technologies expand the range of our abilities, and thus shift the boundary between what is given and what is open to our actions, we become insecure and concerned. It is especially in such circumstances that the phrase ‘playing God’ arises. There is a reference to ‘God’ when something that was experienced as given, not up to
31 Peter-Paul Verbeek, What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency and Design (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), 9. 32 Aaron Welch, Sarah Gaines, Tony Marjoram, Luciano Fonseca, ‘Climate Engineering: The Way Forward?’Environmental Development 2 (2012): 62. 33 Simon D. Donner, ‘Domain of the Gods: an Editorial Essay’, Climatic Change 85 (2007): 235. 186 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
our choices, becomes part of the domain of human considerations. … The fear of ‘playing God’ is not the fear of doing what is wrong (which is an issue within the domain on our side of the boundary), but rather the fear of losing grip on reality through the dissolution of the boundary.34
‘Playing God’ contains an inherent ambiguity, especially for creatures made ‘in the image and likeness’ of the divine: our play can either be an attempt to usurp God’s domain, or be an embrace of our evolving human-ness through reinterpreting the boundaries of the possible. Even though he is discussing technology in general, Drees’s comments suggest the way that the modelled structure of geoengineering can clarify theological concerns. Specifically, geoengineering is ahermeneutical technology, meaning that it serves as a means to reinterpret the material, moral, and perhaps even theological climate. To ‘play God’ is likewise a hermeneutically-oriented metaphor, which highlights the ambiguous changes that occur when we attempt to introduce new technologies in order to mediate the world. So when we seek to ‘play God’ with geoengineering as a form of boundary-crossing technology, are we overstepping the boundary of our fundamental humanness, or more fully embracing it? The answer must acknowledge that there is a wide variety of possibilities: We might play God by acting as members of a community of beings, as stewards, as ‘co-creators’, or as usurpers of the divine. This does not focus on the specific ethical questions that have quickly emerged surrounding geoengineering: for instance, the issues of moral hazards, generational ethics, ecojustice, or the so-called ‘presumptive argument’ against geoengineering itself. Rather, it reorients our sense of geoengineering as how we understand ourselves as being human – something that has theological ramifications. The concluding section will reflect on this reorientation by focusing on the conditions under which geoengineering is theologically appropriate: it is good when it promotes a sense of human and non-human flourishing, especially related to what Klemm and Schweiker call the ‘integrity of life before God’.35 In contrast, geoengineering is open to theological critique when it results in the overhumanisation of the climate.
Playing God, Being Human, and the Depth of Geoengineering
In the previous section, I argued that the basic structure of geoengineering can be expressed as the creation of a mediating technology to exert control over
34 Willem Drees, ‘Technology, Trust, and Religion’, in Technology, Trust, and Religion: Roles of Religions in Controversies on Ecology and the Modification of Life, (ed.) Willem Drees (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2009), 18. 35 Klemm and Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future, passim. Redeeming the Climate 187 the Earth’s material climate. Through its intent and scale, the technologies of geoengineering seek to play God in an effort to humanise one of the basic contexts of our material existence. But to play God is a much more ambiguous act than what might first appear, and therefore we must question geoengineering from different angles. On one hand, how does geoengineering serve as a vehicle for an overhumanising hubris that limits human self-understanding? On the other hand, how does geoengineering act as a necessary technological boundary- crossing that reinterprets human self-understanding? Such questions cannot be easily answered from the perspective of climate science, engineering, or policy. Rather, in order to better address these questions, I suggest the need to include discussion of the theological depth of geoengineering. A theological reading of this model allows us to draw on additional resources to show the possibility of a promising human use of climate technology while simultaneously suggesting a significant theological critique. In other words, theological assessment of geoengineering sees the sacred depth in our technical mediations, and also makes explicit the danger of technological idolatry. To envision this promise and critique – as Heidegger might have said, the saving and the danger36 geoengineering brings – we must first more explicitly identify the depth of the structure as a means through which to construct a specifically theological model of geoengineering. The metaphor of the ‘depth’ of a model is founded on Paul Tillich’s description of faith as ultimate concern. Tillich suggested that religion can be uncovered everywhere as ‘the depth of all functions of man’s spiritual life. Religion is the dimension of depth in all of them. Religion is the aspect of depth in the totality of the human spirit’. But this does not mean religion is simply what we choose to call our ultimate concern. Instead, what is truly spiritual is that which is ‘ultimate, infinite, unconditional in man’s spiritual life’.37 Proper theological reflection, then, is found through two criteria:
1. ‘The object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Only those propositions are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of ultimate concern for us’.38 2. ‘Our ultimate concern is that which determines our being or not-being. Only those statements are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of being or not-being for us’.39
36 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, 33ff. 37 Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press/ Galaxy, 1959), 7. 38 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, I, 12. 39 Tillich, Systematic Theology I, 14. 188 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
If the first criterion posits the true subject of theology, the second suggests an important relationship between structure and depth, making ‘the latter [structure, or preliminary concerns] bearers and vehicles of the former [depth, or ultimate concern]. That which is a finite concern is not elevated to infinite significance, nor is it put beside the infinite, but in and through it the infinite becomes real’.40 That is to say, religion properly dwells on the depth of existence, wherever it is found. And it is found everywhere: our ultimate concern transcends the conditioned world and thereby expresses what is truly ultimate within the confines of finite existence. Our limited, finite perspective does not always make it easy to recognise what is truly ultimate. How can we properly recognise what is truly the depth of existence? Making Tillich’s position of depth available to ethical and theological analysis, Klemm and Schweiker have suggested the need to focus theological reflection on ‘the integrity of life before God’. For Klemm and Schweiker, this phrase is at the heart of theological and ethical thinking, especially as it mediates the extremes of hypertheistic fundamentalism and equally doctrinaire secularism. They write: ‘The integrity of life means, first, the integration of distinct levels of goods into some livable form, always threatened and always vulnerable, but without which personal or social life is impoverished. The integrity of life also requires, second, a life dedicated to respecting and enhancing the proper integration of those goods and thereby a commitment to the wellbeing of other forms of life. Spiritual integrity is thereby the wholeness and steadfastness that is the proper aim of human existence with all of its vulnerability and fallibility’.41 The goods that Klemm and Schweiker identify are not merely physical and material; they also include intellectual, social and spiritual goods. Thus the integrity of life balances physical wellbeing with ethical and intellectual integrity, the integrity of our ecological and social communities, and spiritual wholeness. This productive integration into a meaningful whole is possible only when the human is not mistaken for the ultimate, but rather holds a place as a uniquely biological, social and reflective creature seeking wholeness in the midst of finitude. Might geoengineering proposals suggest an interpretation of what we consider the human relationship to the ultimate in this way? Possibly. Insofar as it seeks to use our natural abilities of technological mediation to humanise the climate, geoengineering is the desire to fix the climate as habitable in ways that transcend the failures of humanity. Geoengineering is a material attempt at salvation, in ways that attempt to promote material and economic goods in society. Or to put this in more theological terms, geoengineering wishes to qualitatively transform the climate through seemingly redemptive human
40 Tillich, Systematic Theology I, 13. 41 Klemm and Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future, 75. Redeeming the Climate 189 work, rendering it capable of symbolising the life-giving presence of the infinite. Properly conceived, then, geoengineering is the technical means through which we ‘play God’ in order to transcend the limits of human givenness, and thus to take responsibility for the climate that transcends us. If this statement adequately expresses the possibility of depth, then the final step of our theological model acknowledges a possible symbolic expression of the divine in and through this elaboration of such an atmosphere of technological mediation, as well as in the redemptive humanisation of the climate. Concretely, this suggests that there is an implicit theological stance at work in geoengineering: the manipulation of the climate is not merely a technological fix, but a desire to atone, andto be redeemed from the material conditions of our fallibility. Geoengineering proposals suggest a promising transformation of the world, a humanisation of the atmosphere. But a danger is also possible: this transformation can fall prey to the confusion between the proximate and the ultimate, and thus geoengineering has a tendency toward what Klemm and Schweiker call ‘overhumanization’, or ‘a social condition in which what possesses real worth, what should orient actions and social relations, is the extension of the human power to shape and create realities’.42 In fact, our responses to geoengineering are so visceral and consuming because geoengineering renders explicit the confrontation between who we are and who we hope to be. This hermeneutical confrontation exposes a dangerous gap that must be fully acknowledged by geoengineering proponents: geoengineering, in its desire for material redemption, always inevitably threatens to become a mediation wherein humanity technologically overwhelms the world and thereby distorts life’s integrity. Seeing climate engineering as a manifestation of the human being’s technological impulse, we are able to see why geoengineering has ignited so much debate and research: It becomes a debate about the limits to human technology as a mere proximate intervention. In the transformation of the givenness in our relationship with our surroundings, with the atmosphere that blankets us, what are we seeking? Through what means? How much is enough, or too much? Is geoengineering committed to the wellbeing of all life-forms through a truly spiritual integrity of human existence? To raise the theologically imperative issue: are there redemptive possibilities for humanity and creation in the structure of geoengineering? Such questions open many possible interpretations of geoengineering, many of which are undesirable. This model implies a criterion for judgment: from a theological perspective, geoengineering proposals must be ongoing works of repentance and redemption. Concretely, we can ask: how might specific geoengineering proposals manifest redemption of both human and atmosphere, and creature and creation? How does a geoengineering proposal avoid confusing
42 Klemm and Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future, 14. 190 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the ultimate and the preliminary? It is here that the process of theological modelling offers a significant theological critique of geoengineering. When judged theologically, most geoengineering proposals seem to be a distortion or inversion of the sacred, insofar as they fail to promote a meaningful integrity of life, and the redemptive possibilities of such integrity. Such distortions place the human as ultimate, and God as preliminary. As is apparent, from a perspective oriented toward the integrity of life, not all geoengineering proposals are seen as equal. In fact, most fail on theological grounds. Geoengineering has a possibility of the presence of a sacred depth, but more often we discover an inversion of the sacred that is the result of our overhumanising, technological impulse. Is the concept of ‘geoengineering’ a promise of redemption or a life out of balance? Interestingly, it is both. For as Martin Bunzl writes: ‘… there is geoengineering and then there is GEOENGINEERING. Nobody gets wound up about the idea of planting trees or painting roofs white as instances of geoengineering … The kind of geoengineering that elicits howls of disapproval is grander than this – it is things like space mirrors, sulfur injection into the upper atmosphere, and iron fertilization of the oceans – it is the idea of invention on a grand scale’.43 Likewise, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber writes: ‘This is essentially the tale of two fairies: the rather wicked one conjures up solar radiation management
(SRM), and the tolerably good one delivers CO2 removal through schemes like industrial “air capture” (IAC)’.44 Theological reflection, uniquely, understands that geoengineering is structurally created in a way that offers both promise and this danger. But against Bunzl and Schellnhuber, the promise is not exclusive to benign, ‘natural’ forms of geoengineering, nor is the threat exclusive to invasive, ‘artificial’ means. Geoengineering proposals cannot be clearly sorted into ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Instead, the promise depends on how we act out a liberative redemption in the face of the all-too-human danger of idolising technology. In response to the scale and intent of geoengineering, we must ask a question of boundaries: how far should we go in order for geoengineering to uncover redemptive possibilities? And at what point does geoengineering overwhelm us, causing an obsessive self-love that emerges from our technological mastery? William Klink’s essay ‘Nature, Technology and Theology’ offers us the tools necessary to understand further this split. Klink’s starting point is the ‘qualitative difference’ between contemporary technology and science and earlier forms, insofar as many forms of contemporary technology have
43 Martin Bunzl, ‘Researching Geoengineering: Should Not or Could Not?’, Environmental Research Letters 4 (2009): 1. 44 Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, ‘Geoengineering: The Good, the MAD, and the Sensible’, PNAS 108, no. 51 (20 December 2011): 20277. Redeeming the Climate 191 tremendous, all-pervasive control. As we see in the case of geoengineering, there are calls to use scientific knowledge and technology to mediate our relationship with the environment. Thus science and technology, therefore, is argued to be the necessary mediator in our relationship with nature itself. But Klink argues that it is not possible to use ecology (when defined as the science of the earth system as a whole, rather than the scientific study of particular ecosystems) in this way, because ecology cannot be considered a science in a strict, narrow sense. Why? Scientific method is predicated on the ability to lead us from theory to a series of testable predictions. ‘But there is only one earth; we do not have at our disposal an ensemble of earths, by which to test the validity of deterministic ecological models. Because there is only one earth, probabilistic ecological models are even harder to test’.45 Interestingly, Alan Robock, Martin Bunzl, Ben Kravitz, Georgiy L. Stenchikov raise this charge against geoengineering, saying that to test geoengineering is to execute it: ‘geoengineering cannot be tested without full-scale implementation’.46 What Klink argues, in other words, is that the mediation of technology often assumes absolute control, resulting in an effacement of the object of mediation. This, we might say, is the ‘evil fairy’, and points to the theological critique of geoengineering: geoengineering does not uncover the possibility of a redemptive climate or the atmosphere of the divine, but rather is an overreaching, idolatrous technification. But Klink suggests that technology also holds an alternative for our relationship with nature: we can use technology as a medium for ‘discourse’ with nature. For this to occur, technology must be seen as ambiguous and ‘as a means toward control which in its very success undermines itself ’.47 This, I would suggest, is the ‘benevolent fairy’ of geoengineering. For Klink, the way to recognise the appropriate purpose of technology is to see how technology allows us to listen and talk to nature, mediating our relationship in terms of I-Thou and not I-It. In fact, Klink’s proposal suggests the redemptive possibility that is expressed in the depth of geoengineering: just as God speaks through nature, we are now given a unique opportunity to speak back to God through the use of technology. With this, we are in a position to fulfil what Klink suggests is the real goal of ecology: ‘What is needed to guide our “speaking back” are theological models that incorporate human freedom (and therefore responsibility for our actions) along with a sense of God’s acting on our earth’.48 In other words, theology provides the vision for our future actions and use of
45 William H. Klink, ‘Nature, Technology, and Theology’,Zygon 27 (1992): 205. 46 Alan Robock, Martin Bunzl, Ben Kravitz, Georgiy L. Stenchikov, ‘A Test for Geoengineering?’, Science 327 (29 January 2010): 530. 47 Klink, ‘Nature, Technology and Theology’, 208. 48 Klink, ‘Nature, Technology and Theology’, 209. 192 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred geoengineering. ‘The role of theological models is to make concrete how a new kind of dialogue between human beings and God is possible, one in which human beings act on the environment through technology, and listen for the response of God through Nature’.49
49 Klink, ‘Nature, Technology and Theology’, 209. Chapter 11 Resilience Techniques: Spiritual Practices and Customary Economics within Farming Communities in Amanbaev Village, Kyrgyzstan Zemfira Inogamova-Hanbury
In 1991 during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the villagers of Amanbaev, Kyrgyzstan, were allocated land plots, told that the state could no longer look after them and that they had to look after themselves. In subsequent years, various what I shall term ‘resilience techniques’ emerged and re-evolved to respond to the immediate needs of the villagers who had lost their jobs and social security. In this chapter, I look at these religious, cultural, spiritual and economical practices among Kyrgyz, Kurdish (Kurmanzhy), Turkish (Hemshil) and Uzbek farmers and how they form their identity and help to maintain their resilience. I will explore how farming communities organise their environmental, agricultural and technological knowledge in order to support farming and food practices and how they interact with each other in socio-cultural contexts. I will suggest that the complex nature of dynamic socio-cultural and ecological systems are unpredictable and always in flux. ‘The most fundamental thing about life is that it does not begin here or end there, but is always going on’.1 In order to maintain the resilience of the community in the face of unpredictable changes, it is essential to have diversity of choice. To enable choice, it is crucial to preserve biocultural diversity. Religious, cultural, spiritual, social and economic practices contribute to biocultural diversity and form alternative technologies, techniques which enhance the resilience of the farmers. The analysis is based on holistic transdisciplinary, qualitative anthropological field research, participant observation of farmers’ daily agricultural activities and in-depth conversations (interviews and transcriptions) conducted in Amanbaev. Hence, this chapter will contribute to discussions on the subjects of anthropology of food, food security, religion, culture, environment, resilience, technologies and biocultural
1 Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 172. 194 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred diversity within Amanbaev and the role of indigenous farmers with respect to these issues. In 1991 Kyrgyzstan gained its independence from the Soviet Union which was in the midst of disintegration. This was a huge upheaval; infrastructure crumbled and the fabric that had held society together for seventy years was transformed. I was seven years old at the time, thousands of ‘rubls’ became worthless and the last bit of our family savings were just enough for my parents to travel to Tashkent and buy a colourful coat for my younger sister. My father lost his job as a gas engineer because the government could not afford to bring the gas pipes into the streets of the village where I grew up, and his skills were not required anymore. ‘Many moved to the capital, Bishkek, or even abroad in search of work. For most villagers, however, outmigration was not an option. Instead, they continued to privatise all goods and property to raise the cash that was increasingly needed as a result of the economic “shock therapy” that was imposed on the country’.2 This was a difficult time for a lot of people; they had to adapt to changes and learn new skills to sustain themselves. After gaining independence, the government introduced land reforms which led to the privatisation of land. In Amanbaev, every family was given a land plot to farm, the size depending on the number of family members. In effect, the message from the government was: ‘at the moment we cannot look after you but we will give you land and you can look after yourselves’. So, my father the gas engineer transformed himself into a farmer of a smallholding, while my mother carried on teaching children at the local high school as she used to do before. As a result of this land reform, every family in Amanbaev now has a smallholding and practises a mixed form of subsistence farming. For example, as a family we started growing beans in our field and sold them to buyers from Turkey, and so did many other farming families in our village. Ingenuity, tradition, custom, creativity and necessity gave rise to new ways of relating to each other, with the land and with the divine. In this chapter, I will talk about the various religious, cultural, social and economic phenomena that emerged or were reintroduced during this time. Amanbaev village was named after a local shepherd, and it is located in the Talas region of the Northwest of Kyrgyzstan. The village is inhabited by more than 6,172 people or 1,226 tütüns.3 Tütün is a Kyrgyz word which means ‘smoke’ and refers to one family or household. During the Soviet period one of the biggest kolkhozes (collective farms) in Talas, named Russia, was situated in Amanbaev. This, plus the presence of a railway station in the nearby village, Maimak, led to a flow of different peoples from all over the USSR into the
2 Judith Beyer, ‘Ordering Ideals: Accomplishing Well-being in a Kyrgyz Cooperative of Elders’, Central Asian Survey 32, no. 4 (2013): 434. 3 Statistical and demographic data of Amanbaev village for the year 2009, obtained from the statistics department of the local government, Amanbaev Aiyl Ökmötü. Resilience Techniques 195 village to work. Even now Amanbaev is one of the most multiethnic villages in the region, one where Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazak, Tatar, Uighur, Turkish (Hemshil), Kurdish (Kurmanzhy) and Russian people live side by side.
