SYSTEMS THEORY AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS IN POSTMODERNITY

A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for AS the Degree 3C,

POLT Master of Arts - V4-1 In Political Science

by Adele Suzanne Marie Veyssiere San Francisco, California May 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Systems Theory And The Ecological Crisis In Postmodernity by Adele Suzanne Marie Veyssiere, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Political Science at San Francisco State University.

James Martel, Ph.D. Professor of Department of Political Science SYSTEMS THEORY AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS IN POSTMODERNITY

Adele Suzanne Marie Veyssiere San Francisco, California 2016

This project presents and discusses the social and political contemporary challenges in relation to the ecological crisis. In this essay I demonstrate the, relevance of a train of thought combining postmodern philosophy with complexity and systems theory in order to articulate an operational reflection on the ecological crisis to finding alternatives.

I certify that the abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The process of composing this thesis was the most creative enterprise I ever engaged in. The classic format of writing presents itself as a linear thinking process: sentences, words and concepts can be very constraining and limiting which also somehow alienates us from realizing so. Thereupon, besides thinking, reading and writing ideas, I found myself animating my thoughts physically and visually too; I experimented, crafted, moved around and tested my ideas in many instances. The cyclic change of approach to articulating ideas stimulated my thought process in enlightening ways by broadening and adding dimensions to my existing perspectives, which is very much the ambition of my work with regards to the current ecological challenges the world faces today. With such approach and purpose, in addition to my scriptural work I offer a collection of illustrations to facilitate the comprehension and articulation of complex ideas and as analytic tools to facilitate and encourage multidimensional thinking. I believe that, it is by modeling perspectives visually that one can recognize and understand several facets of the problem within its global aspect. Nevertheless, it is important to be reminded that an illustration is never exhaustive, as it cannot encompass the totality of a system’s elements or a system’s broader context. Each one of the graphic figures I offer in this discussion should be considered open-ended with a great potential of extensibility.

This thesis is dedicated to Philippe Veyssiere, Lucy Rittner, Zelda Rittner, Maximilien Veyssiere, Fleur Veyssiere, Lucas Conte, Les Frangins Frendleyks and Joel J. Kassiola.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES...... v LIST OF TABLES...... vi GENERAL INTRODUCTION...... 9 PART 1. SYSTEMS AND COMPLEXITY IN MODERN ECOLOGY...... 12 Chapter 1: Paradoxes, Constraints and Creativity Given by The ecological Crisis: A Literature Review...... 12 Chapter 2: The Paradigm of Complexity and System Theory: A Methodological Approach...... 23 A. An Overview of the Contemporary Ecological Challenges: Theoretical Framework...... 23 B. Accessing Mental Models with System Intelligence: The Capacity of Recognizing and Modeling Concepts in Their Systemic Belonging...... 29 PART 2: CONCEPTUALIZING NATURE: CONSTRAINTS AND PARADOXES...... 39 Chapter 1: From Ancient Biocentrism to Modern Anthropocentrism and Grand Narratives: Bible, Hobbes, Locke & Descartes...... 40 C. Ancient and Modern views...... 40 D. The Path Towards Modernity...... 46 Chapter 2: Language, Narratives and Epistemological Issues to Conceptualizing Nature...... 59 E. Ideological Rhetoric: Essentializing and Totalizing Effects of Language...... 61 F. Meta-epistemological problems...... 68 G. Ontological gap: issues in defining the concept of “nature”...... 73 Chapter 3: A Postmodern Approach: Identity, Culture, Centrism and Dualistic Logic. 84 H. The role of culture and identity...... 85 I. Dualistic Logic: The modern Western governing narratives...... 98 J. Paradoxes of Individual and Collective Psyche...... 106 K. Defining the Derridean concept of “Deconstruction”...... 117 PART 3: SYSTEM MODELS: CONTEXT, STRUCTURES, DYNAMICS, ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES REGULATING THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS...... 128 Chapter 1: Embeddedness of mental models, power structures and behavioral patterns...... 129 L. Foundational structures of Western civilization...... 129 M. Modern Identities...... 133 N. Globalization and Development: Planetary Context...... 136 O. The different facts of human behavior in postmodern societies...... 141 Chapter 2: Structural organization of Western contemporary societies...... 153 P. Powers, actors, axiomatic system and ideologies...... 153 Q. Structural dynamics of contemporary societies...... 162 Chapter 3: Paradoxes and crisis relative to Western culture, democracy and neoliberal capitalism in the context of globalization...... 181 PART 4: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND PROPOSITIONS...... 216 Chapter 1: From problems and paradoxes to alternative framework and approach. 216

vi R. Mental Models...... 216 S. Social structures and behaviors...... 223 T. Global Superstructure and local substructures...... 231 Bibliography...... 235

vii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

Figure 1 The "nine dots" puzzle...... 13 Figure 2 “Nine dots” solved...... 14 Figure 3 Organization of human mental models and process of information...... 18 Figure 4 The Iceberg...... 24 Figure 5 Systems and subsystem...... 31 Figure 6 A Transdisciplinary Approach...... 35 Figure 7 Recursive and reflexive process of gender rhetoric in ideological narrative 66 Figure 8 Complexity of Human Representation...... 80 Figure 9 Morin’s Human Trinity...... 87 Figure 10 Human complex Identities...... 88 Figure 11 Polycentric Human Identity...... 91 Figure 12 Cultural capital of sexism: organizational heritage...... 95 Figure 13 A step further on a Foucauldian note...... 100 Figure 14 Oppressive Conceptual Frameworks...... 132 Figure 15 Oppressive structures of Western Civil Societies...... 158 Figure 16 Power of Language in Western Ideologies...... 160 Figure 17 Road Map...... 164 Figure 18 Capitalism: Structural conditions or circumstantial prerequisites...... 169 Figure 19 Commercial Logic of the Market Place...... 172 Figure 20 Market Equilibrium & Law of Demand and Supply...... 174 Figure 21 Structural Interactions and Retroactions...... 179 Figure 22 Structures of world-economy in the world-system...... 190 Figure 23 Processes of Economic Production and the Biosphere’s Dilapidation 197 Figure 24 Change Time: Capitalism’s Sustainability...... 198 Figure 25 Revolution...... 209 Figure 26 Effects of globalization...... 212 Figure 27 Contemporary Western culture and society...... 225 Figure 28 Morin's vision...... 234

v LIST OF TABLES Table Page

Table 1 The Planetary context of globalization...... 137 Table 2 The different facets of the Homo Sapiens: Homo Complexus...... 142 Table 3 Contemporary patterns of behavior...... 143 Table 4 Liquid life...... 152 Table 5 System Thinking...... 222 Table 6 The overlooked values of non-market activities...... 228 Table 7 Rupture with the modern episteme...... 230 9

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

"... Words have the power of ‘representing thought’. But representing in this case does not mean translating, giving a visible version of, fabricating a double material that will be able, on the external surface of the body, or reproduce thought in its exactitude.” Michel Foucault, The Order of Things There is overwhelming evidence corroborating the idea that the prevailing global ecological crisis the world faces today has been ensued by the perpetuating and pressuring individual and social behavior. The (foregoing) discussions about the on­ going degradation of the environment imply the necessity for humanity to make systemic changes in their way of living. Simple notions in biology warn us about environmental limits; the ecosystem cannot uphold and counterbalance humanity’s ecological footprint, as it reaches the limits of its carrying capacity. The modern lifestyle by which humans chose to exploit, consume and waste in the most extravagant fashion, is threatening the planet’s environmental equilibrium and sustainability. A significant amount of literature suggests alternative policies or value systems to remedy the problem, however the theoretical discussions can lack real-world implementations. In order to address this difficulty, my work attempts to put forward an operational and practically applicable theory in order to make essential changes. In a first part, I present the multidimensional stakes in conceptualizing Nature. First, I will examine modern thought and its relation with the concept of nature as in contradiction with the ancient thought. Drawing attention to the Western ideological representation of the ecological crisis, I set forth that ecological crisis is symptomatic of what really is a 10

contemporary political crisis that cries out for coherent ethics and value systems. Secondly, acknowledging the impossibility to transcend established complex human and social imperatives conditioned by the structures such as culture or language that shape our experiences, I investigate the substantial limits of linguistic and cognitive abilities for one to articulate, comprehend and access the question itself. Thirdly, I suggest a postmodern perspective as a strategy to identify essentializing ideological discourses and deconstruct it in order to resist and circumvent their totalizing effects. In a second part, with a great deal of literature and theoretical support I introduce the concept of complex thinking and the system theory. I examine the cognitive limits that bound our understanding the world, as a whole, under such prism. In a third part, I explore the contemporary body of rules, actors and dynamics and put them in relation to the system theory. I suggest, as a practical example of complex thinking, to incorporate the systems (political, economical and social) I found to be responsible for the ecosystem’s boundless degradation. In the fourth and final part, I make the effort of combining the tools I referred to in the previous sections, to developing a body of solutions, which will endeavor to incorporate the complexity of convoluted world/human dynamics. In order to link the environmental ethic and the postmodern philosophy, the interpretational background of the concept of nature will be briefly outlined. I retrace the path from the Ancients' idea of “cosmos”, which was to be altered from a harmonious self-regulating system of the vegetal, mineral and animal, to its actual ecological challenges generated by the anthropocentrism of modern Western civilization. Then I 11

evaluate the prescriptive and performative impact of language behind its scientific descriptive attempt, as well as the lexical limits of concepts from a theoretical approach. 12

PART 1. SYSTEMS AND COMPLEXITY IN MODERN ECOLOGY

In this first part, I make the claim that problematic patterns relative to the ecological crisis do not have central and isolated causes (ethics or social or economic or political etc.) Instead I argue that such patterns are interacting parts of bigger systems whose organization is decentralized and cannot be understood within the modern dualistic categorizations we overly rely on. This means there are coevolving structure and powers that fuel the progression of the ecosystem’s erosion, these include, and are not limited to the realms of: ethic, social, economic and politics, etc.

Chapter 1: Paradoxes, Constraints and Creativity Given by The ecological Crisis: A Literature Review

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Aphorism 3, 1620 The paradox In the Era of information, the question of the ecological crisis remains one of the greatest contemporary paradoxes. While nature safeguards the survival of the human species, the Western capitalist societies still consume its environment in a suicidal fashion. This work discusses the structures of Western ecological denial that produces the paradoxical situation of, on one hand embodying the most educated and most technologically sophisticated societies; and on the other hand, demonstrating to behave 13

in the most absurd, unsustainable and destructive manner. In this paper, I attempt to make the ecological issue a less abstruse and abstract topic in political theory. Situating my work in broader set of discussion within political science. Luc de Brabandere is a Belgian philosopher and mathematician; in 2012 he gave a conference for the Benoit Foundation in Brussels called When Constraints Make Us Creative. De Brabandere introduces his vision of creativity with a simple illustration; using the “nine dots” puzzle in Figure 1 below: The goal is for one to connect all nine dots in no more than four straight lines without lifting the pen.

• • •

• • •

• • •

Figure 1 The "nine dots" puzzle

In order to solve this puzzle one, has only one solution: to go outside the invisible frame, see one of possible answers Figure 2 below. 14

Figure 2 “Nine dots” solved

The puzzle’s difficulty rests in the fact that we unconsciously frame a problem and assume limits to finding a solution. This metaphor sheds light on how our mental boundaries prevent us to, literally, “think outside the box” (term paradoxically mainstream). Furthermore, it illustrates how constraints can foster creativity by changing pre-existing ideas we have about a given problem. In other words, Luc de Brabandere conveys the idea that we need to change our perspectives in order to creatively overcome constraints and produce conceptual and substantial change. With regards to the ecological crisis that I qualified above as one of the greatest contemporary paradoxes, de Brabandere himself also elaborates on paradoxical situations. In the talk he gave in 2012, I found a very eloquent and powerful interpretation of Francis Bacon’s idea that we must obey the forces we want to command: “Nature to be command must be obeyed”. De Brabandere explicates how at first the idea of obeying in order to command can seem very contradictory, however, he 15

explains how if one wants to master nature, then one must first understand the laws (knowledge) and obey to the forces (power) they aspire to command. This emphasizes, the theoretical issues relative to my argument about the ecological denial: If Western societies accepted to bring to awareness their understanding and knowledge at hand about climate change for instance, then, the paradox disappears as we understand the forces producing it with knowledge, and then how to change them. As one steps out of their thinking constraints, and admits the lack of rationale in the Western behaviors and admit another possible way of approaching the problem: the ecological denial can cease and the paradox can disappear leaving room for new thinking model that facilitate creativity and alternative ideas to step in to produce innovative change. Traditional perceptions and contemporary ideological constraints In the second part of the discussion I introduce the different conceptualization of “nature” giving an anthropological/historical background and retracing the structures of domination of man over nature. I present two distinctive ancient visions of “nature” starting with Plato and the dialogue of Timaeus on one hand, where he envisages all natural entities (animal, vegetal and mineral) as one whole in which parts are in communication with each other forming a balanced system. On the other hand, I address the opposite, anthropocentric vision given by Genesis, which extracts humanity from nature, suggests the superiority of humankind over nature, and presents nature as an environment to be exploited by man. With Mohammed Taleb in Living Nature and Pacified Soul, I explore the medieval relationship of man as the vector of the environmentalized nature. I argue that the 16

anthropocentric vision of nature as an environment initially given by Christianity is the one that allowed the dominant relationship between man and nature. Taleb helps understand how the Church condemns practices believed to initiate a (supernatural) connection with nature (e.g. witches). As the process of the State’s secularization started, it is paradoxically, the anthropocentric Christian vision of nature that was adopted by the mainstream modern Western thought. Next I use of works of Hobbes in his Leviathan and Locke in the Second Treatise, and investigate on the ideas that shaped the modern social, political and economical structures. I argue that the theories brought by the modern philosophers shaped the current thinking models that facilitate the domination of nature and culturally entrenched the anthropocentric view. With Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” in Principle of Philosophy, I show how he methodically theorized the disconnection and subordination of man over nature: by separating human from the animal realm and reducing their essential character to their differences. The Cartesian dualistic methodology of reduction and disjunction is the one that opposes concepts and presents them as mutually exclusive; which I argue, framed the contemporary Western mainstream perception model of knowledge. The modern school of thought reinforced the legitimacy of anthropocentric vision and dominion of nature that are now intensified in Western contemporary societies. I use writings of Val Plumwood in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Paul Wapner in Living Through the End of Nature and Ariel Salleh in Class, Race, Gender Discourse in the Ecofeminism/Deep Ecology to present the scientific logic, capitalistic structures and 17

patriarchal structures that shape the contemporary relationship of man with nature. Constraints, overcoming the paradox of the subject’s perspective In a second chapter, I investigate on the epistemological issues of normal science and the mainstream ideological rhetoric it produces as the methodological shortcomings, that, I believe my approach of systems in the paradigm of complexity fills the void. I begin my argument with a criticism of “truth” as defined by normal science and borrow alternative definitions of the notion with Jim Cheney in Postmodern Environmental Ethics and Christopher Butler in Interpretation, Deconstruction and Ideology. I attempt to overcome the idea according to which, one accesses reality by associating it to the notion of “truth”. It is with alternative definitions of “truth” that I unveil the rhetorical mechanisms of power that instrumentalize knowledge. The dominant power structures essentialize and totalize a belief in ideological discourse by delivering it as a narrative of universal “truths”. I illustrate that idea with the discourses that produces and perpetuates the gendered social models. The example I expose emphasizes the idea that we confuse perception and judgment: what is “true” (as judgment of perception) is not necessarily “real” (direct perception of environment) or reflecting “reality”; and how ideologies seize and subordinate objects of knowledge at the service of their beliefs to produce or perpetuate an “environmental reality”. In the graph Figure 2 below, I attempt to replace the concepts of “knowledge”, “truth”, “real”, and “ideology” in their distinct categorical affiliation. 18

THOUGHT PERCEPTION EXPRESSION HUMAN |UDGEMENTAND REALITY OF HUMAN PHYSICAL HUMAN GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIZATION OF ENVIRONMENT DISCOURSE OF PERCEPTIONS PERCEPTIONS

La n g u a g e Scientific K n o w l e d g e THEORIZED AS "TRUE" MENTAL MODELS

SUBJECT PERCIEVES OBJECTS Ideological beleifs and La n g u a g e

C u l t u r a l v a lu e s D e f in e d a s " g o o d "

Figure 3 Organization of human mental models and process of information

From there with Jonathan Culler and his account of works of Judith Butler in Literacy Theory, A Very Short Introduction. I clarify the role of language that amalgamates types of judgments and perceptions in the ideological discourse, and its normative power that produces social narratives and social categories. Next I look at the meta-narratives in theories of knowledge and assess the problematic in traditional methodologies evaluating the one of Hobbes, Locke and Descartes in their respective paradigms I presented in chapter one. In the following section, I investigate the meta-epistemological issues and assess with the idea of philosopher Karl Popper of knowledge’s uncertainty, which refutes its ideological use and essentializing effects. Additionally, with Thomas Kuhn’s account of knowledge as featuring a contradictory character I deny and criticize the simultaneous totalizing effect of knowledge when used in the dominant ideological discourse. 19

In the last subchapter, with Richard Williams account of “nature” I revisit the extended possible conceptualizations of the notion and assess the complexity and richness when building conceptual models. I relate that issue to Kurt Godel’s theorem of incompleteness to emphasize another essential character of knowledge that is, its open- endedness. Moreover, I use of Jurgen Habermas’ perspectives and instrumentalist interpretations of knowledge in Knowledge and Human Interests expose the ambivalence and ideological elasticity of knowledge when its theory is ideologically applied in the social practice. So far, my train of thought had followed intermittently, with the aforementioned authors, the ideas of eminent French philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin and his works in Method; as well as of Richard Rorty in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature to criticize the idea of “truth” and the scientific illusion of accurate human representations that would describe nature faultlessly, as reflecting “reality” omitting the disfiguring lens of human perception. I end this chapter with Edgar Morin as I articulate an understanding of human representation and mental models putting the concepts of knowledge, language and culture in interaction as a visual account of a system, to recognize the interrelations that produce thinking models. Then I conclude that our cognitive abilities are limiting our capability to self-reflect and incorporate the subject’s perspective as a variable in theoretical inquiry. The explanatory gap that our lack of epistemological knowledge hollows out, is by the denial of the fact that the object exists independently from our perceptions, and that our perceptions do not reflect the object independent existence outside of an epistemological perspective. Hence, it is within the paradigm of complexity 20

that I attempt to overcome the paradox of the subject’s perspective on the ecological crisis, and reposition the human subject within its environmental belonging and relationship to the object. Changing Perspectives In the third chapter, I open the discussion by exposing the contemporary paradox of democracy when observing the practical results of its theoretical applications, in terms of justice and equality ideals. These paradoxes motivate the exploration of human identity and the role culture plays in shaping the relations of domination and oppression that perpetuates injustice and inequalities. It is then, along with Morin’s Method I look at different aspects of human identity at the interrelations of three levels: individual, society and specie', which are to be transposed in their respective psychological, social and biological dimensions. From there, I progress with Morin’s thought and reposition the human identities in their cultural centrisms, within each level: egocentrism, sociocentrism and add myself the dimension of anthropocentrism. Next, with Val Plumwood again, I elaborate on the process of “othering” “otherness” and look at the mechanisms of domination in Western contemporary societies engendered by the modern dualistic logic. Then, I take a postmodern approach to identify the dualistic rhetoric in ideological discourse. I begin with a step-by-step guide to understanding the Derridean concept of “deconstruction” with Fred Poche’s account of the transanalytical process. The deconstructive approach aims to challenge and resist the mainstream ideological discourse that uses of the modern dualistic categorization to convey and shape 21

narratives that serves the oppressive dominant power. I apply and put the postmodern perspective in communication with contemporary movements where the perspective of a minority advanced significant change in society changing a culture’s perception on gender or sexuality for instance. The example of given by the deconstruction process with the postmodern perspective I believe, stands as a successful example of producing innovative change in ideas of justice and equality. Therefore, it is by allowing new possible perceptions to change the limits of the status quo that a society can put the models provided by innovative perspectives in praxis (c.f. Luc de Brabandere and Francis Bacon). In part three I analyze the power structures that enable the behavioral patterns that deteriorate the ecosystem and put the contemporary Western societies in the situation of the ecological crisis. I use of a range of authors from the postmodern school of thought. I discuss the social structure, political structure and economical structures of the social system and their implication on the individual level, (to be continued... as ideas will be articulated and composed comprehensively in a written part) Creativity and Innovation It is with the intention of providing new frames of understanding the ecological crisis that I suggest in part four reforms and alternative models that could make change. Therefore, in order to change our perspective of the world’s ecological challenges we need to understand the different models or systems that interact with each other, shape and rule our Western societies. To do so, I investigate the complexities of convoluted world dynamics relative to the ecological crisis in contemporary Western societies. 22

First a little further in this part, I elaborate on the paradigm of complexity and system theory as a conceptual framework from which will emerge alternative models for the one that encourages the destruction of our ecosystem. It is with philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin in Method and Donella H. Meadows in Thinking in Systems as main references to undertake an alternative methodological approach in contemplation of the ecological crisis. Then according to the methodological approach presented, my fourth and last part will present alternative models to the destructive preexisting ones, in order to provide a consistent response to the paradoxical challenges provided by the ecological crisis and its fundamental denial that the social praxis impersonate. The transformations I recommend in this section are offered as paradigmatic reforms in three different realms of human perceptions, organizations and actions. First, to change our mental model and perspectives on the ecological issue, I suggest an educational reform that is to advance a new pedagogical method, which would encourage K-12 students to have a “system” approach to observe and analyze world phenomena. The system approach, I believe, would facilitate the creative process of changing perspectives and “thinking outside of the box”. Then, this would allow greater cognitive development and flexibility to support the elaboration of more sophisticated logic systems and dissolve the mainstream methodology by unveiling the dualistic rhetoric’s fallacious and archaic logic. Secondly, in order to change our vision of nature or otherness in general, some perspective should be brought to the cultural centrisms of Western societies. I suggest reforming the structures and modes of communication between individuals and cultures. 23

Thirdly, in order to change the destructive behaviors within the contemporary Western society, I suggest an ethical shift, which implies that a reform in the domain “ideas” is necessary (define “ideas”). It is the political, social and economical structures that ought to undertake an “ideal enterprise”. It is by offering any kind of value system to fill the ideological void left by the one of capitalism where limitless consumption presents itself as the only possible “idea” and promise for the future (Alain Badiou, La Feminite). Ideas and values are totally disconnected and absent in our Western contemporary societies.