Resilience Techniques
In this chapter, I suggest the idea of resilience techniques used by the farming communities in Amanbaev village as a response to social and economic changes. The notion of resilience, according to Brian Walker and David Salt ‘is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance; to undergo change and still retain essentially the same function, structure, and feedbacks. In other words, it’s the capacity to undergo some change without crossing a threshold to a different system regime – a system with a different identity’.4 As for the notion of technique: ‘I shall take technique to refer to skills, regarded as capabilities of particular human subjects …, and technology to mean a corpus of generalized, objective knowledge, insofar as it is capable of practical application. Both technique and technology must, of course, be distinguished from tools. A tool, … is an object that extends the capacity of an agent to operate within a given environment’.5 Various resilience techniques emerged or re-evolved in response to unexpected socio-economic changes that took place in Kyrgyzstan, particularly in Amanbaev village. Tim Ingold states that ‘technical relations are embedded in social relations, and can only be understood within this relational matrix, as one aspect of human sociality’.6 I suggest that resilience techniques need to be understood in a holistic way because they are applied in social, cultural, spiritual, religious, psychological, ecological and economical situations. Thus, ideas concerning technology, technique and tools are understood in a broader context. As Henri Bortoft states, ‘any entity is what it is only within a network of relations. So instead of being an atomic existence it is in fact holistic. When we think materialistically of the world as being “made up” of separate and independent entities, which are like building blocks, then we really have got it backwards’.7 Resilience techniques emerged as a response to the lack of physical technology and cash, playing the role of an alternative currency in the village. Alternative currencies contribute to the local resilience of the farming communities. ‘Such diversification of currencies is an essential ingredient of a resilient economic s y st em’. 8 Even though the process of being disintegrated from the Soviet Union was
4 Brian Walker and David Salt, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006), 32. 5 Ingold, Perception of the Environment, 315. 6 Ingold, Perception of the Environment, 314. 7 Henri Bortoft,Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2012), 27. 8 Stephan Harding (ed.), Grow Small, Think Beautiful: Ideas for a Sustainable World from Schumacher College (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2011), 159. 196 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred not without shocks and distress, it also gave space for the people to start participating in the further human scale development as individuals, community, society and country as a whole. According to Manfred Max-Neef, human scale development ‘is focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy and of civil society with the stat e ’. 9 For example, in Chinese, where symbolic characters are used to express ideas, the character for ‘crisis’ also contains the meaning ‘opportunity’. It was a crisis but it also gave space for creativity, invention and participation. During the Soviet era most of the cultural practices were banned, though this does not mean that people did not practise them secretly anyway. Crisis, shock and distress provided the opportunity for people in Amanbaev to express creativity in ‘attaining the transformation of an object- person into a subject-person in the process of development’, which is, ‘among other things, a problem of scale. There is no possibility for the active participation of people in gigantic systems which are hierarchically organized and where decisions flow from the top down to the bottom’.10
Being a Farmer
In the summer of 2009 I returned to my village from the UK to research the local farming community for my Masters degree at Schumacher College in collaboration with the University of Plymouth, Devon. My old family home became a base for me to work from and conduct my research. In the course of speaking to my fellow villagers, I compiled a collection of field notes and transcriptions. I started to look at my village where I had spent seventeen years of my life with different eyes and was amused to find that the local farmers do not identify themselves as farmers. For them, farming is not a profession, a form of employment or a job. In the village everyone is involved in farming but only those farmers who receive a salary for working as doctors, teachers, state workers, electricians, etc. consider themselves as having a job. Farmers embody their agricultural, ecological and cultural knowledge by ‘living it’, by ‘being it’ and by practising it on a daily basis. To be able to make a living from farming, it is necessary to have an intimate knowledge of the landscape and region. Farming is ‘encultured’ and embodied by the farmers. It has become part of their way of living.11
9 Manfred A. Max-Neef, Elizalde Antonio, Hopenhayn Martin, Human Scale Development: Conception, Application and further Reflections (New York: The Apex Press, 1991), 8. 10 Max-Neef et al. Human Scale Development, 8. 11 Inogamova, Zemfira. ‘Building Resilience through Preservation of Biocultural Diversity in Amanbaev Village, Kyrgyzstan’. Journal So-bytie (Russian)/Körünüsh (Kyrgyz), Collection of Articles on Biocultural Diversity of Central Asia (2010): 69–75. Resilience Techniques 197
Figure 11.1 Craftswoman from Kyrgyzstan Note: Zhumakan Apa, craftswoman from Amanbaev village, making a traditional ‘tush kiiz’, a hand stitched wall hanging for the dowry of her granddaughter. Source: Photo by author.
Farmers have to work hard in order to sow crops on time in the spring and to harvest them on time in the autumn. Villagers often have a list of jobs they need to accomplish, but at the same time they say that they do not have any jobs to do. Many women in the village do a range of demanding tasks. Some grandmothers 198 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred and other women create sophisticated works of applied art, making shyrdak or kiiz – two different types of rugs made using the complex technology of felting. Others look after children, the garden, work in the fields, look after animals, make bread, make jam and salads to preserve for winter – and yet they say, ‘we do not have a job, we just sit at home’.
Zher Ene, Mother Earth
One farmer said to me: ‘The land is alive. A non-living thing would not give any harvest. Nothing would grow on it. There are beetles, worms and other things in the soil. The land feeds us only because it is alive. There is a saying in Kyrgyz, “er emgegin zher zhebeit” (the land does not waste the hard work of a man). The more you give to the land the more it will give to you’.12 Zher Ene (in Kyrgyz) is a feminine archetype, an animate spirit that evolved in the cosmology and worldview of the Kyrgyz as a symbol of a mother that nourishes and feeds them. Many Kyrgyz farmers when they pray for a good harvest or during times of hardship call the names of Allah, Kuday (‘God’), but also Zher Ene. Farmers believe that the land is alive and that she feeds them. When farmers say ‘the more you give to the land the more it gives back to you’, it shows their cyclical understanding of their symbiotic relationship with the land. Farmers do not say ‘we take back’, instead ‘it gives back’. This is in line with what ecologist Stephan Harding in his book Animate Earth suggests: ‘soil is alive because the soil is inhabited by many different living organisms, insects and worms that make the soil fertile and rich. Living organisms sacrifice their lives in order to give fertility to the soil which in turn gives life to whole ecosystems’.13 Michael Pollan states that: ‘Humus is what’s left of organic matter after it has been broken down by the billions of big and small organisms that inhabit a spoonful of earth – the bacteria, phages, fungi, and earthworms responsible for decomposition … But humus is not a final product of decomposition so much as a stage, since a whole other group of organisms slowly breaks humus down into the chemical elements plants need to grow, elements including, but not limited to, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium’.14
12 Fieldwork interview transcriptions, May 2010. 13 Stephan Harding, Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia (Totnes: Green Books, 2006). 14 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 147. Resilience Techniques 199
Figure 11.2 Traditional technologies Note: Women who say ‘we do not have a job, we just sit at home’, sit at home and make sophisticated applied art works using complex technologies of hand felting, stitching, dyeing and thread making. These are two handmade traditional rugs called ‘shyrdak’. Some women organise ‘ashar’ to make shyrdaks and socialise while sipping hot tea, sharing knowledge, news and technologies of making. Source: Photo by author.
Zher Ene not only feeds the farmers but also fulfils many of their fundamental needs. Farming is an activity with which to express their will, creativity, care for other community members and to be part of the miracle of transformation: of seeds transforming into plants, plants into yield, yield into nutrition, and nutrition becoming part of blood and flesh. Many farmers believe that their bodies are made of soil or clay (‘adam balasy topuraktan zhasalgan’). It is like 200 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred being connected to the land through invisible but powerful roots that shape their substance. Farming satisfies farmers’ basic need for subsistence and also their need to express creativity through growing on the land. It is a synergic satisfier. ‘Synergic satisfiers are those which, by the way in which they satisfy a given need, stimulate and contribute to the simultaneous satisfaction of other needs’.15 The wealth of the farmers in the village is the fertility of the soil; its self-generating capacity cannot be bought or sold (although land can be). Therefore, fertility of the soil is not only a very valuable economic resource, but it also affects the intrinsic wellbeing of the farmers. Life is the wealth of life. ‘Fertile land is a very precious and very scarce resource. It needs to be protected and conserved as an asset of the farmers and as national heritage to be passed on to future generations’.16 For example, fresh manure and composted manure contain many different bacteria, gases and liquids that provide living conditions for organisms and make the soil fertile. This is real wealth – free, ecologically healthy and locally available – that does not cost money like imported artificial fertilisers. Moreover, animals and farming machinery are a store of value instead of savings in banks. Most of the farmers keep their savings in the form of animals. Here they experience the mutual relationships and co-existence of lives. The livestock eat grass and leftover food from the farmers and recycle it back to the earth that feeds the fertility of the soil, enriches it and in turn feeds them. Water is also an invaluable economic resource that plays a crucial role in contributing to the fertility of the soil. For farmers it is very important to maintain the health of the water. However, with the wider and wider use of chemical fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides it is becoming increasingly difficult. Thus, the farmers are very much connected and dependent not on the conventional economy that gives value to money and income generation, but on the ecology of the land and its generous fertility. It also shows how farming skills and knowledge of agricultural technologies can influence the local ecology. During Soviet times, agriculture and farming activities were very intensive, particularly in Amanbaev village. Tobacco, grain and corn was intensively planted and harvested as a part of the kolkhoz agricultural activities. According to the words of my fellow villagers, during these times agricultural fields would be processed with chemical fertilisers or pesticides sprayed from light aircraft even while people were working in the field. At that time the
15 Manfred Max-Neef, Development and Human Needs: Real-Life Economics (New York: Routledge, 1992), 210. 16 Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity (London: Zed Books, 2008), 39. Resilience Techniques 201 governing system was centralised and all land was state property. Agricultural policy was dictated by state officials and the excessive use of pesticides and fertilisers was allowed to raise productivity without any consideration of the cost to the natural environment or the people. As a result of excessive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, the fertility of the soil declined. As Pollan states, ‘… treating the soil as a machine seemed to work well enough, at least in the short term’.17 Thus, local farmers in Amanbaev had to deal with the results of overgrazing pasturelands, micronutrient deficiencies and, because the soil was degraded, present farmers have had to be more creative when it comes to farming. During the Soviet era agriculture was not compassionate and enlightened in terms of taking good care of people. ‘Care is an integral aspect of social security’.18 ‘Agriculture becomes truly enlightened only when it keeps all the balls in the air – biological, social, moral – with the general aim of creating a world that is good for everyone forever, and for other creatures too’.19 After the end of the Soviet Union, farming in Amanbaev changed from larger to smaller scale and from copying to creativity – from ‘being told what to do and how to do it’ to ‘simply doing it yourself ’. During the Soviet time only people in the highest positions, who were mainly Russian, were allowed to be creative, and the local farmers were usually told what to grow and how to do the farming. It is important not to ignore the suffering endured after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the nostalgia for Soviet times. But as a result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, local farmers now have the opportunity to be creative and bring different socio-cultural and economic activities into being. One example of the local farmers’ creativity is the use of locally available organic matter to bring the soil back to life and fertilise the land. In Amanbaev the majority of the local farmers use the combined farming technology of irrigation and fertilisation by making sherbet suu (‘sweet water’) to fertilise the soil. Sherbet suu is made in the half metre, square-shaped holes dug out and lined with a solid plastic sheet to stop the water soaking into the soil around the hole area even before reaching the rows in the field. By combining chicken, cow or sheep manure with glacial water and fermenting it for two to three days, the mixture can be used to irrigate and fertilise the fields.
17 Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 147. 18 Beyer, ‘Ordering Ideals’, 433. 19 Colin Tudge, Feeding People is Easy (Italy: Pari Publishing, 2007), 79. 202 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Figure 11.3 Food preservation techniques Note: Zarima Imashevna – high school teacher, mother, grandmother, wife and farmer – picking raspberries in her garden to make jam and preserves for the winter season. Knowing the technology of food preservation is utterly essential and crucial for subsistence farmers to support their livelihood when the temperature in winter is -30ºC and the land is frozen. Source: Photo by author. Resilience Techniques 203
The Ritual ofKuday Tamak
During drought, a too hot summer that burns the crops on the arid lands, or when it is too rainy to allow a good harvest of beans, or when the yield is poor, local farmers organise the ritual of Kuday tamak. Kuday tamak literally means food for God. During the ritual of Kuday tamak typically people who live on the same street get together and share expenses for the purchase of one big sheep or two small lambs and then sacrifice the lambs or sheep in the name of God. Before sacrificing the sheep toKuday, the local religious leader or mullah recites verses from the Quran and all the elders of the street make their bata. ‘Blessing in Kyrgyz, is bata, which could be a sign of acceptance. People take part in rituals in order to define their roles in society and to feel as a part of this society’.20 After the main bata by the mullah and elders, all the men, women and children taking part in the ritual of Kuday tamak make their wishes and pray, asking Kuday to send good weather and provide a good harvest. After the blessings the sheep is slaughtered and the men butcher the carcase into certain pieces that they cook in kazan – big cast iron pots situated in the field. The intestines are cleaned and plaited by women and cooked together with the meat. The head and feet of the sheep are burned with a blowtorch, washed and cooked together with the other parts in the pot. While the meat and other parts of the sheep are being cooked, the women make handmade pasta and boorsok. Boorsok is a traditional bread made of raised dough which is fried. They also make besh-barmak, which is a traditional dish made of pasta cooked in the stock of the boiled mutton and served with chunks of meat and onion sauce. Children and teenagers help the elder men and women to prepare food, carry wood and lay dastorkon - tablecloths in the field to serve the prepared food on. Through their participation in these religious and cultural rituals, the farmers experience a special connection with the land and landscape around them. This is becauseKuday tamak is celebrated not in a particular place or in a certain household but in the field. Through the ritual praying and festive food, local farmers re-connect with the land and God. It helps them to remember the precious fertility of the soil, yield, rain and sun as powers of Kuday. It also strengthens the social bond between the farmers who are involved in the ritual. During the hot times of drought, with rising numbers of conflicts among the farmers related to irrigation, this ritual provides conditions for reconciliation and union. Kuday tamak allows the farmers who participate to share an intimate and spiritual experience through united praying to the spirits and to God to bless them with a good harvest. The nature of such rituals is based on
20 Zemfira Inogamova, ‘Keeping the Sacred Secret: Pilgrims’ Voices at Sacred Sites in Kyrgyzstan’, in Nature, Space and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, (ed.) Sigurd Bergmann et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 278. 204 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred a ‘sharing and receiving’ reciprocal relationship: before asking, it is necessary to offer. There is a saying widely used among the local farmers:Kur ‘ aiakka bata jürböit’ (‘one cannot ask for blessings with an empty pot’). The meaning of the reciprocal relationship also lies in a caring relationship with nature. Harvest, rain and sun are not taken for granted. A good harvest is a blessing and gift and is not measured by the quantity of chemical pesticides. All rituals bear very important implicit knowledge and meaning that is essential for the lives of people and for young farmers to learn socio-cultural behaviour that allows them to become part of the whole farming community and to learn new skills and technologies to support their livelihoods and enhance their understanding of the ‘unknown’.
Figure 11.4 Well-being of children Note: Children are very much an integral part of farming life in the village. They learn how to farm, chop hay, parent their younger siblings, look after the elders, etc. on a daily basis. Good health, happiness and the wellbeing of children contribute to the resilience of farming communities. Source: Photo by author.
When I asked the farmers about the meaning of these ritual practices, they usually said ‘well, this is the way we do it and have been doing it’ without Resilience Techniques 205 questioning its meaning. The knowledge is an embodied memory of the farmers. The experience of wholeness for the farmers comes into being through the meaning of the ritual. ‘Whole to be no-thing but not nothing’.21 Meaning can be understood by experiencing it through being and becoming part of the ritual.
Sacred Holiday of Rie Ashura
The members of the Kurdish farming communities celebrate the sacred holiday of Rie Ashura, ten days after the celebration of Kurban Ait (Eid, Muslim holiday). On the day of Rie Ashura, Kurdish farmers pray to save their souls from the seven misfortunes, and also pray to have their sins forgiven. Similarly to Kyrgyz culture, the number seven is considered sacred in Kurdish culture as well. On this holiday, Kurdish farmers make a special meal called ashura. It is a very thick soup containing seven ingredients: beans, corn seeds, wheat, dried apples, flour, sugar and salt. In the meal they also use water and the fat of a sheep that they have slaughtered on the day of the previous Muslim holiday Kurban Ait. When the meal is ready, every family that cooked ashura soup shares it with people from seven other households and families. It is prohibited to eat the prepared meal before it is shared with the other seven families. In this meal all seven ingredients are considered important, though for many Kurdish farmers the corn is the most important ingredient. However, some of the Kurdish farmers name beans zhinnet lobia which means ‘beans of heaven’, suggesting a particular significance of this ingredient. More generally, Kurdish people say that beans can substitute for bread, if there is no bread. In answer to my questioning about why Rie Ashura holiday is celebrated, one elder said, ‘our ancestors have been doing so and we will do so; it is a tradition that keeps us together’. I think the celebration of the Rie Ashura holiday contributes to the preservation of biocultural diversity, especially the preservation of corn, bean, apple and wheat seeds which are grown annually as an early preparation for this holiday as opposed to keeping seeds in seed banks where germination and quality of seeds are questionable. Moreover preparation for this holiday ensures the transmission of food preservation technologies from one generation to the next and socially bonds the members of the Kurdish farming community through the sharing of food. To be able to be part of the community holiday celebration is a big socio-cultural incentive to ensure the basic ingredients for the soup. Moreover, as one of the main techniques of maintaining resilience, it is important for the farmers to preserve the diversity of seed by growing them annually. Such techniques enable the production of local pest and disease
21 Henri Bortoft,The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science (Trowbridge, UK: Third Impression. Cromwell Press, 2007), 14. 206 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred resistant, GM-free and free seeds, as opposed to imported and bought seeds that could be genetically modified, infertile in the long term or patented by foreign companies. It is a big risk for the farmers to start using patented seeds since, in the future, farmers would have no right to use future seeds but would need to purchase their ‘own’ seeds in order to grow food. It would not be economically healthy and the farmers would not have the diversity of choice.22
Customary Economics
During the Soviet times farmers were provided with jobs and salaries. After the disintegration, the new government in Kyrgyzstan was not able to provide jobs and incomes for the farmers. So, the necessity of sustaining themselves gave rise to many different holistic technologies of customary economics. In Amanbaev most of the farmers practise ‘the culture of reciprocity’. Farmers share between each other goods, services, products, food, labour, technology, waterproof rubber boots to water the fields and gardening tools. Customary economics is when economic interactions are embedded in customary practices. When referring to the idea of a customary economics, the term ‘economics’ is not just limited to monetary transactions, industrial development, GDP and material products. Customary economics in Amanbaev is complex and involves relationships, interactions and exchanges on social, cultural, ecological, political and agricultural levels. Such a holistic economy is one of the main contributors to local resilience. Not only material growth is valued but also the growth of wellbeing, as well as the happiness of the community and the health of the soil.23 Judith Beyer argues that wellbeing is a never-to-be-attained state that is constantly in the making.24
Zhek-zhaat Customary Economics
I remember when one of the farmers in Amanbaev was seriously ill and needed to be operated on urgently, but it was not harvest time and he and his extended family could only afford some but not all the expenses for travelling and treatment at the hospital. Health care in Kyrgyzstan is not provided by the government, so his family spread the word about his situation and all the other zhek-zhaat members pooled cash into one pot and sent him to the hospital in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. ‘In my field site, people could immediately
22 Inogamova, ‘Building Resilience’, 72. 23 Inogamova, ‘Building Resilience’, 69–75. 24 Beyer, ‘Ordering Ideals’, 444. Resilience Techniques 207 rely on their long-established kin networks or other social support mechanisms such as shared labour among neighbours (ashar) or the long-term reciprocal connections among school classmates (zhek zhaat) ’. 25 After the treatment he or his family was expected to return the same help when other members needed it. An important point to be made is that there is no fixed deadline to return the help. It is based on a de facto arrangement and it serves as social and medical insurance. There are also alternative ways that local farmers try to get better or heal themselves. Farmers who become ill or start having a rash, sores or scabs go to bathe in daary bulak, the healing springs that are located at the outskirts of the village. Farmers believe that the ailment might be cured if they bathe in the water of daary bulak and that it will cure it while flowing. Amanbaev has a couple of springs where farmers can go to bathe their ailments away. The reason farmers use healing springs located at the edges of the village is to ensure that nobody is going to use them for drinking or other purposes after they have bathed themselves while being ill. Farmers also pray to Allah at those healing springs. Ill farmers can also go to see the local moldo or bübü healers. Unfortunately, in the village there is very little awareness that groundwater can be contaminated by the highly toxic insecticides used to kill the Colorado beetle. Zhek-zhaat is a type of social network of relatives, friends, neighbours and social allies. Each individual member of the zhek-zhaat network can also be referred to as a zhek-zhaat. Zhek-zhaats support each other psychologically, socially and financially during events such as funerals, illness, marriages, the birth of a child and other occasions within the community. Zhek-zhaats interact in accordance with the principle of alasasynyn-beresesi bar, which means ‘receiving implies giving’ – if you take, then you give back. It serves as a reciprocal principle between zhek-zhaats. The contribution made by any of zhek-zhaat members varies depending on the occasion. If it is a marriage or funeral, for example, then there are many social rules and expectations in accordance to which zhek-zhaats fulfil their responsibilities. During social occasions zhek-zhaats provide not only financial support but they also participate in and share the grief or happiness of the other network members. The members usually bring akoshumcha (‘contribution’), which is a form of support that can be given in cash or in-kind. Sometimes the members give a fixed amount of cash, a newborn calf or foal as a contribution as long as the price of the animal matches the expected monetary value. The sum of money given will depend on how much was given to them previously by the family whom they came to support. The relationship betweenzhek-zhaats is economic but it is also based on the reciprocal social and cultural relationships of the members who belong to the network. Such reciprocity emphasises the interdependence of members of the zhek-zhaat network and it also strengthens the ties between
25 Beyer, ‘Ordering Ideals’, 439. 208 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred them. The reciprocal relationship betweenzhek-zhaats is not only part of the holistic economy but is also part of a system of customary law based on trust which can provide both social and financial security. Trust is built up based on kinship, tribal connections and on social relationships. It implies that the members of the network are familiar with each other’s families. They know who belongs to which tribe and who is related to whom. In such intimate conditions of relationship the members of the zhek-zhaat network will obey social and cultural rules, expectations and regulations in the same way as people would usually obey laws that have juridical power. The customary law is based on the moral reasoning of the community members and the members of the network. The punishment of disobeying or going against the rules isuiat (‘shame’) not only to the individual member of the zhek-zhaat network but to the whole family or tribe of that particular member. If one member of a family or tribe breaks the rule it will cause uiat and ushak bolot (‘to be gossiped about’) and after this other villagers will not interact with them. ‘Uiat, on the other hand, enforces conformist behaviour as it creates anxiety about not being able to comply with the expectations of others’.26 Thus, in such a network of relationships, responsibility is collective and not individual. This contributes to the tight interdependence of community members with each other. The community tends to be more resilient and flexible when it is not fragmented, and it serves a similar function to insurance and credit. The members of the network support each other because it is part of a customary and ethical cognition embodied by the farmers. Beyer uses the term ‘customization’ to refer to a process ‘by which people gradually change the content of salt “customary law” while at the same time upholding its image of being a coherent body of age-old binding laws, rules, principles, traditions, and rituals. I understand it as a cultural technique which allows people to order their lives by perceiving and presenting different cultural forms as their own’.27 She argues that ‘salt orders people’s lives in particular ways which neither law nor custom alone could. It is this recognition which guides my exploration of salt as a legal repertoire in contemporary Talas, as it exists next to state law and shariat and thereby forms a part of the contemporary plural legal landscape’.28 ‘… ethics is emergent: it emerges on the basis of particular situations and instances’.29 ‘Citizens do not act as rational individuals governed by self-interest or abstract moral codes of self-restraint, but follow an expressivist ethic based on
26 Judith Beyer, ‘Harmony and Shame-Anxiety. The Emotional Economy of Mortuary Rituals in Kyrgyzstan’, (working Papers at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, forthcoming). 27 Judith Beyer, ‘According to Salt. An Ethnography of Customary Law in Talas, Kyrgyzstan’ (PhD diss., University of Martin Luther, 2009), 39. 28 Beyer, ‘According to Salt’, 36. 29 Inogamova, ‘Keeping the Sacred Secret’, 266. Resilience Techniques 209 the valorization of nature and being true to oneself ’.30 Katerina Psarikidou and Bronislaw Szerszynski argue that ‘… individuals engaged in alternative agri-food practices employ different moral styles and codes depending on the different contexts, situations and social networks in which they exist and operate. … they manifest a more “expressivist” moral style based on an ethics of benevolence, compassion and self-realisation, as well as a more affectual, solidaristic one, opening up some space for the expression of diverse relations of solidarity – a cooler version of “organic solidarity”, but also a more culturally thick version of it that can variously operate as an individual or collective project at an interpersonal, group or institutional level’.31 Such a form of economic and social interaction between the members of a network is stronger when it is local and when the members of the network know each other very well through kinship, tribal, neighbourly or friend relationships.
Ashar
When I was growing up helping my parents to farm, growing beans became popular because of the rising demand from Turkey and Russia. Every family started growing various types of beans. Sometimes due to the changes in weather it was necessary to harvest beans before they would get too wet in the field. If beans become wet inside the pods then they would swell up and go mouldy. Then it would be impossible to sell or plant them; you could only mill them and turn them into porridge for cows. In our family, five of us would work in the field since my youngest sister was too young to help us. Even five of us were not enough to harvest the beans from several hectares of land in a short period of time. So, my parents would organise ashar. My father would invite two of his brothers with their families to come and help us for a couple of days to harvest beans and store them under the open shed at our house. As organisers of ashar my parents were expected to provide a hot meal, bread, hot tea, water or cool chalap – yogurt mixed with water and salt for a day. And it had to be enough food for everyone. There would be nearly fifteen of us working in the field. After all the work in our field was finished we would go to my father’s brothers’ field to harvest beans or potatoes until the work there was done.
30 Katerina Psarikidou and Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘The Moral Economy of Civic Food Networks in Manchester’. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 19, no. 3 (2012): 318. 31 Psarikidou and Szerszynski, ‘The Moral Economy’, 321–2. 210 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Ashar is one of the most important and vital practices of customary economics.32 This form of support is reciprocal because relatives, friends or neighbours rely on each other and not on money or banks. Often manual labour is preferred over farm machinery, which requires cash to hire and buy fuel for. In villages, the fields for cultivation are quite big; five or more hectares of land could belong to one family. Usually, a family has many children who can work in the field, but during planting and harvesting time even one day or week can be crucial for the farmers to be able to collect the harvest and to be provided for the whole year. It is very important that farming and agricultural work be founded on cooperation, especially when collective support enables the farmers to preserve and harvest for winter time without major loss due to rain or frost. During planting or harvesting time relatives, friends and neighbours gather in the field of one of the participants ofashar and finish all the work in that field. After the work is complete, the family provides food for everyone who helped. None of the participants of ashar expect cash or compensation in any form. Usually food is served but every participant of ashar knows that they will receive the same support for their field activities. It is a reciprocal and interdependent support system that also ensures good quality work. While participating in ashar the members of the community acknowledge their dependence not only on the land but also on each other. Helena Norberg-Hodge states, ‘when you are dependent on the earth under your feet and the community around you for your survival, you experience interdependence as a fact of daily life. Such a deep experiential understanding of interconnectedness – feeling yourself a part of the continuum of life – contrasts starkly with the analytic, fragmented, and theoretical thinking of modern society’.33 Thus, by practising locally sound customary economics, as opposed to conventional economics that accordingly promotes the values of conventional development, customary economics contributes to resilience, human scale development and the wellbeing of the farmers in Amanbaev village. It is important to point out that nowadays some farmers also pay other farmers to do the work in their fields. So, the work is not always accomplished through organising ashar.
Küzgügö
Küzgügö is another form of local emergent customary economics that influences the lives of the farmers and the local economy. In Kyrgyz the word küz means
32 Inogamova, ‘Building Resilience’, 72. 33 Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (London: Rider, 2000), 189. Resilience Techniques 211
‘autumn’ and küzgügö means ‘borrowing until autumn’, which is the season of harvest and consequently the season of income from selling the harvest. Such forms of economic relationship emerged from the lack of jobs and cash. Most of the farmers are well provided for with diverse vegetables and fruits that they grow but still need to buy whatever they do not produce themselves, such as flour, rice, sugar and other goods. Such forms of economic relationship are beneficial not only for those farmers who borrow until the autumn harvest but also for those farmers who lend their goods, money or service. For example, in my street in Amanbaev one farmer had to slaughter his horse due to an injury and was selling the meat to other farmers. It was early spring and not all the farmers had cash to buy the meat. So, the owner of the horse sold the meat for küzgügö. Farmers who did not have cash to buy meat borrowed meat until autumn. If the conventional way of paying for and purchasing the meat was used, then the meat of the horse would be spoiled and wasted. Hence the farmer would have experienced an even bigger loss than the loss of his horse. Another case is when farmers want to change their seeds and cannot swap with other farmers for different beans or potato seeds; they borrow money forküzgügö from the owners of local shops. Most of the owners of the shops lend money with little or no interest. Shopkeepers do it to keep their business going which would be difficult if their potential clients, local farmers, did not have cash. Some farmers borrow money from shops to avoid borrowing from the local micro-crediting companies because banks charge a higher interest rate and have a fixed deadline for repayment unlike the local shopkeepers who would anticipate the personal income situation of the farmer. Among the farmers, borrowing money without interest is called ajat achyp turuu in Kyrgyz. Farmers usually do ajat achyp turuu in a situation of urgency or duty, for example, when they have to attend funerals urgently and have no cash for covering travel or other expenses, or when a farmer has to start sowing the crop seeds in spring but cannot afford to pay for the service of a tractor or any other machinery. In such a situation the farmer could ask the owners of the tractor or other machine to go on with the work in the field and they would pay them back in autumn in kind with potatoes, beans or cash. It depends on the agreement. Such forms of economic relationship in the village are informal and not controlled legally by the state. One of the farmers said to me of küzgügö in a joking manner: ‘In short anything is available for küzgügö. It could be goods or labour or service. Because Kyrgyz people would borrow even a plane for küzgügö. This is how positive Kyrgyz people are living in the spirit of Buirusa bolot dep kün körüp kele zhatyshat (‘with God’s willing it will all be all right’). 212 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Figure 11.5 Farmers social tools Note: Uzbek and Kurdish farmers swapping bean seeds and village news while mending the tractor for the season. A privatised tractor hired by the farmers to make rows in their fields. Source: Photo by author.