Chapter 2: The Paradigm of Complexity and System Theory: A Methodological Approach

A. An Overview of the Contemporary Ecological Challenges: Theoretical Framework.

The questions revolving around the ecological crisis raises a number of challenges that I hypothesized as a paradoxical situations resulting from denial and lack of self-reflection. In this chapter, I argue that an approach with systems can help overcome the ecological denial and change the constraints given by the modern anthropocentric perspective embodied by the Western mental models. Broadening Perspectives To think of the ecological crisis in terms of systems is to complete the quest of comprehending the multiple dimensions of interactions, forces and patterns contributing and perpetuating the issue. Figure 4 below was inspired by templates in the resources of 24

the Waters Foundation’s website, that I appropriated to the case of the ecological crisis while also incorporating the themes of paradox, constraints and denial. It helps us picture the ecological crisis’ underlying implications with a graphic illustration of an iceberg. The iceberg diagram is generally used in system thinking to expose specific levels of an issue and their degree of visibility.

Figure 4 The Iceberg

At the tip of the iceberg, the “event” level represents what is in sight, the problem we can effortlessly perceive, which I have exemplified with the issue of climate change. The second level stands for the patterns of behavior that generate the crisis at the top. Using 25

fossil fuels for instance, increases the levels of C02 in the atmosphere and constitutes one of the patterns producing climate change. If the relationship between level 1 and 2 is easily detected, the existing technology allows us to observe destructive patterns and transmit information to a large public (science and media); yet, the climate change remains the product of paradoxical habits (e.g. use of fossil fuels). The third level uncovers the structural dimension that causes and perpetuates destructive behavioral patterns. In the case of climate change or the ecological crisis, a society’s systemic political and economic organizations establish the structures (e.g. capitalism) that necessitate the paradoxical overuse of natural resources. At the bottom of the iceberg lies the mental model level where, unconsciously, our perceptions shape and legitimate a system’s activity. The denial rests in the fact that we refuse to realize that our mental model are highly erroneous and that the modern logic and anthropocentrism are the “reasons” that anchor and fasten the constraints that produce the paradox of the ecological crisis: as we know, we have reached the carrying capacity of humanity with the Western contemporary way of life; yet we continue wrecking the ecosystem, pushing the limits of our ecological footprint, we are in denial, impotent, passively embarking on our adventure to self-destruction. Overcoming fragmented knowledge During the 18th Century European intellectuals reformed beliefs and secularized Western societies. Along with the great scientific revolutions and the emergence of modern science, the reductionist approach to produce knowledge became the dominant methodology in the realms of science; this is what Edgar Morin suggests in Introduction 26

to Complex Thinking (2005): “We live in the empire of principles of disjunction, reduction and of abstraction, which as one constitute what I call the “paradigm of simplification... The principles of simplicity either separate what is linked (disjunction), or unify what is diverse (reduction).” (Morin, 2005:18,79). Renee Descartes, notorious philosopher and advocate of the reductionist and disjunctive approach, wrote “If we are to understand a problem perfectly we must free it from any superfluous conceptions, reduce it to the simplest term, and by process of enumeration, split it into the smallest possible parts.” The Cartesian methodology was the dualistic empirical abstraction of the world, which consisted of concepts that mutually excluded one another (e.g. body/mind, man/ animal, man/nature, man/woman, culture/nature etc.). In order to understand the world we live in, as the system of all systems, we broke it down and created different and separated domains of knowledge into an array of scientific disciplines. It is evident human understandings necessitate some sort of divisions to comprehend the scope of a question; in order to identify, access and untangle the knots given by a problem. However, science has put down roots in each of its fields to the point of losing consciousness of their broader systemic context. In fact, while the scientific fragmentation of knowledge into fields and subfields helped build knowledge by isolating domains of expertise, it also hinders an extensive systemic understanding, as our classification methods and boundaries obstruct the potential convergence of multiple fields. Consequently, when trying to elucidate a problem, paradoxically we eliminate the evidence of its organizational dynamics of interaction by breaking it off, isolating it and reducing it to pieces. Later in the discussion, I use Morin’s 27

account of “human trinity” in which he builds and reconstructs to resist the general focus put on either the psychological, social or biological feature of human identity by reassembling them as a whole. Traditional science in those terms produces fragments of knowledge, isolated from their environmental context. The obsessive and compulsive urge for science to provide order, by classifying and fragmenting knowledge, obstructs our own understanding of the world’s organization, and thus holds us back from finding solutions competent enough to adapt to the complexity of a system. Donella H. Meadows, in Thinking in Systems addresses such issues by saying that “we have to invent boundaries for clarity and sanity; and boundaries can produce problems when we forget that we’ve created them (...) The right boundary for thinking about a problem rarely coincides with the boundary of an academic discipline (...) We get attached to the boundaries our minds happen to be accustomed to (...) The greatest complexities arise exactly at boundaries” (Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems 97-98, emphasis mine). Although conferring frontiers to knowledge benefits our understanding by producing order and organization, it also blinds us. It constrains our visibility and ability to recognize the complex phenomena of the ecological crisis, that cannot exclusively falls within one scientific discipline (biology, sociology, psychology, economics, etc.), as it is specifically such a method that, by ignorance, facilitates the progress of the ecosystem’s degradation. Fragmenting and disconnecting our knowledge is preventing us from critical self- examination, and thus, taking us on the path of self-destruction: As egocentrism, 28

sociocentrism and anthropocentrism are harmful tendencies of unilateral thinking, likewise the one-dimensional vision under the prism of a single discipline or theory creates detrimental beliefs such as scientisms. To cite only a few: biologism, racism, monotheism, neoliberalism and feminism, or any ideological -ism are views that reject “otherness” in all its possible forms; thus, these -isms exclude the variation and conjunction and admit only one kind of science, skin color, god, economic model, sex and so on. It is in that sense that ideologisms, idea-logos-ism as “idea-claimed-superior”, are indubitably restrictive, oppressive, dominative and inherently misleading, unfitting, and destructive. Consequently, a lack of interaction between concepts due to rigid scientific structure tends to produce reduced and disjointed theories, isolated from reality. Instead I suggest that different concepts and sciences should play the dialogical complex role that elements of an actual system have. By that, I encourage a scientific focus on integration and communication between sciences, rather than bounded specialization: a paradigmatic shift is much needed in order to reform the structures of the modern erroneous dualistic thinking. To conclude, Edgar Morin sums it up by presenting the challenges regarding such paradigmatic shift (Morin, 2005: 75-76): Hereby we clearly perceive the radicality and the scope of the paradigmatic reform. It comes, in a way, to what is to be the simplest, most elementary, most “childish”: To change the home basis of a reasoning, the associative and repulsive relationships between initial concepts, but from which depends all the structure of reasoning, all the 29

possible discursive developments. And it is of course what is the most difficult (...) Nothing more complicated than modifying the angular concept, the massive and elementary idea that supports the whole intellectual edifice. Because it is obviously the whole structure of a thought system that will find itself shattered, transformed, it is an enormous entire superstructure of ideas that will collapse. This is what we should expect.

B. Accessing Mental Models with System Intelligence: The Capacity of Recognizing and Modeling Concepts in Their Systemic Belonging.

Conceptual framework: defining systems First of all, it is essential to introduce the concepts of “system” and “complexity” and define their abstract meaning, as well as their theoretical significance in studying real world phenomena. I base my understanding of systems according to Donella H. Meadows’ definition in Thinking in Systems (Donella H. Meadow, 2008: 11, emphasis mine): A system is more than the sum of its parts... A system is a set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its ‘function’ or ‘purpose’. Before I elaborate on the concepts and dynamics of systems, a preliminary presentation of what features an open system is necessary in order to make the system approach conversant and coherent with the issues relative to contemporary ecological challenges. For methodological purposes, delimiting the scope of a system is inevitable, however, a 30

system’s boundaries are nonexistent and purely fabricated by the human mind: “There are only boundaries of word, thought, perception and social agreement - artificial, mental model boundaries. The greatest complexities arise exactly at boundaries.” (Meadows, 2008:95). In fact, systems are not separated, systems are entangled, interrelated and interconnected with other supersystems, systems and/or subsystems. For this reason, when thinking in systems, one ought to acknowledge the system’s scale and its environment, as other systems can impact the one under study. When studying ants’ behavior for instance, one should also take in account the scope of the anthill and the systems regulating dynamics to sustain the cases of a capricious, changing environment. Furthermore, as an open system will be affected by internal and external factors, its behavior will inherently adapt and change over time. In that sense, when thinking in systems one needs to comprehend that systems operate in different scales of time and change with varying time lag. A graphic illustration of the apparition of life and the evolution of ecosystems on Earth emphasizes the idea that a system sustains over time and changes by continuously cooperating with its environment. If at first glance, Figure 5 below appears to represent a hierarchy, it is however one that aims to expose relations of entangled systems. As the age of our planet is 4600 million years and birth from the formation of the Solar System, photosynthetic systems allow multicellular life to appear underwater 1000 million year ago; from whose evolution with the transformation of the planet’s environment enable mammalian development 800 million years later; and then, the existence of anatomically 31

modern humans only 130,000 years ago! Again, systems are affected at different scales of space and time; they will change over time in varying delays. Furthermore, thinking with Figure 5 also give a perspective on different time spans and time lags in a system’s alteration that are relative to the system’s range/scope/scale that is affected. If an asteroid hits our supersystem Earth, the time span between the collision (cause) and extinction of terrestrial living species (consequence) can be very small, however other living entities could be spared and aquatic forms of life remain intact for an extended period of time for instance.

Modern Human Life 130,000 years Life 3500 million years

Planet Earth 4600 million years

Solar System

Figure 5 Systems and subsystem

Open systems are multi-scalar in terms of time and space; they are evolutionary (change over time), interdependent (in interaction with each other) and embedded (within one another). 32

Typically, the idea of systems being interconnected and interdependent on different scales of time and space implies the notion of embeddedness; such perspective allows us to take notice of their integration and overlapping on at different systemic scales: the Earth’s biosphere as a system holds different ecosystems, which themselves are composed of more subsystems etc., while the systems of our planet rest in a larger supersystem: the solar system, which itself belong to the Galaxy and so on. In each system, or subsystem an indefinite number of systems can be identified and modeled by the human mind. It is in accordance with Meadows that I insist on how mental boundaries can be detrimental in many aspects, for example scientific development (e.g. academic boundaries), justice and equality (e.g economic boundaries, national boundaries, ethnic boundaries etc.); and I incite one “to have the mental flexibility to find appropriate boundaries (...) to remember that boundaries are of our own making, and that they can and should be considered for each new discussion, problem, or purpose. It’s a challenge to stay creative enough to drop the boundaries that worked for the last problem and to find the most appropriate set of boundaries for the next question. It is also a necessity, if problems are to be solved well” (Meadows, 2008:98- 99). With this in mind, let us now explore systems dynamics with a set of conceptual tools to understand how systems work. Generally speaking, one conceives an open system as an operating entity with organizational rules according to which its parts are in interaction and in relation with its whole. In that sense, an open system is auto-regulated by its self­ organizing phenomena; it maintains a state of “stabilizing disequilibrium” supported by 33

balancing dynamics of order and disorder (Morin, 1990). For more clarity, I consider Meadows’ account of system structures. A system behaves according to dynamics of incoming and outcoming flows regulating the stock level. A system’s stock is the infrastructure of a system, it’s “foundation”. Flows operate independently from each other, meaning the input can exceed the output and vice versa. The rules of a system however, depend on causal connection depending on stock levels. This means that a change in the inflow or in the outflow can alter and change a system. The mechanisms that allow a system’s sustainability over time are balancing feedback loops. A feedback loop is a persistent behavioral pattern that makes a stock maintain its increasing or decreasing momentum. Conversely, a balancing or stabilizing feedback loop maintains the stock levels with a purpose. Those stability-seeking loops are adaptive, regulative loops with equalizing feedback dynamics (Meadows, 17-31, 1993). There are different conceptual approaches to systems, open and closed. We consider an open system as complex because, in connection with its environment, it undergoes dynamic flows of input and output. On the contrary, a closed system is autarkic: it is isolated from its surroundings and has defined boundaries; therefore it is impermeable from external driving forces. In such regards, we consider a world system as an open one, whose context is of the most significant and whose complexity rests in its multidimensional relationships with external sources. As for my approach to the ecological crisis, the discussion will be one of an open (eco)system. The different spheres of human life: the planet as the eco-supra-system, humanity as one of its systems within which subsystems interact. 34