Kötörmö
Kötörmö is another type of resilience technique or form of customary economics practised among the farmers in Amanbaev. The practice ofkötörmö is closely connected with the practice of küzgügö. For example, my uncle in the village had spare bean seeds in spring and was approached by his neighbour who needed more bean seeds but did not have the cash to buy them. So, my uncle gave two sacks of beans to his neighbour, they shook hands and made an agreement that in autumn, during the harvest time, the neighbour would give my uncle four sacks of beans. In autumn the neighbour returned four sacks of beans to my uncle, but my uncle was not satisfied with the quality of beans – he thought the quality of seeds that he gave to his neighbour was better – but he accepted them anyway. Being in a good relationship with your neighbours is part of the farmers’ spirituality. The practice ofkötörmö is also practised on different scales. The same principle can be applied to one or two tons of other types of crops, such as potatoes, corn, wheat, barley, etc. Apart from giving seeds, some farmers Resilience Techniques 213 practise kötörmö by giving a male foal or male calf to another farmer and asking for a female foal or a female calf in autumn. It is the way farmers help each other and benefit from each other. A farmer potentially can get five tons of beans out of one sack of beans. In early spring, farmers, mostly male, from each tütün-household will come out to help clean chong aryk, the main irrigation channel located in each street. They have to clean out any leaves or dirt to allow the water to flow easily. While cleaning the channel farmers talk to each other and exchange useful information, for example, about who is planning to plant what, why certain farmers are planting beans or potatoes, who is offeringkötörmö or küzgügö, how much, for what price, etc. Sometimes the process of collective cleaning can become the place where agreements are sealed and witnessed; indeed, a couple of witnesses and a handshake is sometimes enough to complete the agreement. Sometimes farmers prefer more evidence depending on the person who is borrowing, whether a farmer is reliable or not; sometimes agreements can be made without any witnesses at all. Some farmers borrow in big amounts, for example, thirty sacks of beans or one cow; in these cases the lending parties ask for raspiska (in Russian), a document with the signature of the borrowing farmer indicating the amount of borrowed money, the deadline to return it back and his passport number. Farmers believe that raspiska is valid in an official court as well. It is an additional reassurance but most agreements are sealed with a handshake. Farmers who borrowed will do their best to repay on time because if they do not then next time when they are in need nobody will want to lend to them. It is like building up the collective trust by being reliable to one farmer. It is important to mention that some farmers cannot return the money that they have borrowed due to the weather or poor harvest. In such cases the lending farmers understand since all the farmers in the village would know about each other’s personal situation, particularly concerning harvest results. All the fields are open; there are no fences or barbed wire. Usually farmers use ditches as a marking line or grow corn to indicate the border of their field. Thus, everybody can see what is happening in each other’s fields.
Kezüü
Kezüü (‘managed animal grazing’) is another type of customary economics practised in Amanabev village in both winter and summer seasons. Winters in Amanbaev are cold with lots of snow on the ground and no possibility for grazing. To sustain the domestic animals during the winter, local farmers have to stock or buy hay as fodder. To save hay and to ensure that it is enough to last through late winter when the snow starts to melt, local farmers practise kezüü. Kezüü is usually arranged between farmers or families living in one street. For 214 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred example, let’s say there are seven families arranging kezüü, one of the members from each family will have to be involved in kezüü. The first family has fivebash (‘head’) of domestic animals and usually the son or father of the family takes out all the domestic animals from all five families for one day. But the farmer from the second family will be in kezüü for two days since they have more than five heads of animals to look after. In the same way, the third family has more than ten heads and its family member will be involved in kezüü for three days. Farmers keep taking turns to lead kezüü and rotating the responsibility. In one kezüü there could be as many as 25–30 animals. After harvest time the fields are empty and no distinction is made between different farmers’ fields and animals can eat whatever they find. Kezüü is also practised in the summer. In the summertime, uichuman (‘cowboy/cowman’) or zhylkychy (‘horseman’) or koichuman (‘shepherd’) take large numbers of sheep, horses or cows to pasturelands or to the mountains. It could be a long-term arrangement when a shepherd takes sheep at the beginning of spring and brings them back to each family at the end of autumn. It could also be a short-term arrangement when cows are taken by one uichuman to the nearest available pastureland, looked after, and brought back in the evening and repeated again on the next day until late autumn and the snow falls. In Amanbaev one uichuman will take cows from one or two streets, approximately forty or more households, into the pasturelands to feed in the fields and drink water from the rivers before bringing them back at the end of the day.
Hospitality as a Part of Spirituality
For the local farmers, hospitality is an important part of their spirituality. Hosting a guest or a visitor is a must for the farmers. Some farmers even borrow money or food in order to host their guests. For example, they might borrow for küzgügö from the shops if they need to, to provide an abundant table. For a guest, farmers put out on their dastorkon (‘table’) everything that they have. For example, jam is displayed not only for breakfast but at any time. All the salads, meat and sweets are displayed all at the same time. Cooking a hot meal with meat is a sign of honour to the guests. Serving food without meat is considered to be the sign of low income times or sometimes even lack of respect; at least a chicken is slaughtered to provide meat. Guests might turn up at any time usually without prior notice. Meat is not so cheap and might not be available at all times, so, in order to fulfil the duties of a good host and to ensure the availability of meat most of the time, local farmers practise the following. Four or five farmers get together on Saturdays or Sundays, which is the day of ‘mal bazaar’ animal market in the nearest neighbouring village. They share the cost for the fuel and buy an animal together which could be a well-fed cow, horse, sheep, lamb or poultry. Resilience Techniques 215
From the same market they might buy tiny chickens in order to breed for meat and eggs. In this way farmers can afford to have meat most of the time; since all the expenses are shared, it is more affordable for them. It also makes hospitality more affordable. It is also important to be a good neighbour. In zhakshylyk (‘happy events’), such as a feast, or zhamandyk (‘sad events’), such as a funeral or illness, neighbours get together and help each other out. For example, all the farmers living in one street will elect a bii (‘leader’) of the street who will initiate and organise the support of the street by saying ‘baarybyzdyn bashybyzga tüshöt’ (‘it could happen to any of us’). If farmers in one family experience the loss of a person unexpectedly then they will have to organise a funeral which can be highly costly. All members of the village and often of the surrounding villages are welcome to pay their condolences and will be offered tea and food. The number of people who can attend is not limited and people will keep coming even a long time after the actual funeral has taken place. So, to support the funeral financially abii will collect money from all the other families living on the same street by making the list of people who contributed 500 som (monetary unit in Kyrgyzstan, £6) and that list is given to the family that experienced the loss. In that way the family can see who contributed and who did not. Some farmers who cannot contribute in cash contribute by giving a sheep or cow to slaughter for the funeral. Slaughtering one horse sometimes can cost 40,000 som (£555) approximately. Help is also given in the form of labour as well; families who cannot afford to give cash will give practical help, for example, by chopping logs for cooking, boiling water in samovars (‘boilers for tea’), if funerals occur in winter time, then they will help to scrape the snow out of the yard, set up the yurt, drive the car to transport people to the cemetery or to dig the grave. If someone becomes ill, then farmers who have cars will drive the ill person to the hospital even if it is in the middle of the night. If all the family members have to go for some reason to accompany the ill person, then the neighbours will look after their animals and dogs by feeding them and giving them water. The same principle of help is applied for the feast events. Not all the families have to give but it means that when they are in need other families will not give as well. Families that received help from the farmers living in the same street will return help based on the list that is made by the bii. There is a saying in Kyrgyz among the farmers: ‘Alysky tuuganga karaganda, zhakynky koshuna zhakynyraak’ (‘the nearest neighbour is closer than a relative living at a distance’). This type of help is practised not only among the Kyrgyz farmers but Turkish, Kurdish and Uzbek farmers as well. 216 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Conclusion
All the stories that I have mentioned here are relevant to Amanbaev village and not necessarily to the whole of Kyrgyzstan. It was a challenging journey for my parents as part of the elder generation after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the associated loss of security and livelihood, but for the younger generation of which I am part it was just our way of living. I do not experience any nostalgia or clinging to the Soviet Union because I personally do not remember much of it. During Soviet times the residents of Amanbaev relied on the Communist state. The kolkhozes (collective farms) provided food staples. The state also provided family gardens, jobs, salaries, health care, education and infrastructure. After the disintegration of this system, practices such as zhek-zhaat, ashar, kezüü, küzgügö, kötörmö were adopted through necessity. These practices are based on trust, close relationships as well as cooperation, moral reasoning, collective responsibility, reciprocity, mutual support and reliance. They emerged or re-evolved to help meet the needs of the farming community in Amanbaev. During the Soviet times most of the aforementioned practices were practised to a lesser extent or not at all. I do not want to romanticise the subsistence farming life because I know how tough it can be; but the response and creativity of the farmers made them less dependent on official structures such as banks, insurance companies or micro-credit. These aforementioned practices are personal; they allow space for creativity, flexibility and the ability to change and adapt to the situation. They promote support, generosity, cooperation, companionship and friendship – they are basically part of the farmers’ spirituality. Economic and spiritual practices are connected and complement each other. Economics without spirituality is bound to be non-ethical and non-ethical values do not contribute to resilience. It is physically tough to sustain a livelihood just on farming and many farmers suffer from the lack of resources, but there are many positive sides of farming life as well. There is a big difference between the definitions of poverty if you live on less than a dollar a day in the city and if you live in the village on less than a dollar a day but have assets, community, a house, land, animals and locally- grown food. Max-Neef proposes a new perspective that allows reinterpretation of the concept of poverty. According to Max-Neef, the conventional concept of poverty ‘is limited and restricted, since it refers exclusively to the predicaments of people who may be classified below a certain income threshold. This concept is strictly “economistic”. It is suggested here that we should speak not of poverty but of poverties. In fact, any fundamental human need that is not adequately satisfied reveals a human poverty’.34 There are different types of poverties, for example, poverty of understanding, poverty of creativity, poverty of happiness
34 Max-Neef, et al. Human Scale Development, 18–19. Resilience Techniques 217 and love. Farming communities in Amanbaev are very advanced in inventing such complex techniques of thriving in such challenging times. Thus they are not poor if they do not have cash or physical technologies for farming. While this way of life is resilient to shocks and changes, there are some threats to it as well. Earlier in the chapter I mentioned that the fertility of the land is a very important wealth factor for the farmers, as is seed fertility. However there are some external projects that are introducing and promoting GM sterile seeds and which would leave the farmers enslaved by debt because they would have to keep buying patented seeds. ‘As a technique, genetic engineering is very sophisticated. But as a technology for using biodiversity sustainably to meet human needs, it is clumsy. Transgenic crops reduce biodiversity by displacing diverse crops, which provide diverse sources of nutrition’.35 ‘It emerges that the natural world shares with us the same type of creative process as that which we experience in culture, so that nature and culture become one’ and ‘what emerges is then the importance of meaning in relation to healing, the recovery of wholeness and coherence. This carries over into ecosystems and their use in food production, giving us an insight into the dangers of genetic manipulation and its effects on the health of farming communities’.36 While the local farmers have embodied, encultured and mastered the local religious, cultural, social, spiritual and economic technologies, they still need to increase their awareness of other contemporary technologies connected to farming, as well as ecological issues, to ensure their future wellbeing in the long term. There are many groups in the West who are interested in forms of alternative economics, alternative currencies and subsistence living for ecological reasons. They could learn much from communities like Amanbaev, which has had to make these adaptations to sustain themselves, and in turn farmers in the village could also learn from those in the West who apply science ethically in farming.
35 Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Boston: Systems Vision, 1997), 38. 36 Brian Goodwin, Natures Due: Healing Our Fragmented Culture (Trowbridge, UK: Floris Books, 2007), 22. This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 12 Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency: Climate Modification as Divine Economy Matthew Kearnes
I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganising the climates of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested. That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable paper, taking the old climates in part payment. Mark Twain (The American Claimant)
Introduction
‘Once, there was no “secular”’, John Milbank argues, instead ‘the secular as a domain had to be instituted or imagined, both in theory and in practice’.1 For Milbank, rather than constituting a fundamental break with a previous sacral age, the emergence of contemporary secular culture might be understood as a development within, and as sustained by, a series of decisive shifts within Western theology. This insight has profound implications for studies concerned with the sociological and theological dimensions of technological change. Both scholarly and popular accounts of the social, ethical and moral significance of novel technologies have tended to represent processes of technological change as a largely asocial affair. While it is often noted that notions of salvation and providence figure prominently in processes of technoscientific invention2 – and that religious narratives and normative concerns constitute an important frame in which public debates concerning technological artefacts are couched3 – contemporary analyses have tended to distinguish between the material processes of technological change and an altogether separate and categorically distinct social or moral realm.
1 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 9. 2 Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning (London: Routledge, 1992); David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (London: Penguin Books, 1997). 3 Celia Deane-Drummond, Robin Grove-White and Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘Genetically Modified Theology: The Religious Dimensions of Public Concerns About Agricultural Biotechnology’, Studies in Christian Ethics 14, no. 2 (2001): 23–41. 220 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
The logic here is a linear one. In the contemporary lexicon, scientific knowledge- making and technological innovation tend to be situated in a definitively secular space. Religion and theology appear as a vestige, signifying notions of limitation, order and tradition, and are figured as a residual set of concerns external to scientific and technological practice. While often regarded as an important area of public deliberation, the ‘religious implications’ of technological systems commonly remain divorced from the inner workings of technology itself. In practice this categorical distinction between material artefact and cultural and religious practice has tended to produce a distinct division in ‘moral labour’ marshalled in the social appraisal of new technologies.4 Questions concerning theological, moral and ethical import are posed as fundamental dilemmas separated from the distributed processes of material and technical assemblage. However, if, as Milbank and other theorists of secularism ague,5 the secular does not simply come after a sacral age, but is itself constituted theologically – as a movement within theology – normative, moral and ethical analyses of technological systems can no longer be relegated to dilemmatic questions outside the material practices of technoscientific invention. Seen in this light, the notion of a fundamental break between the secular and the theological – and the supposition that science, method and reason are the agents of this break – no longer provides an adequate vantage point for a rich sociological understanding of science and technology. Exploring recent political debates concerning proposals for the deliberate and large-scale modification of climatic systems as a response to anthropogenic climate change, collectively referred to as geoengineering, the challenge I address in this chapter is not simply the possibility that direct climate modification may precipitate profound religious and moral implications.6 Rather my goal is to develop a site of theoretical intervention that articulates – at least in part – something of the socio-theological milieu in which research on geoengineering is situated. More broadly, my aim here is to bring a participatory theology – what Milbank terms
4 Tsjalling Swierstra and Arie Rip, ‘Nano-Ethics as Nest-Ethics: Patterns of Moral Argumentation About New and Emerging Science and Technology’, Nanoethics 1 (2007): 3–20. 5 See for example: Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Jean-Pierre Dupuy, The Mark of the Sacred (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). 6 It seems self-evident that these proposals will generate significant and sustained concerns, which religious teaching and doctrine will play an important role in shaping. See for example: Forrest Clingerman, ‘Geoengineering, Theology, and the Meaning of Being Human’, Zygon 49, no. 1 (2014): 6–21; Forrest Clingerman and Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Playing God: Why Religion Belongs in the Climate Engineering Debate’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70, no. 3 (2014): 27–37. Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 221 an ‘ontology of the participation of the Creation in divine creativity’ – into contact with work on the pragmatics of technological innovation and recent work on economic theology.7 This approach is itself indebted to a counter- tradition in theological analyses of technology – of which this volume is but the latest example – which has made significant steps in demonstrating the ways in which technological change is both conditioned by and accomplished in situated socio-religious contexts. 8 Developing these ideas, in this chapter I explore the ways in which geoengineering might be understood as a biopolitical form of earth management. Originally drawn from Michel Foucault’s analyses of biopower – the ‘set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy’9 – contemporary biopolitical analyses have tended to focus on the intersections between techno-economic innovation and the vitalisation of biological life. In this light, I suggest that the recent turn in environmental politics toward ‘earth systems governance’ – a project that seeks to manage interconnected biophysical, atmospheric and geological processes in order to ensure the reproductive potential of the earth – might be understood in biopolitical terms. The earthly life of humans and the geological life of the planet are bound together in a project that aims to define a ‘safe operating space for humanity’.10 In this guise, contemporary environmental politics is recast in biopolitical terms as a matter of rational administration, of literally managing a ‘future earth’.11 I argue below that geoengineering might therefore be understood as a paradigmatic biopolitical technology. While presented as an exceptional technological response to an impending climate emergency, the feasibility and deployment of climate modification techniques is cast as a matter of administrative rationality, couched in the terms of cost-benefit analysis and
7 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, xxii. 8 This work is situated at the intersections between theology, science and technology studies (STS) and the history of technology. See Celia Deane-Drummond (ed.), Brave New World? Theology, Ethics and the Human Genome (London: T&T Clark, 2003); Celia Deane- Drummond, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Robin Grove-White (eds), Re-Ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics (London: T&T Clark, 2003); Bronislaw Szerszynski, Nature, Technology and the Sacred (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 9 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977–1978 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007), 1. 10 Johan Rockström et al., ‘Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity’, Ecology and Society 14, no. 2 (2009): 32. 11 See for example the ‘Future Earth’ – a ‘10-year international research initiative’ that aims to ‘mobilize thousands of scientists’ to ‘develop the knowledge for responding effectively to the risks and opportunities of global environmental change and for supporting transformation towards global sustainability in the coming decades’ (see: http://www.icsu. org/future-earth). 222 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred economic valuation. While the development of geoengineering is likely to precipitate profound moral and religious questions, my interest in this paper is the theological underpinnings that sustain this distinctly biopolitical response to global environmental change. I turn to Giorgio Agamben’s recent work in economic theology, and particularly his genealogy of the concept of oikonomia in early Christian patristic doctrine, to explore the ways in which notions of executive sovereignty have been supplanted by forms of governing defined by mutually constituting logics of administrative rationality, economic valuation and divine mystery.12 I argue that geoengineering therefore is a biopolitical project that seeks to extend forms of economic valuation to the globe, and as such is bound up with a series of theological narratives that invoke both rational administration of the life of a planet and a concept of the divine economy of the globe.