The initiative of using systems as a conceptual tool is for me to broaden the modern human perspective on the ecological phenomena. The ecological state of affairs only constitutes a so-called crisis at the systemic level (“Modern Human Life” on Figure 5). In fact, living ecosystems are self-regulating and self-organizing, however, the stock levels of the ecosystem that enable human life are being exploited in ways that disable its stabilizing dynamics. The balancing feedback loops of the ecosystem that supports human life cannot catch up with the outflows induced by human energetic consumption in its broader sense. By all means the ecological crisis really constitutes a threat for humanity’s survival as a part of the fauna and flora’s ensemble, whose other parts may be equally endangered, but not necessarily its whole. Thus, a suspersystem or formerly existing system, such as the flora, is sustained independently from the stock that maintains the fauna system or the human life subsystem, as it does not face the same “level of urgency” or time lag between the alteration process and adaptation/transformation/extinction processes. Consequently, it is within the framework of systems that I embrace the commonly accepted and anthropocentric terminology that describes what in fact really is an “environmental crisis”. As the human system depends on its environment to survive, I will put my focus on the ecosystem throughout the human system’s lens which conceptual tools define the biosphere as technically, not anthropocentrically, the human system’s environment. Figure 6 below puts emphasis on a transdisciplinary approach. It is by choosing the prism of systems that I look at the ecological crisis within the scope of the Western human life at large (on the levels of the individual, societal and political 35

systems). In doing so, I hope to shed light on the complexities that lay at their junctions and in the interactions of subsystems (i.e interrelations of psychological, social and governmental) that have been obliterated by Modernity’s paradigmatic barriers and facilitated a global denial of the environmental crisis. The paradigmatic shift I suggest is illustrated by the black arrowed dynamics.

ECO-SUPER-SYSTEM

/■...... X 1 s...... \ PATTERNS OF STRUCTURES ENVIRONMENT BEHAVIORS OF(SUB)SYSTEMS MENTAL MODELS PERCEPTIONS IN CRISIS ACTIONS BELEIFS .. A—— J ------J >P ■ 7 Hm o I ■a m o O o o c/> o Wo RHETORIC OF > os °> o o c/)“ z i ECOLOGICAL DENIAL uI c s 1“ z o C/> m 73 s o o CO g z n > Po s > §1 o > o 3 S O m sm t

Figure 6 A Transdisciplinary Approach

When studying the extent to which the biosphere’s erosion threatens the human life perpetuity on Earth, saying we should readjust our ecological footprint is stating the 36

obvious and overlooking the particularities of the Western contemporary human and their way of life. I must examine and inquire about the underlying structures that facilitate the achievement of destructive behavioral patterns; which are, inadvertently, slowly driving humanity to commit collective suicide. In pursuance of capturing some the complex conditions that produce the paradox of ecological crisis and its denial. It is with attention to an anthropological and historical background and close examination of the mental models and thinking processes (e.g. part two); that I proceed later with an examination of Western human systems and structures of its governing subsystems: social political and economic models (e.g. part three). The graphic Figure 6 above elaborates on the aspects given by the iceberg in Figure 4, on the rhetorical level we can find the roots of the problem as well as a base for elaborating alternative mental models to reform the structures of the belief system (e.g. part four). It is by changing perceptions that one intuitively will readjust their patterns of behavior and action. The paradigm of Complexity As for the paradigm of complexity, I use Edgar Morin’s account: “the intelligibility of a system should be found within the system itself, as well as within its relationship to its environment; and that relationship is not simply a dependency relationship, but rather constitutive of the system” (Morin, Introduction to Complex Thinking, 1990:32). Under such premises one can see the embeddedness and ubiquity of systems: they are in multileveled types of cooperation everywhere. We are surrounded by systems, we are part of systems, we are systems ourselves and there are systems within us. Systems 37

can be studied at any level, micro or macro, from any epistemological standpoint and under any field or discipline of research (from thermodynamics to psychology and everything in between, including the solar system, traffic jams and anthills). The complexity of a system simultaneously embraces the global and the local aspects of it. Therefore, to envision a dynamical system implies a multiscallar approach to conceiving its patterns of organization; to reflect on all levels of connection within and between the macro and the micro levels. In other words, most systems are not linear, like algebra would be for instance; systems in the real world mutually interact and imply rather more complex notions of causality that require a transversal mode of thinking. Egdar Morin, in Introduction to Complex Thinking, offers a method to take up the challenges of understanding the world’s phenomena overcoming the traditional epistemological heritage of scientific disjunctions and reductionism. In this first volume, he discusses his aspirations in taking a multidimensional approach with the one of complexity. Essential to the field of system theory is, in fact, that it is multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary. Complex thinking by definition rejects the modern reductionism and modes of disjunction used by normal science. The lens of complexity helps examine phenomena in terms of open systems and their interconnections, instead of perceiving closed systems of abstracted, isolated objects (i.e., expand on Hobbes’ liberalism that holds an atomistic vision of humanity and/or Thatcher’s denial of society). Hence, the fundamental approach to interpreting systemic organizations is the one of complexity. To present the aspects of the paradigm of complexity I borrow the word of Edgar Morin, whose work on complexity and system theory is rather consistent with my 38

approach to presenting the ecological problem thus far. He offers a vision of what is knowledge that he characterizes as complex (Morin, 2005:13-13): Because it recognizes that the human subject that studies it is included in the object of study; Because it conceives inseparably of human unity and diversity; Because it conceives all dimensions or aspects, actually disjointed and compartmentalized, of human realities, that are physical, biological, psychological, social (...) economical, sociological, historical; Because it conceives homo not only as sapiens, faberjand oeconomicus, but also as demens, ludens and consumans; Because it holds together disjointed truths that are excluding one another; Because it allies the scientific dimension (...) to the epistemological and reflexive dimensions (philosophical); Because it recaptures a meaning to lost and fallen words in sciences, including cognitive: soul, spirit and thinking.

While reflecting the narrowness and shortcomings of the Western mental models and thinking processes, this account of complex knowledge condenses the methodological standpoint I aspire to take when circumventing the limits of theory-building that modern science suffers when confining knowledge in normative categorization with academic fields. 39

PART 2: CONCEPTUALIZING NATURE: CONSTRAINTS AND

PARADOXES

Introduction In this section, I illustrate the methodological implications in conceptualizing ‘nature’, while examining the conditions under which the relationship between humanity and nature are constrained and evolved to producing an environmental crisis. First, I introduce the idea of modern anthropocentrism by putting it in contrast to Ancient philosophy. After introducing the antagonistic Modern and Ancient schools of thought, I investigate the consequences of modern values on the environment. Thereafter, assessing the divergent theoretical contrast, I review the consequences and importance of taking an epistemological standpoint while building a theory on the relationship between humanity and nature. Then, I shall explore postmodern philosophy with the Derridean concept of “deconstruction”, and utilize it as a multi-dimensional analytical tool and framework. 40

Chapter 1: From Ancient Biocentrism to Modern Anthropocentrism and Grand Narratives: Bible, Hobbes, Locke & Descartes

There is no universal meaning of a concept such as “nature”, however, the presentation and underlying meaning of a concept frames the common understanding of its perceived character. In other words, each given civilization throughout time and space has its own conception of nature. In the context of a global historical approach to conceiving nature, one would have to go back to the Neolithic period and the Agricultural Revolution around 10.000 BC, and the foundation of monotheist religions, starting with Judaism. However the works of such a comprehensive chronological anthology of civilizations and the history of thought falls outside the scope of this paper

C. Ancient and Modern views

Typically, there are two major, opposing paradigmatic trends when thinking about nature in the West: the Ancient and the Modern. The philosophical and spiritual approach to ecology (spiritual as in its immaterial form, in connection with the idea of “soul”) that rests in the ancient thought goes way back to Classical Antiquity, while the Modern anthropocentrism arose during the Renaissance and the rise of modernity in the 16th and 17th centuries. On one hand, the Ancients’ ethical considerations put nature at the core of existence: the mineral, vegetal and animal realms coexist and co-function in 41

a balanced system where all entities are dependent of one another (source). In the dialogue of Timaeus, Plato’s account of the formation of the universe is prominent in the Ancient cosmology. The craftsman of the physical world materialized the universe, creating a harmonious whole of four elements: fire, earth air and water. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers an overview of the dialogue, and relates to the explanation given for the existence of the universe: “It is a living thing (zd[i]on, also translatable as “animal”), because it is better for it to possess intelligence than to lack it, and the acquisition of intelligence by anything requires the acquisition of soul. It is complete, and thus it includes within itself all the species of living things as its parts.”. Furthermore, in the ancient paradigm, Greek mythologies were animist in the sense that they incorporated natural phenomena in their mythology, beliefs that view non-human entities as possessing a spiritual essence. Ergo, in the Ancient’s tradition, humans are animals resting within the idea of nature that bears a soul as much as all the other inhabitants of Earth. On the other hand, in the value system of modernity, the idea of equal coexisting categories is disturbed by the human hierarchical reorganization of the order while conceptualizing nature, stepping out from it and rising above it: anthropocentrism. The anthropocentric perspectives originally found its roots the in monotheist religious conception of nature, given for instance by the Genesis as: “ God blessed them [men and woman] and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’.". 42

The concept of environment emerged along with the anthropocentric exteriorization and superiority of mankind over nature. More precisely, in the modern tradition, humanity removed itself from nature while experiencing scientific revolutions. God gifted nature to man, believed to be superior living species as they were uniquely endowed with reason. The anthropocentric feature of modern life excluded nature, isolating humanity from sharing a common living sphere with and within nature; they separated themselves from nature but conceived it as useful for human ends. In other words, modern men envision nature as an external resource that can be used for the human purpose of creating its own privileged and secure space; this anthropocentric view does not include explicitly the degradation biosphere but that is an inevitable result. Peter Sloterdjik in a conference in at University of Paris 5 in 2000, evokes the idea of interiority and exteriority of the modern human sphere (Universite de tous les savoirs. audio conference no. 330). According to him, the world’s organization is stressed by the construction of boundaries and symbolic means of political and philosophical affirmation of oneself, creating different psychological, social and political spaces or spheres. The communities within the human sphere managed to come together in a political and cultural synthesis and create, physically and mentally, ‘interior spaces’, for which an inner wall serves as the primary separating component or boundary in producing spaces. Hence, the idea that humans are in a state of isolation as inhabitants of a privileged ecological niche, who can create the desired interior design of their sphere. This account of the abstraction and superiority of humanity from nature directly relates to the modern dislocation of humanity’s spiritual, immaterial connection with nature. The 43

pre-monotheist world recognized nature to be alive, to be visible and invisible, both material and spiritual. The modern religious belief according to which only God’s invisibility and transcendence exists, denied nature’s intangible essence. In modern times the cultural and scientific rationalization of nature reduced it to its objectifiable, biological interpretation, a turn that Max Weber refers to as “disenchantment of the world”.(source) The concept of “disenchantment” describes the paradigmatic shift from the enchanted pre-modern traditional conceptions, such as animism, to the Western modern processes of rationalization and desacralization of reductionist scientific thought. From Antiquity to The Middle-Age The medieval experience of Christianity initiated the transition from Ancient to Modern structural relationship with Nature. First, the collapse of the Roman Empire gave way to the social and political reorganization of Western Europe. Along with the Early Middle-Ages, the expansion of monotheist religions surged; Roman temples were progressively converted into Christian churches. The growing Christian power facilitated the emergence of monarchism, by which the King is justified by the divine.(source) These developments were followed by the High Middle-Ages the political structures evolved into sketches of the modern Western states, as we now know them. As the political powers were modeled in the Christian authority, the philosophical developments were also very entrenched in theology. In regards to the 13th intellectual life, Thomas Aquinas drew upon Aristotle’s distinction of form and matter and contributed to removing nature from the commons of living 44

entities. However, if the Aquinas scholastic greatly inspired the modern humanism, it is not until the 17th Century and thinkers like Renee Descartes that wrenched human and nature apart. The humanist thought developed a rationalist construction of human identity, where they elaborated upon the dualism of mind/body. By mechanisms of separation and opposition and by putting reason at the center of the human nature, the Cartesian thought breaks up the relationship between man and nature, the latter being stripped of reason. Mohammed Taleb, in Living Nature and Pacified Soul, explores the realms of ecopsychology and inquires about the spiritual relationship between men and nature across time, civilizations, religions and culture. In presenting his works of 49 portrayals of eco and cosmo-conceptions, he briefly discusses the Middle Ages among other different periods of time (Mohamed Taleb, Living Nature and Pacified Soul, 2014, translation mine). His figurative contributions give perspective on the evolution of the human psyche and representations of nature. Moreover, his account resonated with my own attempt to take an anthropological and historical perspective, from nature’s desecration by religion through Ancient naturalism to the early stages of Renaissance with Modernity and scientific Revolution. I mention Taleb because he recalls an interesting anecdote that shows the Middle Ages’ influences and its cosmic humanism as the junction between Antiquity and Modernity. Leonardo De Vinci’s illustrious drawing of the Vitruvian Man depicts the proportions of the human body representing the structures of the universe, (picture) He symbolizes the human body as an extension of nature; De Vinci’s cosmography characterizes man as 45

the vector, the carrier of the cosmos. Notwithstanding, mystical practices existed in all ages; the medieval Christianity emphasized the interesting dialectic of the monk and the gardener. The mystical exercise of shamanic and magic incantations, healers using plants for instance, epitomized the function and relationship of the Virtuvian Man. The Catholic Church condemned those ritual practices, believed to be supernatural and thus Heretic. The Inquisition conducted prosecutions of ‘witches’ who communicated with nature. However, it is not until the end of the Middle Ages that the witch-hunt phenomenon reached new heights; actual estimations range from 40,000 to 100,000 women killed. Nevertheless the medieval philosophy has certainly environmentalized nature (instead of humanity being part of nature, nature is conceived as external from human life), and its relationship to nature remained one of enhancement with ceremonial practices, not yet to be the one of dualist corruption by means of its intellectualization in the modern discourse. The ancient consecration of nature came under attack during the Renaissance; it is along with the gestation of Modernity that the rupture was completed. In fact, as scientific revolutions were contradicting religious dogmas and as the political powers were taken away from its hands, the Catholic Church, hand-in-hand with the Enlightenment’s intellectual trend, reinforced the dislocation of men and nature’s spiritual connections. 46

D. The Path Towards Modernity

Hobbes, human nature and anthropocentrism My mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear. Thomas Hobbes The idea of an anthropocentrism preceded its modern practices in Western societies, whose conditions are animated by political, social and economic power structures, that is to say: Modern democracy, individualism and capitalism. Thomas Hobbes, emblematic pioneer of modern philosophy, elaborates the idea of a government that would be embodied by one person or group, incarnated and symbolized by "The Leviathan". He draws and builds his social contract on a negative anthropology of human nature. In the state of nature, two passions govern human nature for Hobbes; the first consumes men in their mighty, constant and unlimited desire to master, and the second is the one that torments them with the idea of violent death (Hobbes, Leviathan, 1986:161-2). Hobbes declares that humans differ from animals by their capacity to reason. “The greatest of humane Powers” in chapter 10 is what allows humans to compare themselves to each other, it is to value, or to “worth a man” that will engender vice and war (Hobbes, 1986:151). These notions of honor and dignity, which animals are deprived of, are the result of man’s ability to reason and make man a rational being in conflict. The purpose of creating a civil government would be to administrate laws to regulate the causes of war, which are found in state of nature and diluted or exalted in civil society. These causes are competition for profit, diffidence for security and glory for reputation (Hobbes, 1986:185). 47

Hobbes justifies, in the interest of seeking for subsistence, the human domination over nature (Hobbes, 188, emphasis mine): And thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason. The passions that incline men to peace are: fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggests the convenient articles of peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement. The sense we get from Hobbes’ account of the relationship between Man and Nature strongly echoes with the modern anthropocentric turn, allowed by the vain, speculative and vainglorious human rationality. The idea of nature was shaped and formatted of by the early modern conceptions. As men conglomerated in creating the modern political State, they organized themselves to work on and against Nature. Humanity put nature to serve modern societies’ goal of profit through its exploitation. Locke’s influence: political liberalism and capitalism. Forasmuch as Hobbes’ philosophy is recognized as the origins of liberalism, Locke’s work is less ambiguous and its influence on the modern political and economic structures is more transparent. Locke’s limited government operates by virtue of the idea that each man disposes of a fundamental and inviolable individual liberty and individual property that the state ought to protect (John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 2002:1689). Along with creating the concept of environment, when understood as an exploitable resource, rose the idea of property, work and profit recalled 48

in Locke’s Second Treatise On Civil Government. In chapter 5, On Property, lays a fundamental contribution to American society as he identifies sources of legitimacy to the right of property. While men can take advantage of nature, and the world that they all have in common, by applying labor to what the earth put at his disposal, a man can remove his own from the common natural state. It is by using God’s gift to men that men can mix nature with his labour, as long as he leaves enough for others, and can claim property on it, which others ought to respect. The values of work and nature are means to justify property and possession (Locke, 1689: § 27): For its labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what it is once joined to, at least where there is enough good left in common for others.

For the modern man, nature is at his disposal to be taken advantage of and this idea is central to and constitutive of the anthropocentric view. Nature is considered as an environmental resource that men not only can own, but also use to exploit (for subsistence) and abuse to make profit (for opulence). The widening operation of economic capitalism, structuring and aiming to sustain Western societies, fostered the ethical gap between the Ancient view of nature and Modern anthropocentrism, tearing Nature and Humanity apart by making humanity superior and creating the modern vision of Nature as an external environment to be appropriated and utilized for humanity’s purposes. In this regard we understand that the transformation of nature, together with the conceptualization of the environment, is intrinsically correlated to capitalism through the 49

idea of work and ownership. The moral dimension provided by the Ancient is supplanted in Locke’s philosophy by its fundamentally antithetical stand of capitalism: the concept of value alongside the idea of market facilitates individualistic behavior; that is to say, according to Locke: “By the law of nature men should not waste resources; The abundance of perishable stock must be traded for something equivalent or more durable” (Locke, 1689: § 46). Thus, the idea of property and its necessary industry triggered the creation of money as a trading value (money being the most long lasting of goods, as opposed to perishable resources e.g. corn); to avoid waste and enable men to increase their possessions through use of a pre-agreed common currency system, by which he can exchange his stock and property for money (Locke, 1689 : § 47). However, the desire to acquire more goods alters the natural value of their utility. Locke notes that industry, trade, and the accumulation of money ultimately also assisted men in the progress of increasing their possessions (Locke, 1689 : § 48). The individualism that underlies the enlargement of one’s possessions is emblematic of the capitalist Western consumer societies we live in. The social, political and economic context of the modern life is determinant when addressing the environmental question. The ecological ancient wisdom as a model was not designed to reconcile nature with the rise of modern civilization and the emergence of the contemporary capitalist structures. Hence, its inconsistency due to its anachronistic features (e.g. modern capitalist values contradict ancient cosmological values) may prove the impossibility to implement and restructure society in accordance with the Ancients’ philosophy. Therefore, the myth according to which we can align to these ancient values and morals, without considerations for 50

modern life, is of credulity because of its contextual incompatibly. Descartes’ ontological reduction ism, rationality and dualism In order to understand the premises of the contemporary conceptions of nature it is of the utmost importance to understand its rooting in Modernity’s philosophy. Renee Descartes, iconic figure of modernity and the intellectual Enlightenment movement, revolutionized the structures of the Western thought. In the context of Modernity, the cosmological idea of nature was transformed to its conceptualization as environment. With his famous “Cogito ergo sum" translated as “I think, therefore I am”, Descartes discomposed the cosmos’ ontological order by differentiating humanity from the animal realm who do not think, presumably. It admits the superiority of man over animal by virtue of reason, as if men were not animals. According to modern premises, animals do not think, they are inferior to humans, therefore they lie within the natural sphere whereas humans think, therefore are outside of nature. The modern semantic shift changed the structures of the concept of nature; it is by stating the exteriority of man and opposing it to nature as non-human that man created the concept of the “environment”. The ontological dualist reductionism that emphasizes modernity’s worldview assumes that everything is reducible to two kinds of substance, mind or body, for instance. The Cartesian development of the human/nature dichotomy genuinely transformed the way we perceive the world’s phenomena. Descartes’ dualism assumes that since men are the only species endowed with consciousness and have the ability to reason, they intrinsically belong to a different sphere -the one of the mind- than all other non-rational entities -the ones of the body. 51

The simplifying mechanisms of dual categorizing rely on the following causal approach: there are those who are given a mind, therefore, some are not, hence the reductionist opposition of mind/body. As the realms of humanity and nature are divided accordingly, the mental barriers that separate human and nature are drawn. The Cartesian dualism not only deeply reformed our way of producing scientific knowledge but also universalized it in Western societies. This means that pursuing knowledge with dualistic reasoning allows methodological mechanisms of simplification and hierarchical organization that ignore the complex character, the necessary transdisciplinary approach to studying the world’s phenomena (e.g. the ecological crisis is not just a biological issue but also a political one, a social one, an economic one, an educational one and so on). This occurs because the rationalist methodology alienates the individual from the object of his study (the founding principles of the Cartesian methodology will be discussed later in a section devoted to epistemological and metaphysical issues in theorizing knowledge). It is by separating humanity from the rest of the world’s entities and by denying the idea of “living nature” that the humanists’ rationalism creates the conditions of its own denial: The one upon which the essential disconnection of man and nature that it theorized, inherently limits the extent of its knowledge about it. Therefore, the dualistic logic prevailed by humanists’ methodological reductionism is fundamentally fallacious. The rationality prevailed by the Moderns to extend their knowledge about the world embodies, paradoxically, the mental boundary for man to connect with the “natural” world. However, by justifying the human superiority over nature with reason; Descartes 52

made himself pioneer of the contemporary project of becoming “master and possessor of nature” instrumentalizing science and technology and subordinating nature for humanity’s ends (Descartes in Plumwood, 2002:110). To conclude, in addition to producing the mutual exclusion man/nature by logical disjunctive mechanisms, the Cartesian dualism justifies the inferiorization of nature as discussed above. The humanists reinforced, with the use or excuse of reason, the human urge to master and control nature. Contemporary Conceptions Paul Wapner, in Living Through the End of Nature, argues that the wilderness of nature is jeopardized on both empirical and conceptual levels (Wapner, 2010:5). The idea of “The end of nature” characterizes, on one hand, the physical impact and harm perpetrated by humanity’s modern way of life on nature’s materiality, such as with wilderness. On the other hand, it describes the conceptual abstraction of the notion of nature as a social construct. Today, what we call nature is the realm of nonhuman entities, and Wapner qualifies such conceptualization as “a contextualized idea (...) a projection of our cultural understandings specific to certain time and places.” (Wapner, 2010:7). Wapner in the Introduction of his book mentions the complexity of the power structures that facilitate the ecological erosion and refers to capitalism, the modernist scientist logic and patriarchy (Wapner, 2010:25). Following this insight I explore the impact of the contemporary power structure on the Western conception of nature. Scientific logic In addition to fragmenting and dissolving the Ancients’ ideal of nature as 53