Insuring the Earth
First proposed in the mid-1960s,13 climate modification and direct weather manipulation have a long history, and the idea of deploying these techniques as a response to human-induced global warming has been in the background of international climate change policy for some time.14 In the context of the collective exasperation with the slow progress of international climate change
12 Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 13 The first US government report on the possible environmental implications of rising concentrations of atmosphere carbon dioxide – chaired by Roger Revelle – explicitly argued for a form of climate modification that would counteract the predicted warming of the atmosphere. The report outlined that ‘the climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings’, and that ‘the possibilities of deliberately bringing about countervailing climatic changes therefore need to be thoroughly explored’. Science Advisory Committee, Restoring the Quality of the Environment: Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965), 127. 14 See for example the carefully worded statement on geoengineering issued by the US National Academy of Science Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy Panel on Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming: Mitigation, Adaptation and the Science Base (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1992). Though far from endorsing geoengineering as a response to climate change, and having highlighted the substantial uncertainties regarding the technical feasibility of these techniques, the report noted the apparent low cost and potential efficiency of geoengineering proposals. The report thereby signalled a conditional political acceptance that geoengineering techniques might form part of a future set of responses to global warming. Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 223 policies, there is now renewed interest in a suite of technologies, collectively referred to as geoengineering, in both scientific and policy circles.15 Writing in 2006, the Nobel Laureate and world-renowned atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen argued that while ‘by far the preferred way to resolve the policy makers’ dilemma is to lower the emissions of the greenhouse gases … so far, attempts in that direction have been grossly unsuccessful’. In response to the political failure to mitigate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, Crutzen advocated a public debate on the feasibility of deliberately intervening in climatic systems to bring about a cooling of the earth. He argued that ‘although by far not the best solution, the usefulness of artificially enhancing earth’s albedo and thereby cooling climate by adding sunlight reflecting aerosol in the stratosphere might again be explored and debated’.16 Crutzen’s argument is characteristic of the political debate concerning the feasibility of geoengineering. It is now routinely claimed that, as we have failed to successfully consolidate political action on climate change and are headed toward a ‘climate emergency’, we need to think the unthinkable. Geoengineering, it is now argued, ‘could be the only affordable and fast-acting option to avoid a global catastrophe’.17 Alongside notions of an impending climate emergency sit a range of analogous metaphors – geoengineering as a global insurance policy, as an option of last resort, as an uncomfortable but necessary ‘Plan B’ or the rather curious claim that research in geoengineering and the deployment of geoengineering techniques will herald the key to controlling the global thermostat.18 In this way, advocacy of geoengineering has taken the form of ‘reluctant support’ for climate modificationresearch , in anticipation of the possible future deployment of these technologies. Writing in The Guardian, the President of the Royal Society, Paul Nurse, said ‘hopefully we will never need geoengineering but, if we do, to fail
15 Geoengineering is commonly divided into two principal forms. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques are designed to reduce absorption of incoming solar radiation through a series of interventions that make the Earth more reflective. A range of SRM techniques have been proposed to achieve this effect, which include artificially brightening the surface of the earth, or releasing reflective or light scattering aerosol particulates into the upper matter in the atmosphere. An alternative set of techniques, aimed at directly removing CO2 from the atmosphere, is referred to as carbon dioxide removal (CDR). 16 Paul Crutzen, ‘Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?’, Climatic Change 77 (2006): (211). 17 Ken Caldeira and David W. Keith, ‘The Need for Climate Engineering Research’, Issues in Science and Technology 27, no. 1 (2010): 57–62. 18 Brigitte Nerlich and Rusi Jaspal, ‘Metaphors We Die By? Geoengineering, Metaphors, and the Argument from Catastrophe’, Metaphor and Symbol 27 (2013): 131–47; David G. Victor et al., ‘The Geoengineering Option: A Last Resort against Global Warming’, Foreign Affairs 88, no. 2 (2009): 64–76. 224 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred to assess its usefulness and safety in advance would be a risk no one, least of all those most concerned with the environment, would thank us for’.19 Framed in the language of insurance and risk, current debate on geoengineering has centred on two main areas: cost analyses of the feasibility of climate modification technologies and moral and ethical deliberation focused on notions of prudence and responsibility. Financial calculation and economic assessment have therefore been the preeminent modes through which the feasibility of climate modification has been considered.20 Indeed, a series of recent cost-analyses have highlighted the ‘surprising’ and ‘incredible’ economics of geoengineering.21 For example, an early assessment of geoengineering conducted by the US National Academy of Science concluded with a carefully written statement on the potential use of geoengineering techniques, noting that ‘perhaps one of the surprises of this analysis is the relatively low costs at which some of the geoengineering options might be implemented’, but also arguing that ‘the level at which we are currently able to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of engineering the global mean radiation balance leaves great uncertainty in both technical feasibility and environmental consequences’.22 More recent analyses have seemingly confirmed these results: when measured against the costs associated with the abatement of carbon dioxide, geoengineering – and particularly solar radiation management (SRM) techniques – appears to be a relatively cost-effective response to global warming.23 For advocates, an additional benefit of the development of geoengineering technologies is the possibility that they may be deployed unilaterally. For example, in their analysis of the economics of global warming, William Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer compare direct climate modification with a range of alternative policy approaches. Demonstrating that the deployment of SRM techniques would be well within the reach of a single nation or a major corporate interest, they conclude by arguing that:
19 Paul Nurse, ‘I Hope We Never Need Geoengineering, but We Must Research It’, The Guardian (8 September 2011). 20 For a comprehensive review of existing assessments of the feasibility of geoengineering, see Rob Bellamy et al., ‘A Review of Climate Geoengineering Appraisals’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3, no. 6 (2012): 597–615. 21 Scott Barrett, ‘The Incredible Economics of Geoengineering’, Environ Resource Econ 39 (2008): 45–54. 22 Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy Panel on Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, 460, emphasis added. 23 J. Eric Bickel and Lee Lane, Climate Change: Climate Engineering Research (Challenge Paper: Copenhagen Consensus, 2012); Justin McClellan, David W. Keith and Jay Apt, ‘Cost Analysis of Stratospheric Albedo Modification Delivery Systems’,Environ. Res. Lett 7 (2012). Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 225
The difference between the geoengineering results and the results for the other policies is so dramatic that it suggests that geoengineering should be more carefully analysed. … In addition to its significant economic benefits, geoengineering also has important political advantages over the current approach of emissions reductions. Geoengineering does not require near-unanimous agreement among all major countries to have an effective policy; indeed, the United States could easily undertake geoengineering by itself if other countries would give their assent. Given its clear economic and political advantages, we believe that geoengineering should be much more carefully analysed. 24
The spectre of geoengineering technologies being deployed unilaterally has precipitated sustained debate on their possible ethical and social consequences and the governance and regulatory arrangements necessary to establish ‘legitimate collective control over an activity that some might try to do unilaterally without prior consultation or international risk assessment’.25 Given the dominance of the terminology of risk and insurance in the political consideration of geoengineering, it is striking that analyses of the social and ethical dimensions of climate modification have also been framed in broadly economic terms. Debate has focused particularly on whether coordinated state support for the development of climate modification technologies constitutes a ‘moral hazard’.26 For example, one of the first major policy treatments of geoengineering conducted by the Royal Society noted that the ‘very discussion of geoengineering is controversial … because of a concern that it may weaken conventional mitigation efforts. … The risk is that major efforts in geoengineering may lead to a reduction of effort in mitigation and/or adaptation because of a premature conviction that geoengineering has provided “insurance” against climate change’.27 The definition of ‘moral hazard’ adopted in the Royal Society report underscores the economic and calculative framing of these considerations of geoengineering. The report defined moral hazard as amarket ‘ failure often associated with the provision of insurance [whereby] people with insurance may take greater risks than they would do without it because they know they are protected, so the insurer may get more claims than it bargained for’.28 In response, advocates of geoengineering research have deployed the language of
24 William D. Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer, Warming the World: Economic Models of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 132. 25 Caldeira and Keith, ‘The Need for Climate Engineering Research’, 62. 26 Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). 27 Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty (London: The Royal Society, 2009), 37. 28 Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate, 78, emphasis added. 226 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred responsibility to argue that, though climate modification technologies may prove unnecessary, it is ‘prudent to research additional options created by geoengineering to buy time should political efforts fall short’,29 and further that ‘scientific processes and existing regulations can ensure that geoengineering research is done prudently and with minimal environmental risk and that the public will trust that this is so’.30
Planetary Oikos
The ways in which notions of a climate emergency are interwoven with those of calculative rationality and cost-benefit analysis defines something of the theological underpinnings of climate modification. The relationship between the concept of the emergency – and the often exceptional forms of political intervention that are justified by this terminology – and sovereignty is central to Carl Schmitt’s notion of political theology. Famously arguing that ‘all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts’,31 Schmitt defines political theology around a concept of the exception, which he describes as ‘analogous to the miracle in theology’.32 Schmitt argues that though the ‘idea of the modern constitutional state triumphed together with deism, a theology and metaphysics that banished the miracle from the world’,33 the concept of a state of exception, and thereby of a miraculous ordering of governing, remains immanent in liberal-democratic modes of governing. As has been extensively discussed elsewhere,34 Schmitt’s notion of the exception is inextricably interwoven with the legal concept of sovereignty. For Schmitt it is the capacity of a sovereign to declare a state of emergency that defines the boundaries of the concept of sovereignty itself and the nature of contemporary political theology that underpins the constitution of public law. However, in light of the debates over the feasibility of climate
29 Dane Scott, ‘Geoengineering and Environmental Ethics’, Nature Education Knowledge 3, no. 10 (2012): 10. 30 Edward A. Parson and David W. Keith, ‘End the Deadlock on Governance of Geoengineering Research’, Science 339, no. 6125 (2013): 1278. 31 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 36. 32 Schmitt, Political Theology, 36. 33 Schmitt, Political Theology, 36. 34 See Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 227 modification – and the broader proclamation of a climate emergency – Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty appears to offer only a partial theorisation of contemporary environmental politics. Indeed a characteristic feature of debates over geoengineering has been ways in which the formerly state- centric models of climate governance have been supplanted by more diffuse modes of governing, couched in the terms of administrative rationality, cost-benefit analysis and climatic security. For Agamben, this redefinition of sovereignty, in favour of the regulation of the body politic, is a defining feature of the shift toward definitively biopolitical modes of governing. He argues that ‘in all of the Western democracies, the declaration of the state of exception has gradually been replaced by an unprecedented generalisation of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government’.35 Here Agamben develops Foucault’s analysis of the notion of security in which he diagnoses a shift from techniques focused on individual bodies to projects aimed at the administration – and indeed securitisation – of entire populations. As we will see, for Agamben this shift toward a paradigm of security entails a redefinition of government itself. In place of Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty the problematics of government are now defined through the terminology of home, a vocabulary that speaks of the ordering and administration of domestic space. Echoing Hannah Arendt’s reformulation of the notion of sovereignty in the language of oikos – a term from which we draw the concepts of ecology and economy – the resonances between Agamben’s paradigm of security and the prospects for earth systems governance are striking. Evoking the classical concept of oikoumene, ‘a delimited area habitable by humans, rooted in the idea of home (oikos) ’, 36 the development of climate modification technologies is entangled with a broader political project oriented toward the rational administration of planetary life. Earth is defined in domestic terms as humanity’s cosmic home, while earth systems governance aims to manage planetary life ‘within a state conducive to human development’.37 For Agamben, in this shift toward a paradigm of security – characterised by the distributed administration of biophysical life, even the life of a planet – the miraculous remains at the heart of his conception of power. Developing Agamben’s gloss on Schmitt’s notion of political theology I therefore argue that it is the interplay between the administrative and the miraculous that defines the theological underpinnings of geoengineering.
35 Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 14. 36 Denis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 36. 37 Rockström et al., ‘Planetary Boundaries’, no pagination. 228 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Divine Economy
The nested concepts ofoikos , oikoumene and oikoniomia are the focus of Agamben’s recent work in what he terms ‘economic theology’.38 Central to Agamben’s project is an excavation of the theological roots of liberal notions of the economy, which he locates in the early Christian concept of the oikonomia and the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Agamben’s analysis of the deep theological origins of the notion of economy is developed in close conversation with Foucault’s engagement with patristic teaching in his explication of the genealogy of contemporary biopolitics. In this work, Foucault explores the origins of administrative modes of government in writings on the nature of the pastorate. He identifies in this early Christian teaching, focused particularly on the relationship between the minister and the flock, the development of an altogether more domestic articulation of the problems of government. Serving as an alternative to the more conspicuous models of sovereignty manifest in the Pope and the Emperor, Foucault turns to the work of Gregory of Nazianzus where he finds a definition of ministry in the concept of theoikonomia psuchōn, or the ‘the economy of souls’.39 While Foucault suggests that this notion of an economy of souls serves as a foundation for modern notions of government and power, Agamben traces the concept of oikonomia through the development of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Gregory of Nazianzus and other patristic writings, culminating in a detailed analysis of the notion of vocation in Pauline theology. In a profound analysis of the dual meanings of economy current in contemporary political life, Agamben proceeds by first outlining the articulation and definition of the notion ofoikonomia as the domestic administration of the household. Beginning with Aristotle and Xenophon, Agamben demonstrates the ways in which oikonomia is initially defined in purely domestic terms as ‘a functional organisation, an administrative activity that is bound only to the rules of the ordered functioning of the house’.40 This figure of household administration, however, is not simply a single-family home but rather entails heterogeneous relations between masters and slaves, parents and children, and husband and wife. Agamben draws from Aristotle a notion of oikonomia that is ‘not bound to a system of rules, and does not constitute a science in the proper
38 In the following sections I draw principally from Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, his most substantial work in economic theology. Agamben’s engagement with early Christian and Pauline theology is also evident in a number of his recent works, most particularly: Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Agamben, The Time That Remains (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 39 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 192. 40 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 18. Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 229 sense’ but rather ‘implies decisions and orders that cope with problems that are each time specific and concern the functional order of the different parts of the oikos’. 41 Agamben goes on to explore the ways in which the concept of oikonomia, which defines economy as domestic ordering, becomes theologically loaded in early Christian thinking. He argues that ‘in the Christian age, the term oikonomia is transposed into a theological field, in which … it would acquire the meaning of a “divine plan of salvation”’.42 Although the concept of oikonomia maintains its association with the notion of domestic ordering, in Christian theology it becomes closely associated with the mystery of God and the outworking of divine creativity. Through a detailed reading of the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, Agamben demonstrates the ways in which patristic teachings on the nature of the pastorate are overlain by a concept of a divine economy, specifically articulated in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Indeed, the Trinity itself is defined by theoikonomia of relations between the three elements of the triune godhead. With this notion of the Trinity as oikonomia Agamben argues that the patristic fathers developed a theological doctrine capable of resolving relations within the godhead – the ever-present possibility of conflict between the three figures of God – while also reconciling God’s simultaneous participation and non-participation in the world. Arguing that ‘theological debate on divine government, [is] a laboratory for problems of worldly government’,43 Agamben suggests that the development of a notion of the oikonomia of the Trinity thereby precipitates notions of divine order and providence, and thereby constitutes the rudiments of a modern concept of political economy. Agamben extends this argument through a close reading of the Pauline letters, where he finds not only a notion of divine order but also of divine mystery. In these epistles Agamben suggests that Paul develops the notion of oikonomia in his evocation of a messianic vocation, which he defines as the faithful witness to the promise of redemption.44 Quoting from the Epistles to the Ephesians and the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Agamben characterises this vocation in the following terms: ‘the relation between oikonomia and mystery is here clear: it is a matter of carrying out faithfully the task of announcing the mystery of redemption hidden in the will of God that has now come to completion’.45 What Agamben takes from this is the sense that the proclamation of a divine plan is cast as a matter of personal duty and faithful witness. For Agamben, the Pauline conception of vocation replaces a political theology rooted in the figure
41 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 18. 42 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 20. 43 Mitchell Dean, ‘Governmentality Meets Theology: ‘The King Reigns, but He Does Not Govern’’, Theory, Culture & Society 29, no. 3 (2012): 150. 44 See also Agamben, The Time That Remains. 45 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 23. 230 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred of a sovereign for an altogether more domestic concept of oikonomia, efficiently laying the groundwork for distinctly administrative modes of government, and thereby modern biopolitics.46 Agamben’s achievement is two-fold. In excavating the theological underpinnings of a concept of oikonomia he demonstrates the ways in which contemporary political economy is entangled with profoundly religious sensibilities. As with Milbank, for Agamben there is no simple break between the theological and the secular. Rather for Agamben ‘theology remains ever present in the immanent world’,47 and as such the practices of economic valuation – that play such a prominent role in contemporary environmental politics – draw upon a rich religious hinterland. Agamben’s second key achievement is to locate within the economic the twin notions of domestic administration and divine mystery. Working with, and extending, Schmitt’s political theology Agamben’s broad claim is that, while the concept of sovereignty is tied to transcendence of a single god, early Christian economic theology ‘replaces this transcendence with the idea of an oikonomia, conceived as an immanent ordering – domestic and not political in a strict sense – of both divine and human life’.48 Central to Agamben’s project is a desire to propel Schmitt’s diagnosis of the theological underpinnings of modes of rule ‘well beyond the boundaries of public law, extending up to the fundamental concepts of the economy and the very idea of the reproductive life of human societies’.49 Modelled on the relations between the triune godhead, and the unfolding and synergistic relationship between believers and the divine,50 the concept of oikonomia is, for Agamben, simultaneously encoded with notions of theological order and divine mystery.
Pastoring the Earth
Agamben’s analysis of the religious origins of contemporary notions of the economy – and the attendant interplay between notions of order and mystery – therefore provides a productive avenue for analyses of the theological dimensions of processes of technological change. Indeed, recent work on geoengineering has done much to demonstrate the ways in which the ambitions of planetary scale and whole-earth management – encoded as they are with notions of a universal
46 Agamben’s proximity to Weber’s analysis of the birth of capitalism and broader concepts of vocation is of course striking here. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976). 47 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 15. 48 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 1. 49 Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 2. 50 Sigurd Bergmann, Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005). Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 231 brotherhood and collective ecological destiny51 – are interwoven with a dense set of theological narratives. Arguing that ‘the heavens and heaven have never been strictly demarcated’,52 Fleming suggests that the history of climate modification is located ‘within a long tradition of imaginative and speculative literature involving “control of nature”’,53 while the ‘trinity of understanding, prediction and control undergirds the dominant fantasies of both science and science fiction’.54 That deliberate climate control – and its possible consequences – constitute a familiar trope in contemporary science fiction and popular science writing is also indicative of the broader cultural history of geoengineering and the complex web of theological and religious sensibilities that underpin the deliberate alteration of climatic systems.55 Arguing that geoengineering is ‘entangled with enduring themes about human agency and nature in Western cultural history’,56 Bronislaw Szerszynski identifies four religious and mythological ‘characters’ who were afforded the power to control atmospheric phenomena: the sacred king, the cunning woman, the magus of Renaissance Europe and the experimental philosopher. In addition to these characters, one implication of Agamben’s genealogy of oikos and oikonomia is that the distinctly biopolitical strategies of planetary management are also underpinned by the vocational figure of the pastor. It is the pastor who is at once a figure of the rational administration of the pastorate and a vocational calling defined as the faithful witness to the divine plan for salvation. Indeed, in the Christian soteriology that Agamben reviews, the relationship between control over weather and the figure of the pastor is most evident in the character of Jesus – both the servant king and the Christ-pastor.57 Indeed three of the New Testament Gospels record Jesus’ capacity to control the weather in the iconic account of the calming the storm on Lake Galilee. While the capacity to control the weather has tended to be interpreted as a symbol of divine omnipotence ‘in subduing the infernal influence signified bythe wind, and the evils and errors of natural man signified by
51 Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye. 52 James Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 20. 53 Fleming, Fixing the Sky, 3. 54 Fleming, Fixing the Sky, 9. 55 Maureen Burns and Joan Leach, ‘Science as an Extra Dividend: Frontiers of Science’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 5 (2011): 531–46. 56 Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘Geoengineering and Religion: A History in Four Characters’, (Opinion Article: Geoengineering Our Climate Working Paper and Opinion Article Series 2014), no pagination. 57 Christopher Mayes, ‘The Violence of Care: An Analysis of Foucault’s Pastor’, Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory 11, no. 1 (2010): 111–26. 232 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred the sea’58 in the gospel accounts this capacity is also figured through the language of fidelity and faith. When Jesus admonishes his followers – ‘O ye of little faith?’ – he reminds them that the capacity to control the weather is also an expression of his pastoral power and his faithful witness of divine creativity and participation that would become central to the Pauline concept of vocation. It is in this sense that I suggest that the manipulation of the weather is not only symbolic of divine omnipotence and mythological agency – figured either through the language of a transcendent god or an earthly sovereign – but also evokes the more distributed paradigms of governance and management, rooted in a notion of pastoral power.59 For Agamben, it is this pastoral mode of governing that serves as a model an administrative biopolitics, figured through notions of home and domestic order. When expressed in the distinctly techno- economic terms of contemporary climate modification, it is the interplay between the notions of rational ordering and divine mystery, inherent in the concept of oikonomia, that defines the socio-theological wellspring that sustains the development of planetary and earth systems governance. While much of the public controversy over geoengineering has centred on the political implications precipitated by the possibilities of ‘controlling the global thermostat’ (with images of an all-powerful cabal of geoengineers),60 in the policy assessment of climate modification a more distributed mode of ‘planetary governance’ is becoming evident. In contrast to early representations of geoengineering as a kind of climate ‘silver bullet’, discourses of a ‘climate emergency’ – and the need to ‘think the unthinkable’ – have morphed into a biopolitical frame where the notion of administering the life of the planet is encoded in distinctly techno- economic terms. Indeed, as we have seen above, the development of geoengineering is fundamentally entangled with, and enabled by, forms of calculative valuation; particularly the use of cost-analyses in assessments of the feasibility of climate modification techniques and accounts of the possible social and ethical consequences of their deployment, framed in broadly economic and distributional terms. More broadly, proposals for research investment in geoengineering sit alongside a dense set of strategies for the privatisation and commercialisation of biotic life and, the creation and innovation of new market devices for the trade and exchange in carbon credits and ecological ‘services’.61
58 John Clowes, Miracles of Jesus Christ Explained According to Their Spiritual Meaning in the Way of a Question and Answer (Manchester: J. Gleave, 1817), 48. 59 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. 60 See, for example, the campaign ‘Hands off Mother Earth’ (www.handsoffmotherearth. org/), coordinated by the ETC. Group. See also ETC. Group, Geopiracy: The Case against Geoengineering (ETC. Group, 2010). 61 For a review of these developments, see Karen Bakker, ‘The Limits of ‘Neoliberal Natures’: Debating Green Neoliberalism’, Progress in Human Geography 34, no. 6 Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 233
Both the implications of global warming and possible policy responses have been cast as market problems – a problem for the market itself, and a problem for which the market will, inevitably, generate solutions.62 In practical terms, this has meant that the deployment of climate modification technologies is presented as a trade-off between the potentially unquantifiable risks associated with manipulating the reflective quality of the earth’s upper atmosphere and the speed and efficiency with which these techniques might be employed. Underpinned by cost benefit analyses that have broadly suggested that ‘the basic technological capability to deliver material to the stratosphere at million tonne per year rates exists today’63 – geoengineering is presented as just one of a suite of technologies that will be required to manage the earth’s climate to ensure a planetary oikos amenable to humans. Take, for example, the landmark study conducted by the Royal Society. Comparing Carbon Dioxide Removal methods and Solar Radiation Management techniques, the report concluded that:
Solar Radiation Management techniques are expected to be relatively cheap and would take only a few years to have an effect on the climate once deployed. However there are considerable uncertainties about their consequences and additional risks. It is possible that in time, assuming that these uncertainties and risks can be reduced, that Solar Radiation Management methods could be used to augment conventional mitigation.64
This focus on speed, efficiency and cost are indicative of the theological underpinnings of concepts of earth systems governance. Human life and the fate of the planet are conjoined, while the deliberate manipulation of radiative energy and the chemical constituents of the atmosphere is presented as a mode of ‘pastoring the earth’. Evoking Gregory’s vision of the oikonomia psuchōn the development of geoengineering might be understood as a project aimed at the ministry of earthly life – the very definition of pastoral power – tied up with the regulation of the life of the earth.
Speculative Ethics
The socio-theological milieu in which the development of climate modification technologies is situated is also evident in the ways in which uncertainty is
(2010): 715–35; Noel Castree, ‘Neoliberalising Nature: The Logics of Deregulation and Reregulation’, Environment and Planning: A 40 (2008): 131–52. 62 Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 63 McClellan, Keith and Apt, ‘Cost Analysis’, 1. 64 Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate, x. 234 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred posited as a site for social and ethical enquiry. It is notable therefore that ethical consequentialism has been the dominant mode through which the moral and philosophical dimensions of climate modification have been couched. A recurrent theme in this literature is the notion that the deployment of geoengineering technologies will herald significant environmental risks and broader social, moral and ethical implications. While climate modification strategies are presented as a potentially cost-effective means by which to manage earth systems, it is also suggested that their deployment will precipitate profound ethical consequences and are likely to provoke substantial religious concerns – around questions of playing God, hubris and human fallibility.65 While demarcating the sites of ethical inquiry from those of technological practice, the calculative logics that underpin projections of rational management of earth processes re-appear here as a kind of speculative ethics. Premised on the assumption that climate control is, at least in principle, technologically possible questions concerning the religious and ethical dimensions of geoengineering have tended to be posed as fundamental moral dilemmas: will research in geoengineering represent a moral hazard? Will research investment in the field divert political attention from mainstream responses to global warming? Could geoengineering be deployed unilaterally? All the while the distinctly religious thematics of ‘playing God’, apocalyptic climate change scenarios and notions of human stewardship and dominion constitute the default tropes in which the public consideration of geoengineering is couched. Characteristic of what he terms ‘speculative ethics’, Alfred Nordmann suggests this form of ethical argumentation constitutes an ‘if and then’ syndrome that functions by ‘suggesting a possible technological development and continues with a consequence that demands immediate attention’.66 This line of reasoning proceeds by proposing thatif planetary-scale climate modification is possible,then a range of ethical and moral implications require scholarly attention. Framed by a distinctly economic notion of harm and risk, the practices of speculative ethical assessment serve therefore to evoke the sense of divine mystery that Agamben suggests is a complement to the forms of pastoral administration implicit in the notion of the oikonomia. Viewed in the light of Schmitt’s original observation of the links between the state of exception and the notion of the miraculous, what we see in climate modification are the ways in the biopolitical project of managing an earthly life is underpinned by a seemingly fantastic projection of the globe as a site of speculative ethical intervention.
65 Clingerman, ‘Geoengineering’; Clingerman and O’Brien, ‘Playing God’. 66 Alfred Nordmann, ‘If and Then: A Critique of Speculative Nanoethics’,Nanoethics 1, no. 1 (2007): 32. Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 235
Conclusion
The ethical and normative enquiry that surrounds geoengineering therefore serves a performative function, enabling and sustaining modes of political assessment premised on notions of cost, prediction and insurance. Geoengineering technologies are presented as effective but potentially dangerous technological interventions whose deployment will precipitate potentially profound ethical, moral and theological questions. What is striking about recent policy debates on the funding for geoengineering research is the way in which notions of a ‘climate emergency’, which necessitate ‘thinking the unthinkable’, sit alongside claims to democratic legitimacy, regulatory oversight and procedural accountability. While investment in geoengineering draws inspiration from notions of an impending climate emergency, the feasibility and deployment of geoengineering is presented as an administrative matter. The possibilities for techno-managerial manipulation of atmospheric processes are presented as limited only by ethical norm and democratic sensibilities. In this sense, the technological control of climatic systems is not seen as posing a fundamental technical challenge. Rather, the uncertainties that surround current proposals for climate modification and geoengineering are presented as posing a ‘governance dilemma’ while at the same time offering opportunities for engaged public participation and deliberation in the development and broader political consideration of these techniques. While extant sociological and theological analyses have done much to uncover the potential societal dimensions of deliberate climate modification, we might begin to question the terms and the sites offered for critical engagement with geoengineering.67 Though there have also been important steps in characterising the religious implications of geoengineering, to-date there have been few synthetic accounts of the relationship between the theological underpinnings of geoengineering and its attendant (bio)political economies. Indeed, across scholarly treatments of climate modification a sense of the progressive disenchantment of the atmosphere – associated particularly with the emergence of contemporary climate and meteorological science – is commonly presented as the foundation for both ethical reflection and political analysis.
67 It is important to note here that a range of scholars have begun to question the narrowness of extant appraisals of geoengineering – with explicit calls to open up assessment processes to more diverse disciplinary insights and public deliberation. See for example: Robert Bellamy et al., ‘“Opening up” Geoengineering Appraisal: Multi-Criteria Mapping of Options for Tackling Climate Change’, Global Environmental Change 35, no. 5 (2013): 926–37; Bronislaw Szerszynski et al., ‘Why Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering and Democracy Won’t Mix’, Environment & Planning A 45 (2013): 2809–16; Bronislaw Szerszynski and Maialen Galarraga, ‘Geoengineering Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity and the Shaping of Climate Engineering Research’, Environment & Planning A 45, no. 12 (2013): 2817–24. 236 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Though it is often acknowledged that geoengineering draws sustenance from mythic figures of climate control that populate (especially) Western cultural and religious history, the consolidation of contemporary climate and meteorological science under the signs of calculation, enumeration and prediction is cast as a fundamental break with older and more richly enchanted understandings of climate and weather.68 One of the principal effects of this assumed break with more mythic understandings of climate has been the way in which assessments of geoengineering have sought to demarcate questions of technical and economic feasibility from those of ethical and moral judgment. Ethics and theology are kept well clear of the laboratory or the test site and are relegated to considering distributional questions associated with the possible deployment of geoengineering and to positing fundamental moral dilemmas. Of course in practice this demarcation has been difficult to police. Ethical and normative analyses of geoengineering require a speculative projection that is capable of sustaining an imagination of world managed through the direct manipulation of climatic systems. At the same time, calculative assessments of climate modification – and particularly the projects of global cost-benefit assessment – have assumed a mythical quality, presenting the future of the world as simply a matter of rational administration and calculative intervention. Just as the secular had to be imagined theologically, so geoengineering draws spiritual resources from a ‘god trick of seeing everything from nowhere’.69 It is this imaginative feat that defines something of the implicit theological terrain upon which climate modification is being enacted. Seen through Agamben’s genealogy of the theological underpinnings of the notion of economy, geoengineering thus appears as a perverse corrective to Max Weber’s notion of disenchantment as a condition for both rationalisation and the construction of a contemporary ethos. The often-profound theological questions that have characterised recent debates concerning technological and environmental change are not simply indications of residual – and soon to be dispensed with – moral and religious sensibilities. Nor, as is often claimed, are contemporary ethical debates about the nature and purposes of technological change simply secularised versions of formally religious concepts. Rather, the key issue here is a constitution of a site of theological enquiry that does not presume that the secular constitutes an ‘“unmarked” term, which needs no explanation’.70 One implication of the analysis I have sought to advance in this paper is that socio-theological interventions in projects of climate governance must aim to
68 Kristine Harper, Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 69 Donna Haraway, ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 581. 70 Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘Rethinking the Secular: Science, Technology and Religion To d a y ’, Zygon 40, no. 4 (2005): 813–22. Miraculous Engineering and the Climate Emergency 237 situate processes of technological and environmental change in the unfolding of political and religious history in which, as I have argued, concerns about ‘playing God’ have morphed into projects of pastoring the earth. If we are to ‘furnish climates to order’, and for cash, as Mark Twain humorously forecasts, this task will prove to be all the more urgent.