harmonious cosmos, the modern anthropocentrism also altered and deteriorated the biological structures of nature. In the 21st century, we follow up on the damage and discuss the ecological disasters in terms of numbers obsessively trying to measure the level of biodegradation attained (see environmental literature such as State of The World annual series). No matter how alarming the numbers are, calculating and measuring the quality of air, the rising temperatures, the elevation of the sea levels and so on, tend to erroneously give us a sense of comprehension, a mastery on what is going on, especially regarding global warming and climate change. Scientific data and report tend to rationalize the ecological degradation by reducing the human ecological footprint to numbers instead of ringing alarm bells not only as a warning but also as catalyst for change. The scientific reductionist narratives impact the psychosocial fabric of modern Western societies; paradoxically it disconnects us from the material reality that it reports on, which could explain the modest gains of any environmentalist movement. Furthermore, while expected to be a catalyst for change, the scientific rationalization of the impact of human life on Earth somehow simultaneously removes the sensibility necessary to building a responsive ethical approach to the problem. The sensibility I refer to here is non-material; it is a sense of appreciation of the essence of nature, being mindful and aware of our intrinsic connections, both sensual and spiritual. The human psyche is not necessarily emotionally numb or so disconnected from nature; yet, individuals tend to distance themselves from non-human entities in modern anthropocentrism. Modern anthropocentrism, coupled with capitalist logic, considers nature as an 54

environment and employs it as an economic resource,. This view envisions all parts of nature, from tree to fish, as commodities and investments; in the neoliberal market everything is commodified. This blurs the historical reflection of its natural essence given by the Greeks. The consequences of modern anthropocentrism not only affect nature or how we conceive it, but changes our ability to relate with it on other levels than the one allowed by reason. It is true the anthropocentric vision distances humanity from nature, the dualistic conceptions and categorization are certainly in favor of building scientific discourses but this view ultimately and inherently harms the health of nature’s ecosystems. Capitalist structures While being aware of the human ecological footprint, modern societies develop a sense of responsibility. However, the conceptions of nature’s value are not necessarily shared within a society; the fact that nature is endangered disparate reactions among different economic strata of Western society. The economic system is structured along a capitalistic logic that increases the wealth of a small minority, at the financial expense of ‘a majority’. This system puts the lower classes under economic pressure to survive, causing money to be their main priority. Under these conditions nature is to be seen primarily as an instrument to prosper, and the natural resources of the planet are considered the means to acquire economic capital in order to achieve socio-economic stability. In contradistinction,the upper and middle classes are relieved from such anxiety and have the luxury of other concerns, such as the ecology (see the relation between wealth and concern for the environment; Simon Kuzets curve). Taken from an individual 55

perspective, all are not equal before the ecological crisis; different interests and priorities will create different perspectives. Here I make use of pronoun “we” referring to the privileged stratum of societies, the ones supposedly more inclined to have sensible connection to nature because they are freed from economic insecurity of the lower class. Nonetheless, we destroy the so-called environment; we still perceive the wilderness today as a fragile and precious entity that we ought to protect, even though we are part of the threats to it (Wapner’s reservation of wilderness). As a result of the increasing scarcity of wilderness, the idea of experiencing nature arouses enthusiasm. As Paul Wapner puts it “ We are so thoroughly decimating the empirical reality of nature and so radically revamping our ideas of it that the whole ensemble of nature as that which separates from humans is apparently vanishing before our eyes." (Wapner, 2010:5). The appreciation of nature echoes with experience something rare, exotic; wilderness has gradually become a rather alien environment for the Western population of the modern world. Paul Wapner talks about the “otherness” of nature that has been significantly altered by human life and its artifices (Wapner, 2010:14). In fact, genuine wilderness can never really be found either in the urban or rural areas where the ecosystem is in disequilibrium due to established human civilizations in a context of advanced and globalized capitalism; it is the elimination of wilderness in the sense of “untouched by humanity”. Furthermore, as humanity colonized the natural world the idea of preserving the remains of wilderness has became more popular in contemporary Western societies (Wapner, 2010:23, discusses of “reservation ecology” and why it doesn’t work). However, two 56

paradoxes arise from wanting to minimize our ecological footprint to protect wilderness: firstly, it inherently requires us to interfere and manage those natural spaces, thus intruding upon nature to control its degradation (Wapner 29).; and secondly reducing our impact on nature conflicts with the supreme value of endless economic growth given by the capitalistic structure of contemporary societies. Wapner lays out examples of human ecomanagement of the nonhuman world by monitoring the natural world to maintaining wilderness biodiversity (Wapner, 2010:142-146). Patriarchal structures In addition to the aforementioned accounts of the scientific and capitalist impact on the Western view of nature, Ariel Salleh, in her essay Class, Race, Gender Discourse in the Ecofeminism/Deep Ecology, refers to humanity’s domination over nature as analogical with the modern patriarchal ideology that oppresses women (Salleh, 1993: 79). According to her, the division and domination is encouraged by “ a complex set of exploitations based on patriarchal identification of femaleness with the order of nature” (Salleh in Postmodern Environmental Ethics, Max Oelschlager, 1995:79). Salleh’s words resonate with the Greek mythological personification of nature as “Mother Earth”. A parallel can be drawn from the Ancient feminization of nature and the contemporary naturalization of female, both subordinated by the sexist and anthropocentric Western societies. The dynamics of patriarchal structures that associate the notions of nature and femaleness, allow the exploitation and subjugation of both under the same ideological frame: This domineering relationship of men over women is dialectical as it opposes to 57

social forces, and it cannot be dissociated from the one of man over nature, as it also implies the opposition of two different entities. The way our paternalist societies treat and condition women are not just analogous with the way we treat nature, they are very much interrelated. Val Plumwood, in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, draws an analogy as well and argues: “the concept of reason provides the unifying and defining contrast for the concept of nature, much as the concept of husband does for that of wife, as a master for slave” (Plumwood,1993:3). The preservation of natural spaces is now under human supervision and management to protect biodiversity of the non-human organisms. Referring to Wapner’s argument about ecomanagement and wilderness’ preservation in reservations, men seem to isolate biosphere to protect it; similarly, women are marginalized by the same mechanism of paternal care that allows and perpetuates the very conditions that oppresses them. Environmental organization, institutions and other eco-friendly green trends assign themselves with the ‘paternalistic mission’ of protecting the environment, the heroic intentions legitimize and perpetuate the structures that allow the abuse in the first place. It is by arrogantly pretending to operate as the antidote, while acting as the poison in the first place that humanity paradoxically continues to destroys nature while trying to safeguard it (glossary: pharmakon). Because environmentalist movements attempt to undertake the challenge of repairing or avoiding environmental consequences of the modern way of life, they also indirectly legitimize its destructive design by not challenging the founding principles of its philosophy. Despite good intentions, the movement appears somewhat superficial while positioning itself as a savior. The idea of 58

humanity’s superiority remains and its domineering relationship with nature lingers. Hence the anthropo-centered paradigms and actions of the modern Western man are not compatible with the idea of living conscientiously within nature, as, by definition/principle, they exclude it. Going back to Sloterdijk’s account of spaces and men isolating themselves from nature, he says that instead, men should reject and dissolve the concept of the environment and invite nature to be part of the community (Universite de tous les savoirs, audio conference no. 330). The counter-productive modern human sphere could never embody the founding principles of any green policy as it maintains the structures of a system politically and socially constructed on production, whose economy depends on the abusive exploitation of environmental resources. As Wapner also suggests, a dialogue between man and nature should be initiated (Wapner, 2010:162); which means that a sense of responsibility and reconciliation should prevail by putting an emphasis on connectivity “between people, landscape, species and, as will become clear, narratives” (Wapner, 2010:156). I acknowledge the closing of this chapter opens a Pandora’s box with the concept of “narratives” whose great significance will, however, be discussed in the following section. In this chapter, the different conceptualizations of nature given by the different schools of Ancients and Moderns were an attempt to present the question answering the “what”, “when”, “who” and “how” questions. To which we hope we respectively give a sense of the ethical divergences between the traditional narratives; as well as the authority legitimizing power of such a paradigm; and their concrete consequences affecting the 59

ecosystem. Borrowing Wapner’s words to sum up my argument: “For too long humans have maintained cultural and philosophical boundaries between ourselves and wilderness (...) the most challenging step to blurring the boundaries of wilderness involves a cultural and philosophical blurring of our idea of wilderness. Central to this point is the principle of relationship” (Wapner, 2010:159). In other words, as a symptom of the Modern society’s degeneration, the environmental crisis reflects what I believe is a political crisis, with interplaying elements and/or actors and paradigmatic struggles, to which regulation inherently implies incorporating the questions of values. Then I shall explain why in the next chapters.

Chapter 2: Language, Narratives and Epistemological Issues to Conceptualizing Nature

If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. Albert Einstein The contemporary societal and power structures of modern philosophical thought transformed the natural world, substantially generating the environmental degradation of the system that fundamentally supports their existence. This chapter discusses the philosophical and methodological stakes that ought to be acknowledged while leading scientific inquiry. While exploring the processes of conceptualization through language, we emphasize the importance of understanding the implications in taking any methodological approach, as well as the epistemological limits in undertaking research 60

and building theories. Throughout history, the attempts to conceptualize nature have shown to be contextually entrenched in given epochs and cultures. In this following section I argue that human understanding is constrained in ways that limit the extent of comprehending the ecological disaster. In David Abram’s words: “There is no realm, not even the mental terrain of our thoughts, that falls completely under conscious human control” (David Abram in Paul Wapner, 2010:162). In this section I set aside the Greek view of ‘truth’ as something absolute and isolated from the rest, whose paradigm I find outdated if I shall think about the contemporary stakes of the ecological crisis. From a pragmatic standpoint the Platonist ideal of truth is to philosophy what God is to religion. Similarly, there is a myth within modernity that somehow sanctifies objective reason. It is paradoxical to hunt for closed, harmonious theory of knowledge when knowledge has been shown to be an open, self-correcting enterprise. I shall not elaborate my argument on either essentialist or relativistic grounds, but rather use the paradigm of complexity, which is capable of accounting for the ecological crisis, reconciling pragmatism and epistemology. Here, it is important to bear in mind the definitions we give of ‘concept’, ‘language’, ‘culture’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘narrative’, and how these realms of the human mind interact and rely on one another to understand the world. 61