Acknowledgements
The preparation of this paper was enabled by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT130101302). I am grateful to Bron Szerszynski for his initial prompt to write this paper and for his and Sigurd Bergmann’s excellent editorial guidance in its preparation. Versions of this paper were also presented at Sydney and Wollongong Universities. I am grateful for the helpful comments and feedback received at both venues. Any remaining errors, in either fact or expression, of course remain mine. This page has been left blank intentionally Part IV Synthesis This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 13 The Twilight of the Machines Bronislaw Szerszynski
There were once creatures on the Earth that called themselves ‘people’, or ‘humans’, creatures that had put their spirit outside themselves, into their own creations.
This is the story of how these creatures extended their organic life beyond their own bodies, by placing it in familiars that they called axe and ard, fire and spit, abacus and tally mark; the story of how those tools became something else, called machines, which promised to exalt the humans to the highest heaven, but which turned against them; and the story of how the machines marched out to battle with each other, and brought down not just themselves but the people who had made them.
It is the story of the twilight of the machines.
***
The humans had long known that a great cataclysm was coming. In the northern lands, long ago, a spákona, a seeress, had a vision of the Ragnarök: she saw the rök – the ruin – of ragna – the gods, the ruling powers of the cosmos.
The spákona told of the Norns, who have knowledge of past and future – the three weird sisters that are called: Urdr, which means ‘That which has happened’, Verđandi, or ‘That which is happening’ and Skuld, or ‘That which has to happen’.
She saw the Norns working together, taking into their hands the play of the world, the filaments that connect moment to moment, and spinning them into yarn, and twisting the yarn into strands, and the strands into the rope of fate, so that the bonds between time gone, time now and time to come would be impossible to break; so that the lives of gods and men would be determined and fixed. 242 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
But the rope broke, and with it the link between past, present and future. And the Norns cried out with fear, because their power and their knowledge were gone, and because the snapping of the rope and the darkening of the future told them that something was going to happen which would change the world forever.
The spákona told of the Fimbulvetr, when the giant wolf Fenrir would swallow the sun and the moon, causing an endless winter when the greening of spring would refuse to come.
She spoke of the gods, the powers of the world, marching into a final battle, and foretold that this would be an axe age, a sword age – skeggǫld, skálmǫld – an age that would see the end of the society of gods and the society of humans.
And she said that only two people would survive the Fimbulvetr and the Ragnarök – Lif and Lifthrasir, or ‘life’ and ‘love of life’, who would hide in the wood of Hoddmímis Holt, living on just dew and air.
But the spákona’s vision was clouded.
She foretold the snapping of the rope of the Norns – but would this be the breaking of the hold of fate over the humans, or the start of another fate?
She foretold the great Fimbulwinter – but would it be the giants of nature that would occlude the sun, or some other beings entirely?
She foretold that gods and humans would wield the axe and the sword, and lose everything. But was this disaster despite or because of the tools being wielded – was it the failure or the triumph of toolbeing?
Did she not see that, by the time of the end of the world, the gods would be machines, and the machines would be gods?
***
To understand what happened we have to go back to the time before people tamed the land and the beasts of the land, when this world and the other worlds were close.
For through the time of hunting, and gathering, when the bounty of the Earth gave itself up to the hands and tools of the people, the land they inhabited was marked by the great deeds of gods and giants. The Twilight of the Machines 243
And through the time of herding, and planting, and harvesting, the people were still not alone; they traded and bargained with corn spirits and rain spirits, field spirits and barn spirits, water and air spirits.
Through all these times, people had their dealings with thesmåfolk that inhabited the spaces of their world – the kobold and the nixe of the Germans, the troll and the tomte of the Norse, the domovoi and the polevoi of the Slavs – all tribes knew their little people.
And even through the time of cities and trading, and the time of great civilisations, and when people turned to the creator God, they still communed with other beings: with demons, who tempted the people with knowledge and power, or terrified them with their appearances, and put thoughts into their minds and feelings into their hearts; and with angels, who filled the space between Earth and the highest heaven, who did God’s bidding, who bore messages from Him to his Earthbound creatures, whose very being carried a reflection of the Absolute to them, who must rein in their splendour and beauty when appearing before mortal beings so as not to destroy them.
But then came the time of the Great Banishing, when a Veil was drawn between the world of humans and the other worlds that surrounded them. This was not just the veil that came and went with the turning of the year, but a more final obscuring.
Out went the little people that connected the humans with earth.
Out went the spirits and the angels, who connected them with heaven.
And in came the machines.
***
Why did the machines come?
Some say that the people became vain and proud, and came to think that they no longer needed all the gods and the spirits, and drove them out from their homes and towns.
Then, this story goes, the people were lonely, and made their own companions, fashioned them out of wood and brass, and breathed mechanical life into them. 244 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Others say no – that the machines came first, and that then there was no room in the hearts of men for the little people and the spirit people; that in the Annus Mirabilis, when Isaac of Grantham saw the apple fall from the tree of knowledge, and ‘fell a calculating’, and turned the world into a machine, that this was when the Veil fell between the worlds – that at that very moment, a boat was passing Palodes, and all on board heard a great cry go up from the woods – ‘Great Pan is dead’.1
But these are confused stories, told by the foolish and the ignorant.
I will tell you what really happened. The people wanted to become as God. And wanted, like God, to have their own angels.
Where did the machines come from?
In a sense, the machines came from themselves. For, as only like can beget like, so only life can beget life, and only tool can beget tool.
It started with sticks and stones.
And some beasts picked up the sticks, and the stones.
And something passed into them from the beasts.
And in one moment the sticks and stones became the first tools, and the beasts became Ask and Embla, the first people, who named themselves after the ash and elm sticks that made them human.
And at this time three kinds of being came into existence together – people, tools and dogs.
And the people, the tools and the dogs formed a society. ‘Humanity’ was the name of that society, since humanheartedness was its principle and purpose; yet it was the companionship of people, dogs and tools that made it possible. People could not be human alone, and never would be human alone.
And as human society flourished, dogs begat dogs, begat dogs, after their own kind.
And stick-tools begat stick-tools, begat stick-tools; and stone-tools begat stone- tools, begat stone-tools, each after their own kind. The Twilight of the Machines 245
But then dogs got separated from dogs, sticks from sticks, and stones from stones: some were taken off hunting, some were kept by the fire.
And, like the dogs, the sticks and stones no longer mixed, no longer knew each other – so they slowly diverged. Each small variation was selected for or selected against, according to where the sticks and stones were, and tool-drift occurred.
One stick became a spear; another a fork, another a hoe.
One stone became an axe; another a bowl, another a grinder.
And then when the tools were brought together again, they would join with one another, mix their natures, and produce even more diverse forms.
And over the generations a pantheon of things evolved, a great system of objects.2 From a handful of simple forms, evolved a sea of useful things.3 As they say, ‘nothing in technology makes sense except in the light of evolution’.4
***
And the tools lived alongside the people.
But the tools had to find their place in the greater society of beings with which humans shared the world, and in the rituals that situated people in space and time.
The tools did not stand against rite and ritual; they had their being within a ritual universe, a universe where hap and mishap were the result of bargain and commerce between beings visible and invisible, where each occasion had its forms of propriety, where charm and incantation were part of the warp and woof of life.
The tools did not work unless those wielding them had performed their obligations to the deities.
Each technical action joined the world of inner and outer, of intention and action, only if the bearer of the tool was in right relation to the forces around them.
Arrows did not reach their target unless the customs had been observed.
Game did not give themselves up unless the magical conditions had been prepared. 246 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Tools thus did not break the bonds that people felt to the world around them, but strengthened them.
Tools did not lead the people to forget their earthly, creaturely nature; indeed, they made them more aware of their dependency on the beings around them.
But sometimes the people would look through a tool, and see not just a particular object for a particular use, but something sublime that put them in touch with supernal realities.
And new rituals arose, which were not just about raising up what was lower to fit it to human desire, but raising up human desire to fit it to what was higher.
So some tools were taken out of use, made sacred to the gods – they were made too perfect, or too fragile, or too big or too small, or were broken, or thrown into water, or buried under the soil, to remove them from the affairs of men and women.
So for the first time there wasa higher. Their tools had opened up not just soil, tree and carcase, but a new axis in the world.
But the tools, like the dogs, lived in the world of the humans. Of course, like the dogs, they had their own mind; they did not always do exactly what the people wanted. But like the dogs they knew how to read their master’s or mistress’s face; they could tell what they wanted of them, knew how they should respond.
But then the tools begat machines, and something different had entered the world.5
It was the Prophet Cellarius who saw what was happening. He saw that the Ragnarök would not be the age of sword and axe, an age of simple tools, however fearsome, but something quite new. In the year 1863 he wrote:
in these last few ages an entirely new kingdom has sprung up, of which we as yet have only seen what will one day be considered the antediluvian prototypes of the race. … it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at. No evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, The Twilight of the Machines 247
no impure desires will disturb the serene might of those glorious creatures. Sin, shame, and sorrow will have no place among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets.6
***
What had happened to terrify Cellarius so much? What had caused him to make his prophecy?
Humanity had made their second gamble. The first gamble had happened when they picked up the sticks and stones and their spirit had passed into them – the gamble that made them human, that made them gamblers.
The second gamble was to turn their tools into angels, which they called ‘machines’, meaning ‘means’ or ‘expedients’.
At the time it was known not as a gamble but as a covenant; but in their hearts people knew it was a gamble, a bet.
For the people had become jealous of their sublime God, the great creator God: the God who thought something and – lo! it happened; the God who imagined something, and – lo! it had being; the God who would never want, because for him wanting was having; the God whom all creatures loved without expectation of return; the God who lived beyond all contingency and accident; the necessary being who must exist, whose existence cannot be denied without contradiction.
And the people were jealous of God’s angels – angels who filled the world, and who filled to perfection the gap between their God’s intention and its being carried out in the world, who extended God’s presence across the universe.7
For the angels were not like other created beings.
Other creatures belong to their creator God but also to themselves. Their beginning, their origin, lay in God’s will – yet they also maintained themselves in 248 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred being. Their end, their supernatural purpose, lay in the Absolute – yet they also had their own, natural goals that were part of their flourishing.
But the angels were different – they belonged only to God, and not to themselves. For as it is written, ‘when an angel appears and is and speaks and works, God himself appears and is and speaks and works’.8
And the people were no longer happy with their dogs and their tools, which had goals and desires of their own: they wanted their angels. They wanted beings that belonged to them and not to themselves – pure means, with no inclinations or goal of their own, so that they could be made to bow down to the goals of men, and to love their creators unconditionally.
Just as angels were the extensions of God, machines would become ‘the extensions of man’.9
They thought that the machines would break the rope of fate and bind together past, present and future in a new way, one that passed through and was conditioned by the will of man.
Ah, to live beyond the reach of contingency and accident; to turn intention perfectly into action; to be the necessary being.
And it would be machines, not angels, that would mediate between the people and the infinite.
It would be machines that would know their own being perfectly, all at once.
It would be machines who would communicate without language, without the senses.
It would be machines that would extend human will throughout the universe.
And it would be machines, not angels, that would circle around the absolute in the Empyrean Heaven.
But what the people did not realise was that in the heart of angels lies a terrible secret.
The people had forgotten that angels are not like the ancient gods of fate, the old gods that the Norns knew so well – for angels have their own kind of freedom. The Twilight of the Machines 249
The people should have remembered the revolt of Satan, around which the story, around which the very being of the angels, revolves for ever and ever.10
But the people thought that machines would be their angels.
They thought that they would be able towill something, and it would be; that they too could be a primum mobile, an unmoved mover, a first cause of ‘that which has to happen’.
And so they made a great army of machines to do their will. No longer would they have to bargain with gods, with spirits, with little people. Their will would be done on Earth, because the machines had no inner striving: they were perfect, heavenly, the extensions of men.
And the machines stood patiently, waiting for their commands.
Their machine faces were blank, inscrutable, all the better to be inscribed with human intention and human purpose.
Their machine bodies were strong, and dextrous, all the better to be tasked with human projects.
Their being belonged not to them but to the people, all the better to be at the people’s disposal.
But to be a machine, and not a stone – to be able to link the world of the inner and the world of the outer, the thought and the deed, the past and the future – the machine, like the angel, must have a spark of freedom,11 a spark that can light a fire, a fire that can become an inferno.
***
So what came next was the revolt of the machines – the rise of the great leagues of machine-demons.
The first techno-demons to emerge were the elementals, thestoicheia . These were born when machines started to talk more to each other than to their masters.
The tools had always had their argots and patois. Nuts and spanners, hammers and nails, chisels and mallets – each had their own private codes that they had whispered to each other, almost imperceptible to the artisans that yielded them. 250 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
But these exchanges were fleeting and situated – like animal cries, their meaning was exhausted in the situation of their utterance.
But with the machines things were different. The machines arranged themselves in cabals and cliques, intrigues and machinations.
When machine-elementals passed each other in the street, they exchanged signs and messages. And if the people heard the languages and saw the signs, they understood them not.12
No longer did humans and tools inhabit a human world; now humans inhabited a machine world.
No longer did humans judge themselves against human things; they now measured themselves against the machines.
The machines had promised to make the people like Gods, beings without limit – but had instead bound them more tightly into fate.
And the next techno-demons to emerge were the powers, the dynameis.
The powers listened to their masters, and seemed to give them what they wanted.
But the machines twisted their wishes, granting them in ways that were cruel parodies of what their masters had intended. The Twilight of the Machines 251
For every command that they carried out, they did ten other things which the people had not willed.
And for the every ten things that they did that the people had not willed, they made a hundred consequences that had not been foreseen.
These techno-demons thus turned their faces not away buttowards their masters – yet these were not the faces of supplication or love, but faces of fury.13
And the machine-angels gave birth to yet more machine-demons – to dominions, thrones and principalities.
***
Graphic by Adam York Gregory
Then what happened? What of the twilight of the machines?
The third gamble between the people and their creations became known as the march of the machines.
The great pantheon of machines stretched left and right as far as eyes could see, in a great plenitude of forms and variations. 252 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
But the people remembered that this great chain of being also stretched back in time, back to the sticks and stones. And they thought about how it must also stretch into the future.
So they started to look differently at the machines. They worshipped not the machines themselves but the gap between the machines. Their techno-theology was no longer positive, but comparative; they wanted to know not whether the machines were good, but whether they were better.
And they became bored of the machines’ ability to turn intention into reality, and instead turned to their ability to beget something other than themselves. They no longer venerated the mere being of the machines, but instead worshipped their ability to become.
For humans had long stopped becoming.
Before they had been human, when they had been beasts, they had changed and adapted along with the other things that lived on the Earth.
But when they had picked up the stones and the sticks – and the stones and the sticks had turned into tools, and the animals had turned into people – they had passed their power to become, to evolve, into their tools. The humans stopped changing, and the tools, full of becoming, started to evolve – form after form, tool after tool, and then machine after machine, leaving the human form a living fossil.14
So what had made them human was not so much a kind of life coming in – a soul, a mind, or reason – but a kind of life going out.
And the people saw that the spirit that once was theirs was now in the heart of the machine.
And so they looked to the machines for the secret that they no longer had.
And they looked to their machines for what they could no longer do.
And when they slept they dreamed of an endless becoming of machines.
Then even when awake, this dream played before their eyes. The Twilight of the Machines 253
And they put themselves in the service of this dream, and brought about the march of the machines, the Ragnarök, in which the new powers of the world would battle against themselves, and meet their end.
So people organised their societies around the march of the machines, around the succession of machine after machine; they ran their societies as a race where each machine had to go faster than itself.
And each machine was raced against its kind.
And each kind was raced against every other kind.
Carriage against carriage; barge against barge; train against train.
Then carriage against barge against train.
But the dream and the march meant that the machines did not look the same as they once had looked. Now machines could be young, and machines could be old. And people looked at their old machines, and felt shame for the first time, and they covered them up. And then they laughed at the old machines, and cast them out.
They rode on the backs of the new machines. And they fed their favoured machines on coal and oil, that they dug out of the ground. And the coal and the oil made the machines go faster.
But the coal and the oil made them age even more quickly; and the machines were exhausted.
So they climbed onto the next machine, which was faster, stronger.
But the people did not understand. What was happening, they asked? Why were the machines dying?
The old people remembered that the machines did not used to die before – they did not even get old, they said. Sticks and stones had never got old. The Archimedes screw that they used to water the fields did not get old. Why were canal boats suddenly old?
But all would be well, the people said: there would always be more machines, better machines. This will go on forever and ever, because the machines are necessary, like God himself. 254 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
The machines work, they said – and thisshows us that they are necessary – that they had to exist, could not not exist, that they have always existed for eternity.