E. Ideological Rhetoric: Essentializing and Totalizing Effects of Language

Undecided “truth” in quest for certainty In chapter one I retraced the different philosophical views about the origins and essence of nature that shaped societies across time. Such initiatives to express abstractions with concepts are motivated by the need of to make sense of the world, to bring clarity to what appears to be obscure, to answer to uncertainties. From humanity’s attempts to access forms of knowledge, I assume thereby, that we crave to believe in manmade ideas that would appear to us as the “true” representation of nature (Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: 1979). As much as “nature” has shown to inspire many conceptualizations to find its true nature, the idea of “truth” itself arouses various attempts to finding its true definition. In fact, the historical perspective on the conceptualization of nature stands as an illustration of the difficulty to find a true and universal definition of nature, as truths changed over time and each of its definitions, given with reason, carried the context of its numerous purposes (c.f. historicist vision). Consequently, I imagine the struggle of finding a true definition of truth itself. This raises the epistemological question of the quest to truth: as how do we truly know (legitimately represent) what we know to be true (legitimate representation)? This very complex question requires an extended study on the matter, which I cannot undertake in this section. However, according (corresponding) to my anthropological/historical approach to the concept of nature, it appears to make sense (coherence) for me to stand for a pluralist view of truth. In such regards, Michael P. Lynch’s account of “truth” is helpful, as 62

it is both appealing to coherence and/or correspondence. Again, my concern here is not of advocating a specific theory of truth over another, but rather looking at how truth operates. Instead of leading a quest to find truth, I shall investigate on the quest of truth itself: what kind of knowledge does it encourage? For these reasons, I consent to “truth” as in its operational role; more specifically, as in Lynch’s idea of “truth” as a functional way to lead inquiry (Lynch, 2001). A pluralist view helps us understand how truths, as social beliefs and justifications, carry a normative value of “correctness”. The truism of “it is good to believe what is true” emphasizes the social value of truth and how it accomplishes normative function (James, Lynch, 2004). Essentializing truths and totalizing norms: narratives and ideology Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought Walter Benjamin Whether or not truths are “correspondent” to the empirical world is not demonstrable in any certain way; here however, I focus on how it brings “coherence” to the human mind. On such grounds, I reject the idea of a true and accurate or faulty description of a concept such as the one of nature (which justifications fall out of the scope of the discussion). Instead I offer the idea of the plurality of intersubjective truths that conventional accounts were adopted upon shared paradigms in different historical and cultural contexts. Here, I understand the underlying social construction featuring the development of truths as its general function (not its nature) of creating narratives. According to Jim Cheney’s sociological definition in Postmodern Environmental Ethics: 63

Ethics as Bioreaional Narrative: “ ‘Truth’ is simply the result of social negotiation, agreement achieved by the participants in a particular conversation” (Jim Cheney in Max Oelschlaeger, 1995:23); along with Christopher Butler’s postmodernist account in Interpretation, Deconstruction and Ideology: “ What we accept as truth in fact only the latest in a long series of interpretations of past experience, and that our acceptance of any such latest position is not determined so much by its empirical well-foundedness as by its general coherence.” ( Butler, 1984:85, emphasis mine). What I mean by “essentializing truth” is the way conventional truths are assimilated by the process of their generalization; and how they shape our mental representations of the world. Hence, an aggregation of “essentialized truths” is organized by the human mind and articulated by a cultural body into social narratives. I shall argue now that the idea of totalizing norms stems from the one of essentializing truths. If we consider something coherent therefore we assume that it must be true. The social representation of what must be true holds the description of an ideal, but also carries an imperative message, in the sense that it operates by suggesting what ought to be, and extensively, prescribing a recommendation: what must be done (imperative), according to what must be true (ideal). Hence, we understand that a social norm is characterized by its correspondence to the social representation of truth as coherent and as ideally good. Richard Rorty, in Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature, makes the distinction between “normal discourse” (i.e. non-contentious) and “abnormal discourse” (i.e. deviant from the norm, controversive): “Normal discourse (...) is any discourse (scientific, political, 64

theological or whatever) which embodies agreed-upon criteria for reaching agreement; abnormal discourse is any which lacks such criteria.” (Rorty, 2013:11). Therefore truths do not only have the descriptive role of representing the world with narratives, but also a prescriptive function to normalize values upon a dominant ideology; as a “truth” implies a single right (the true, as the normal) way to act, as opposed to a multiplicity of wrongs (those that could have been true, the false, as the abnormal) (Lynch, 2004). In my understanding, a norm is totalizing in the sense that it denies its own alterity, it imposes an erroneous unity where multiplicity transpires. In short, I make the argument that the human rational mind synthesizes its representations of reality and beliefs into shared narratives, from which sets of norms are shaped that structure and give a frame to a dominant ideology or set of ideas. Language-game, picturing the world: constatative and performative What is it that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. Niels Bohr The role of language is that of a connecting, adaptive tool between the world and its human representation. Given the centrality of language, I consider the linguistic issues in producing knowledge, truth, norms narrative, ideology etc as a “language- game” as the social practice that approves of meanings (Wittgenstein, Sellar, Lyotard). I explore the rhetorical operations of the philosophical discourses and their prescriptive goals, in the sense that they base themselves on pre-established narratives and accepted knowledge to describe how things are and prescribe how things ought to be, 65

and such extension sets down their representation as social norms and realities. Jonathan Culler in Literacy Theory, A Very Short Introduction discusses the underlying normative power of narratives when examining the meanings and effects of language (Culler, 1997: 82-107). In the realms of gender studies, notably in the works of Judith Butler, the idea of a ‘performing constative’ emphasises my argument of a ‘prescribing description’. It argues that the description of subjects as male or female, carried by the rhetorical operation of repetition, prescribes and enshrines gender norms (Butler in Culler, 1997:101). While claiming to represent what or how things are, the relentless social description and categorization of gender is performative, as it prescribes and genders the subject. As Butler puts it “subjected to gender but subjectivated [made a subject] by gender” (Butler in Culler, 1997:103). The rhetorical mechanism that operates the gender norms produces our social representation of male and female, and dictates how we should embody the idea of male or female, excluding, by normative totalization, any possible alternatives. The linguistic performative force of gendered narratives, creating and perpetuating a social and mental model, emphasizes the performance by prescription of the supposed descriptive, scientific and philosophical narratives. The grammar of an ideological discourse produces oppressive social narratives as it amalgamates what is seen- a “perception of reality” (physiological differences)- with what is judged, “theorized as true” (essentializing social differences) and what is categorized, “defined as good” (totalizing difference in value). Ultimately, the persisting reflexive cycle of oppression of gender norms and society 66

works with mechanisms of repetition: I participate in others’ normative and social representation of a woman, as everyday (production of reality) I represent that social image of women according to how I am myself relentlessly socially subjected to it (perceived reality). In fact, I never made the original choice of being a woman (paradox) but still feel like a woman (denial). This unsatisfying explanatory gap between who I originally was and who I became sheds light on human perceptual constraints (subjected to given social narratives). Furthermore, the same role construction can be observed with men, people of color, etc. In figure 7 below, I unravel the mental models process from which originates the confusion and different interpretative phenomena: I untangle the rhetorical knot of the essentialization and totalization of gendered social models that delivers and perpetuates oppressive ideological discourses.

PERSPECTIVE THOUGHT LANGUAGE

3 . PARADOX 1. UNIDEMENSIONAL VISION 2. DENIAL OF ALTERNATIVE HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN GRAMMATICAL BELEIFS ESSENTIALIZES SOCIAL DISCOURSE TOTALIZES REALITY OF HUMAN IDENTITY IDENTITY IDEOLOGICAL VALUE

JUDGE AS IS T h e o r y m u s t b e " t r u e ” MAN OR WOMAN PERCEPTON OF SELF IN SOCIAL CONTEXT WITH PRE-EXISTING MENTAL MODELS AND NORMS CATEGORIZED AS IS DEFINITION MUST BE MASCULINE OR FEMININE "GOOD" SUPERIOR OR INFERIOR

Figure 7 Recursive and reflexive process of gender rhetoric in ideological narrative

The cultural stereotypes regarding gender do not necessarily reflect who we are and 67

tend to take away our individualities; they do not mirror our identity. To me this illustrates the same recursive normative impact of all sciences on social and historical narratives; bysimultaneously contributing and perpetuating norms because they remain coherent, without necessarily being correspondent. This is what Rorty’s epistemological behaviorism denounces when he says that our knowledge is built on conversation and social practices, and such representations do not mirror reality (Rorty, 2009:1271-4). Nevertheless, as for both the social and rhetorical structures that allow the perpetuation of narratives, ideological frames and normative patterns also create the conditions for contention and opportunities for alternative ideological frames and narratives to emerge, such as the ones that now recognize more than two gender markers (of which an example will be given in the next chapter). The irreducibility of the male/female gender narratives here shows the lack of epistemological grounds to justify absolute/universal correspondence, but allow the possibility of an alternative hermeneutical or conversational approach to edify the discourse and potentially produce social change (Rorty, 2009:171, 351). Under those circumstances, it is of the utmost importance to keep in mind the function of knowledge through language: producing coherence, set social norms and narratives and ideological truths. 68

F. Meta-epistemological problems

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it Albert Einstein He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt. Joseph Heller - Catch 22 It is not feasible to incorporate my approach of the question of the ecological crisis in a traditional methodological school as it would imply reducing and separating its phenomena to fit specific modes of inquiry. My capitulation in finding a perfect, pre­ existing epistemology, in which my thinking would not be bounded, shall lead me to take the transdisciplinary approach offered by the paradigm of complexity. Here I shall explain why I cannot consent to the modern account of reason and its abstract rationality, whose solutions are not less problematic than the initial predicaments. The development of a “theory of knowledge” by studying the human mind was the epistemological turn taken by Descartes. The contemporary heritage of the Moderns’ dualist rhetoric is problematic from a metaphysical standpoint, as it developed knowledge from generalizations upon the reason of the one-dimensional reduction of a mind-and-body distinction. In regards to Descartes’, Hobbes’ and Locke’s main arguments, one can note the omnipresence of the thematic of mastery (c.f. Wapner’s “Dream of Mastery”), whether on the human’s (essential) nature, or on nature in its materiality as man’s environment. Those narratives typically relate to the modern myth, according to which humanity exceeds its natural origins and, for the sake of of progress and religious obligation, should master the universe. 69

I shall take one narrative to illustrate the codification and legitimization of the Modern’s conceptual model. Locke’s account of nature in the Second Treatise is the most helpful here, as it is the most straightforward. In fact, it reflects three major aspects of the modern thought: He suggests that men are superior to all other natural entities (anthropocentrism); that nature is given to and for men by God(nature as his environment); and that nature serves men’s survival purposes, therefore men should exploit it and make it their property (objectify, transform and privatize nature by adding to and working on it). From elaborating “human nature” to “nature’s nature”, philosophical knowledge greatly influenced the social representation of nature, and still impacts the contemporary Western ideology, as we shall see later. Now we shall explore the epistemology of the modern thought, whose narratives do not just presuppose the structures of nature, but also ideologically justify controlling it. As the Cartesian thought suggests: The modern man appropriated and mastered nature in practice, instrumentalizing and manipulating its abstract concept. I shall criticize this modern epistemological double-legitimization of its claims (as knowledge), and the philosophical reflection that makes these claims. Rorty argues that what we call “claim to knowledge” in that sense is merely “the claim to have a justified belief” (Rorty, 2009:141). He quotes Wilfrid Sellars on the matter: “In characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state, we are placing it in the logical space of reason, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.”(Rorty, 2009:176). When thinking about nature we ought to bear in mind the complex and multidimensional 70