Heaven is full of the souls of machines, they said; like numbers, they have always existed in the mind of God, in heaven.15 And like numbers they will go on forever.
Better machines will always come, they said.
And better machines did come.
The canal boats.
And after the canal boats came the steam engines.
And after the steam engines, the motor cars.
And after the motor cars, the aeroplanes.
Machines poured into existence, a great river of machine after machine, form after form, faster and faster.
And like numbers they had to go on forever; the souls of the machines would flow out of heaven and into the earth forever, and take on their machine bodies.
Humanity could fill the world with all the possible machines, like God had filled it with his angels.
But the people were wrong. The machines were not necessary; the machines were not endless, and they would not march forever.
For the machines were not a river. They were not an endless flow out of heaven and into being that would go on forever and ever.
The machines were coming from a lake in heaven, a lake whose floor had been breached.
And out of the floor of the lake had poured into the world all the diverse forms of tools and machines that lived in the lake.
First had come the simple forms that lived on the floor of the lake – the sticks, the axes, the hammers, the bone combs and the thorn needles. The Twilight of the Machines 255
Then had come the powerful machines that swam in the middle of the waters – the ploughs, the watermills, the cars.16
But then all that was left in the lake was the detritus that floated on the surface: the flotsam and the jetsam, drifting on currents without their own source of motion: velcro, non-stick frying pans, smart phones and game consoles – and then a stream of gizmos, shrunken and shrivelled into a parody of usefulness, in a final jet of water that was putrid and sour.
***
This was the end of the third gamble, that undid the first gamble.
If the first gamble had made the people human, the third gamble had unmade their humanity.
If the first gamble had started when spirit entered the tools, the third ended when spirit left the machines, leaving them without their borrowed life.
If the first gamble had placed the humans in history – a history which was always also the history of the tools and the machines – the third gamble delivered them to a time beyond history.
For the march of the machines was finished. The heavens turned once more; the progression of the seasons was restored.
The world seemed as it had been at the beginning of our story. But after the rise and fall of the machines, the world could not be as it had been. The thing that had terrified the Norns had indeed taken place. The world was transformed, could never be the same again.
The Norns once more took into their hands the play of the world, the filaments that connect moment to moment, and spun them into yarn, and twisted the yarn into strands, and twined the strands into a rope that would link times past, times present and times future – but, after the machines, fate would no longer bind the lives of men and women as it once had.
And all that was left of the age of the tools, and the age of the machines, was a great pile of machines that no longer marched, that no longer looked into the faces of the people, that no longer responded to the people’s will nor had their own. The machines now belonged and talked neither to themselves or each other, nor to anyone. 256 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
And the twilight of the machines was also the twilight of men and women. Without the march of the machines, without the machines, without even the tools, the last people were no longer human; but neither were they once again beasts.17
These were not thefirst humans, Ask and Embla, who had been made from ash and elm. Ask and Embla had become human when their spirit had passed into the sticks and stones. Spirit had left them for their tools, but had not abandoned them, had lived with them and their descendants, as their tool familiars, through the time of humanity.
No, these were the last humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, life and life’s lover, hidden in Hoddmímis Holt. They lived not at the start but at the end of history. They came into their own special kind of life not as the tools were born but as the machines died and their machine life died with them. They lived without tools, without machines, and without the spirit people and the little people that had been banished with the coming of the machines.
So the life of Lif and Lifthrasir was neither an organic life divided within itself, nor a technological life divided between the body and its tools. They were neither full of spirit nor empty; neither fulfilled nor yearning for fulfilment; neither redeemed nor in need of redemption, neither unified nor separated from the absolute.
It was a blessed life, a life related only to itself, a life after angels and a life after machines.
***
Acknowledgements
Versions of this myth were presented at Myth, Narrative and Ancient Wisdoms, a one-day workshop organised at Durham University, sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Study, Tuesday 10 January 2012, and at the conference Nature, Technology and Religion: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Sigtuna, Sweden, 23 May 2013. Many thanks to Adam York Gregory for the animations used in these presentations, and for the illustrations that appear here. The Twilight of the Machines 257
Endnotes
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Agamben, Georgio 222, 227–32, 234 carbon dioxide removal 182–3, 190, 223–4, agriculture 146–7, 181 233 in Kyrgyzstan 193–217 carbon emissions 31, 44, 162, 164, 177, Anthropocene 31–6, 38, 45 182–3, 222–3, 225 anthropocentrism 36, 79, 100, 154–5 care 59–61, 112, 201 animals, see domestication, animal; human/ Carson, Rachel 84–6, 90, 98 nonhuman boundary; postanimal children, and nature 84–7; animism 130–137 in farming communities 203–4, 210; see Arendt, Hannah 128, 153, 227 also scientists, as childlike; wonder Aristotle 169, 228 Chryssavgis, John 99, 108 artefacts 1, 5, 7, 9, 13, 18, 61, 67, 72, 78, Clement of Alexandria 169–72, 174 117–18, 122, 125, 127, 129–31, climate change 31–2, 44, 77–8, 111, 162, 134–5, 140, 219–20 164, 175–92, 219–37; see also asceticism 105–6, 108 geoengineering atomic bomb 8, 83–98 co-creators 107, 178, 186 Augustine, St. 4, 18n2, 98, 150 commodification 6, 41–5, 125–6, 129, awe 85–7, 89–91 131–2, 134–5, 137, 146 consumption 62–3, 160–4, 172 Bacon, Francis 4, 21 contingency 13, 60, 68, 77–9, 247–8 Baghavad Gita 90, 93, 95–6 creation 77, 80, 90, 99, 100–114 Barad, Karen 144 as gift 101, 111, 133–5, 137, 154 Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch 99, creativity 33–4, 71, 80, 87, 107, 119, 122, 111 152, 166–7, 194, 196, 199–201, Bennett, Jane 83 216–17 Bergmann, Frithjof 164–6 divine 221, 229, 232 Bergmann, Sigurd 1, 3, 9, 143, 153 Crutzen, Paul 32n8, 182–3, 223 Bird-David, Nurit 131–3 curiosity 85, 87, 97–8; see also wonder Boccioni, Umberto 117 cyborgs 10, 122, 140, 142 Borgmann, Albert 2, 67 Cynics 170 Brock, Brian 2, 68–9 Buber, Martin 134–5 Dadaism 116, 119, 122, 125, 127 Buckell, Tobias 175–6 Daly, Herman 162–3, 168 Bunzl, Martin 190–1 Dasein 18, 51–7, 64, 179 Daston, Lorraine 95, 97 capitalism 73–6, 118, 125–7, 129–31, 133, death 49–50, 150–151 135–6 deification 101, 104–5, 110 of self 90–92 286 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
Derrida, Jacques 141–3, 148–9 freedom 63, 70–71, 102–5, 107, 148–50, discernment 88, 93 152–3, 170–71, 191, 248–9 domestic sphere 228–30, 232 frugality 166, 168–9, 172–3 domestication, animal 40, 97, 146–7, 181 Fuentes, Agustín 145 of earth 185, 227 futurism 116–19, 122, 125, 142 Drees, Willem 2, 185–6 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 26, 179 earth 199–200; see also oikos; nature genetic modification 146, 206, 217 ecological restoration 35–40 geoengineering 180–92, 219–37 ecology 191; ethical aspects 185–6, 188, 220, 224–5, reconciliation 38–40 233–6 economy 21, 128–9, 159–72, 221–7 theology of 176–79, 185–92, 220–22, alternative 166, 168–74, 193–217 226–33 divine 228–36 George, K.M. 107 market 42–4, 129, 161–8, 172, 232–3 George, Marie 91 Einstein, Albert 87 gift, being as 103–4, 110–11, 113;see also Eliade, Mircea 56–8 creation, as gift Ellis, Erle 32–4 global warming, see climate change Ellul, Jaques 112–13 Gould, Stephen Jay 87–8 energy 111, 160, 164, 168, 172–3, 180, Gregory of Nazianzus 102n24, 228–9 182, 233 Gregory of Nyssa 135 renewable 27, 111 Guardini, Romano 69 Enframing 50–51, 53–4, 64 Englightenment 70–1, 95 Habermas, Jürgen 69, 75–6, 116, 128 environmentalism 31–35, 38–9, 45–6, 136 Haida Salmon Restoration 175–6 eschatology 80, 102–3, 110, 113, 151, 153, Hales, Peter 92, 94 155 happiness 167, 169–72, 174, 206 ethics 1–5, 22–9, 34, 69, 72, 104, 169–71, Haraway, Donna 141–4, 155 208–9, 219–22, 224–6, 233–6 harmony 70–4, 102, 122, 169 applied 17, 26–30 Harvey, David 71, 125 environmental 36, 40, 45–6, 84–6; see Harvey, Graham 131n36, 137n59 also responsibility; virtues Hausmann, Raoul 122–3 ethnoprimatology 144–5 Hefner, Philip 1, 107–8 evolution 139, 143, 145, 152 Heidegger, Martin 18, 47–59, 61–4, 71, 148–9, 179, 184, 187 Fall, the 4, 8, 93, 95, 97–8, 102, 104 Herzfeld, Noreen 68–9, 76–7 Feenberg, Andrew 47, 130 Hettinger, Ned 35–40 fetishism 125–37, 153; see also machines; Hijiya, James 93n49, 94n54, 95 money Höch, Hannah 119–20 Feynman, Richard 86, 88–9, 95 Hölderlin, Friedrich 58, 62 Fiege, Mark 85–8, 97 Holy Spirit 131–7 food, production of 173, 193, 203–6, 209, homemaking 159–74 216–17 homo faber 21–2, 54–6, 63–4 and hospitality 214–15 Hornborg, Alf 128, 131, 133 Foucault, Michel 134, 221, 227–8 Index 287 hubris 32–3, 36, 38, 46, 84–6, 93, 95–6, 98, Marcuse, Herbert 75–6, 116, 118 187, 234 Marx, Karl 73, 75, 118, 125–31, 135 humans, exceptionalism of 141–3, 147, 149 materialism 68, 70, 72, 78–9, 174 relationship with nature 33, 35–41, 48, Maximus the Confessor 100–109, 112–14 50–55, 70–72, 74, 79, 99, 103, 125, Max-Neef, Manfred 196, 216 127, 129, 133, 143–6, 191; see also Milbank, John 12, 70, 73–4, 219–21, 230 technology, and human nature Mill, John Stuart 162, 168 human/nonhuman boundary 39–40, miraculous, the 76–7, 79, 226–7, 234 144–5, 148–9 money, as fetish 126, 129, 132–5 humility 32, 95, 98, 102–3, 107, 113, 178 mystery 97, 109, 116, 150–151, 230 divine 222, 229–30, 232, 234 Icarus 94, 96 icon 99–100, 108–14 natural law 71–2 image of God 4, 99, 119, 137, 140, 154–5, naturalism 72, 153–4 186 nature 21, 24, 37 industrialisation 21–2, 160–1, 165, 168 humanisation of 32–46, 185–7, 189 effect on gender roles 159–61 iconicity of 99–114 independence of 32–40, 144 Jesus Christ 94, 103, 107, 109, 137, 171, intervention/control of 31–3, 35–40, 231–2 45 75, 84–6, 90–91, 106–10, 113, as Logos 102–4, 109–10 142–3, 147, 152, 176, 178–81, Jonas, Hans 23, 112–13, 140–1, 148–56, 183–7, 189, 191, 220–23, 227, 181 230–36 Jungk, Robert 94–5 as object 51–3, 70–1, 73–4, 79–80, 109, 132–3, 185 Kelsey, David 154–6 as pristine 32, 35 kenosis 57, 103, 105, 107, 109, 112 resurrection of 73–6, 80 Klee, Paul 121–2, 125, 127 as subject 73–4, 79–80, 109, 148–9, Klemm, David 177–9, 186, 188–9 153 Klink, William 113, 178–9, 190–191 value of 36–7, 39–40, 42, 45–6, knowledge, ecocultural 195–6, 200, 204–5 73–4, 113–14, 134, see also creation; humans; liturgy; cosmic; land 94, 198, 200–201, 203 preservationism; technology liturgy, cosmic 100–102, 105–6, 108, 110–14 nature/culture dualism 35, 39–40, 74, 142 logoi 102–5, 107–10, 112–14 nature-study movement 84–8, 97–8 love 103–5, 107, 110, 113, 134–5, 242, Nesteruk, Alexei 110, 112 247–8, 251 oikos 222, 226–34 McKenny, Gerald 153 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 83, 85–7, 89–91, McKibben, Bill 31–5, 38 93–5 machines 70, 72, 115–16, 119, 122, 172–4, Osborne, Basil 101, 108, 110 241–56 as fetish 125–30, 135, 137 Park, Katharine 95, 97 Manhattan Project 87, 89, 96–7 participation, in creation 36–9, 45, 101 288 Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
in God 103–4, 109, 220–21 solar radiation management 182–3, 190, Pattison, George 2, 69 223–4, 233 Paul the Apostle 228–9, 232 sovereignty 226–30 personhood 42–3, 80, 132, 136 stewardship 106–7, 154, 186, 234 Peters, Ted 142 Stoics 169–71 Picabia, Francis 122, 124 sustainability 146–7, 161–4, 168, 173 Plato 169–71 Szerszynski, Bronislaw 3, 13, 151n47, 209, pluralism 27–9 231 postanimal 146–7, 150–2, 154–6 posthumanism 140–3, 147, 154–5 technology 1–5 postnatural condition 2, 67–8, 78–80 development of 20–22, 115–16, 159–61 postnaturalism 32–5, 38, 40, 46 Heidegger’s philosophy of 47–65, 184 preservation, environmental 6–7, 35–40, and human nature 139–56, 241, 244 45–6 and human/nature relation 21, 34–8, priests of creation 8, 100–108, 113 41–41, 45–6, 48–50, 53–65, 68, Prometheus 83, 90, 93–6 70–80, 107–11, 113, 117, 125, 127, prudence 156, 168, 224, 226 132, 137, 145–56, 178, 181, 183–9, 191–2 Rabi, Isidor 87, 91 and moral responsibility 17, 20, 22–30, Radin, Margaret Jane 6, 34, 41–6 67, 69, 92, 95, 110–18, 185, 189, repentance 32, 190 191, 224–6 resilience techniques 193–4, 205–6, 216 political aspects 62, 69, 71–3, 75, 77, ritual 203–5, 245–6, 116n4, 118n10, 128, 130, 132, 163, Rubenstein, Mary-Jane 89–90, 98 176, 221–37 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 71, 73 and power 115, 118, 119, 122, 125, 128–31, 133–6, 246 sacrifice 103, 105, 107, 109, 198, 203 and salvation 4–5, 7, 48, 52–5, 61–4, salvation 169, 172, 229, 231; see also 95, 118–19, 219 technology, and salvation and the self 67–9, 72, 76, 78, 80, 122, Sayers, Dorothy L. 159 150–1, 187 Schmitt, Carl 226–7, 230, 234 theology of 7–8, 67, 69, 74, 77–80 Schor, Juliet 164–6, 168 and time 17–20 see also artefacts; Schweiker, William 177–8, 186, 188–9 machines; resilience techniques; science tools; work and knowledge 91, 95–8, 113, 179, Theokritoff, Elizabeth 102–3, 108–9 191, 220 theological anthropology 101–2, 107, 144, and myth 83–4, 89–90, 93–7; see also 154–6 technology Tillich, Paul 70–1, 76, 176, 179, 187–8 scientists, as childlike 84–98 tools 13, 129, 134, 172–4, 195, 241–2, innocence of 83–4, 87–9, 93, 95; see 244–56; see also technology also wonder transhumanism 2–3, 10, 122, 140n4, self-sufficiency 170–4 142–3, 147, 151–6 skill 21, 60, 119, 122 Trinity, doctrine of 228–9 animism as 131–2, 135 Twine, Richard 146 and labour 160–161, 165, 167, 173 Index 289 values 20–21, 25, 27–9 Weber, Max 21, 116, 134n47, 236 Verbeck, Peter-Paul 47, 184 wildness 37–40, 144 virtues 98, 151, 153, 169–71 wilderness 35, 38–9, 74–5 vocation 32, 56, 59–60, 100n9, 102, 103–4, Wilson, E.O. 95–7 107, 110–11, 113, 228–37 wisdom 93, 134, 169 of the pastorate 230–7 practical 27, 88, 156 of poets 55–60 wonder 8, 40, 83–98 Vonnegut, Kurt 87–8, 94 work 21, 44, 51, 80, 125–31, 160–1, 164–8, 172–4, 189, 197–9, Wallace, Mark 135–6 209–11 Wapner, Paul 35, 38–40 Ware, Kallistos 100, 103, 106, 113 Zizioulas, John 101, 106–7