connections that put the conceptual model in communication with reality. That means we should be aware of how the idea of nature (or of any other concept) in narratives substantially affects the material world. The profound transformations in conceptualizing nature, from the religious, ancient or modern perspectives, stand for an eloquent illustration of the impact of narratives (claims about knowledge) and how they are justified. The way Renee Descartes envisioned the separation between mind and body as excluding one another exposes, in our case, the upstream methodological and metaphysical issues of theory building presented by limits of the subject/object relations, and thus the need for a new kind of epistemology. Meta-epistemology My argument stands in with Rorty’s epistemological behaviorist claim “that philosophy will have no more to offer than common sense (supplemented by biology, history, etc.) about knowledge and truth (...) [and] refuse to attempt a certain sort of explanation (...) between the impact of the environment on human beings and their reports about it, but uses such notions to explain the reliability of such report.” (Rorty, 2009:176). In fact, for him it does not make sense to believe that knowledge has foundations outside the realms of knowledge and inquiry; we already have agreed upon and accepted “a paradigm is, in effect, inevitably self-justifying” (Israel Scheffler in Rorty, 2009:178-326). The epistemological engagement in theory-building and legitimately producing knowledge is of great significance. Arran E. Gare in Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis brings attention to the stakes met while scientifically articulating 71

one’s experience of the world under any method design. In fact, not only do competitive and alternative methodological models manage to comprehend reality within the limitations of their own epistemological orientation and narratives, but they also carry the metaphysical, totalizing effect of producing meaning while situating and legitimizing theories. Gare then quotes the physicist David Bohm who says: I think the most important aspect of the interchange is the emergence of a common realization that metaphysics is fundamental to every branch of science. Metaphysics is... something that pervades every field, that conditions each person’s thinking in varied and subtle ways, of which we are not conscious. Metaphysics is a set of assumptions about the general order and structures of existence... It seems clear that everybody has got some kind of metaphysics even if he thinks he hasn’t got any... What is needed is the conscious criticism of one’s own metaphysics, leading to changes where appropriate and, ultimately, to the continual creation of new and different kinds. In this way, metaphysics ceases to be the master of a human being and becomes his servant, helping to give an ever-changing and evolving order to his overall thinking. This definition emphasizes the prevalence of metaphysics when thinking about epistemological standpoints and the impossibility to take hold of a fixed account of reality. Karl Popper’s account of truth and scientific knowledge developed within the necessary uncertainty corroborates the idea that nature does not autonomously exist, but rather that it is malleable, abstract conceptualization relies on, and interacts with, other concepts, as well as the social context in which they are constructed. I also object to the predominance of what Thomas Kuhn calls “normal science” as the one guided by 72

a “single paradigm” that avoids contradiction; such ‘science’ dictates epistemological norms and is only renewed and by the scientific community when “falsified” by another theory, triggering a “scientific revolution” (Chalmers, 1999: 104-129). Therefore, a dominating paradigm generates narratives and perpetuates unquestionable truths unless a whole conceptual and logical framework challenges it and offers a new, acceptable, single paradigm. In that regard, a paradigm is a necessary prerequisite as a helpful heuristic device (that may be true or fasle) or a set of regulative ideas to enable “normal science” to make new discoveries. On such grounds, I reject the essentializing (c.f. Popper’s uncertainty) and totalizing (c.f Kuhn’s contradicting paradigm) effects of scientific truths, paradigms, narratives, discourses and so on, by admitting their plural character without making any moral judgment, (yet). Rather, I promote self-awareness and openness to alterity to relieve truths, paradigms, narratives, discourses etc. from the non-desirable effects of modern dualism and anthropocentrism. In that sense, I support Bohm’s idea of continuously creating new and different kinds of metaphysics to facilitate progress in human thinking. This implies reintegrating, rather than dissolving, uncertainty (c.f. Popper) and contradiction (c.f. Kuhn) in the dominant, one-track thinking process in order to unfold its diversity and expand its promises. For these reasons, I reject the idea of an abstracting, one-dimensional epistemological approach and suggest it should be overcome. While science fails at being self-reflective and blots out its own epistemological issues, it ignores the multiplicity of connections that structure the ecological problem; and therefore constrains our understanding of it. 73

To review, I provide the alternative of a multidimensional approach to theory building that requires inevitably the recognition of two key features of knowledge as truth: its uncertainty and its contradictions.

G. Ontological gap: issues in defining the concept of “nature”

To know that you know when you do know and know that you do not know when you do not know: that is knowledge. Confucius, Analects, 2: 17. “We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.” Richard P. Feynman in 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?': Further Adventures of a Curious Character Beyond the abstraction of empirical realities in opposing concepts Through the process of defining Nature, one is confronted by the polysemy of the word, that is, its different meanings and potential interpretations. Raymond Williams admits that the concept of nature is the most complex one in the English language (Williams, Keywords, 1983). He explores and distinguishes three domains within which nature can be defined. The author’s first report is rather neutral, being “the essential quality and character of something” as an entity’s identity. In the second account of nature it is to be understood as an inherent operational force constitutive of the world and/or human beings, assumed to be formed by some single, prime, 74

transcending cause or entity, reminiscent of the idea of God. In the third conception, nature refers to the “material world itself. The author emphasizes that the singular word “nature” implies a multiplicity of things which all share something in common: Their existence in the real world. The polysemic aspect of a word in a given language and the diametrically opposed definitions we find for one concept such as “nature” emphasizes the semantic complexity of language. After examination we find that general human usage of language tends to reduce the definition of a concept by disjunction, where a definition is built against a contrary; as in “nature” as opposed to “artifice”, “nature” as opposed to “divine” or “nature” as opposed to human-made “culture”. The richness of conceptual knowledge becomes problematic, as the governing laws that characterize knowledge are indefinite. Because concepts resting outside the natural world are inexhaustible, there is an indefinite number of questions to be asked and ways of building knowledge. This metaphorically relates to Kurt Godel’s theorems of incompleteness, in which he suggests that a mathematical model cannot be both consistent and complete (Kurt Godel, 1931). While Godel’s theory applies to mathematics, elaborating on axiomatic systems, it inspires and resonates with the idea that we will never achieve Cartesian knowledge. In other words, there is knowledge beyond what we can conceive, which does not mean it is inaccessible to us, but rather that it is not fully solvable because of the infinite character of knowable things and the finite number of things the human mind can process. While for a matter of cognitive comfort, the human mind marks the border of it knowledge with distinctive and fastened 75

disciplines of sciences, I put the emphasis here on the essential character of knowledge: its open-endedness. Critical theory of knowledge In an attempt to rationalize the foundations of human reasoning, one can investigate the purposes of elaborating and communicating about human experiences of the world.One can question the use we make of “truths” and formulate the interests that oblige humanity to make scientific progress. Briefly, I present a critical view of contemporary sciences’ inheritance of the Enlightend’s epistemological legacy made by one of the rare defenders of the Modern’s project: Jurgen Harbermas. With regards to the development of modern sciences, Habermas argues in Knowledge and Human Interests, that three types of “knowledge-constitutive interests” drive the expansion of human knowledge and delineate the modes of scientific inquiry. The first one is a “technical interest” that he defines by our benefits from dominating and controlling our environment; an empirical analytic method is used as an instrument to explain, predict and master nature (c . f feeds anthropocentric strategy) (Habermas, 1968). The second one is the “practical interests” that reflects the practicality of mutual i understanding in social interactions; interpretative research in historical-hermeneutic science allows an appreciation of cultural norms and control on social standards (c.f. feeds sociocentric values): “The object domains of the empirical-analytic and of the hermeneutic sciences are based on these objectifications of reality, which we undertake daily always from the viewpoint either of technical control or of intersubjective communication” (Habermas, Theory and practice, 1974:8).The third interest is the 76

emancipating one, the methods of critical theory facilitate self-reflection and provide insights on psychological, social and environmental and constraints which knowledge enables the process of liberation and self-emancipation once the oppressive forces are identified and brought to consciousness (c.f. feed egocentric behavior) (Habermas, 1968). Notwithstanding the work of Jurgen Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests have generated much criticism; however, it stands as visionary when articulated together and put in inter-communication. The objectifying process of realities sheds light on technological, practical and emancipatory interests and shows to what (uncontrollable) extent “science” (or “method of knowledge”), can instrumentalize truths, manipulate narratives, and dominate decision making in economic, military, political, social and individual development, to either pursue its potential self-realization or self-destruction. The conceptual frameworks and logic given by a methodological design can both elucidate and obscure knowledge to serve, benefit and promote ideas. Here I put the emphasis on another fundamental character of knowledge: its ambivalence; its ideological elasticity. Knowledge, language and culture in a system Throughout the process of hominization, the one by which primates progressively evolved into human beings, emerged language with and within which humanity’s evolution never ceased (Morin, The Humanity of Humanity, 2001:31). Language is the cognitive ability that revolutionized all the dimensions of the individual, society and species, or what Edgar Morin calls the “human trinity” (Morin, 2001:52, I shall expand on 77

this concept in the next chapter). Specifically, the individual, by acquiring and communicating with language, enabled the development and building of culture, at the same time embodying the tool for its transmission. Language creates and perpetuates culture (Morin, 2001:34). Culture is, according to Edgar Morin, “constituted by all sets of customs, practices, skill, knowledge, rules, norms, interdictions, strategies, beliefs, ideas, values, myths, that perpetuate, generate and regenerate social complexity (....) The primary human capital is the one of culture.” (Morin, 2010:34). Morin recognizes the fundamental role of language in producing knowledge and instilling culture; and culture as being both the condition and object of learning to create language and knowledge. Also, we understand that knowledge, language and culture are the constitutive elements of each other’s systemic existence and subsistence. Therefore, the linguistic and cultural models by which we access knowledge are inherently modeling knowledge. Correspondingly to Morin’s account, we extricate three main collaborating entities that together produce one another: 1) the function of language and knowledge in creating culture (L+K=C), 2) the function of knowledge and culture to produce language (K+C=L), and 3) the role language and culture in building knowledge (L+C=K). We understand that scientific knowledge derives from the primal sensory and cultural experience of the world, yet we abstract the nature of a physical object that we conceptualize with language and systemize with logic. We define the world with abstract conceptualization and build scientific models according to those observations, and we articulate theories to explain them, which have necessarily arbitrary starting points , as human science does not mirror nature or reality. 78

Thinking system and production of narratives Insofar, combining elements of Williams’ and Morin’s insight we realize that, though knowledge is unlimited, it is not undetermined. Using Richard Rorty’s book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. I shall explore the realm of human representations, justifications and narratives. In this section I consider, but not rely on, an epistemological behaviorist approach to knowledge and the justification of narratives, as it is key to seeing the relationship between what we call knowledge and what we call reality (Rorty, 2009:178). I attempt to put these representations in perspective with an epistemological approach that takes roots in the paradigm of complexity; hereby, I attempt to avoid the traps of subjectivism (that ignores the existence of reality), objectivism (ignores subject/object relationship), holism (ignores the dependence of parts, and see them as the sum of the whole), and relativism (that ignores existence of absolute truth and easily can easily fall in the slippery slope logical fallacy). The gargantuan task of retracing the ontological origins of knowledge, narratives or thinking models and the attempt to find their epistemological foundation, stands as an impossible and vain effort given the limited extent of and application to my discussion. However, I can think about the interplay of elements to the production of mental models (perception) and the justification of thinking models (narratives). When thinking about narratives for instance, the inseparability of the elements in their interplay is essential to comprehending the interdependency between language, culture and knowledge. I view the power of the matrix of narratives as “a field of force” (Rorty, 2009:181), which produces meanings in the realms of knowledge, language and culture, as being 79

propelled by their interactivity in human experiences. This admits a recursive formula of three sets of dynamics, in which each term is a function of another: 1) we apply knowledge and language to produce culture(s), 2) we use of culture to produce knowledge(s) and language(s) and 3) culture(s) results from acquiring language and knowledge. A narrative (N) is the product of those interacting elements but also operates as the contextual condition that determines the rules of the system within which language (L), culture (C) and knowledge (K) interact and behave. In a simple equation, I unfold the necessary properties to generating new narratives recursively in a preexisting and continuously evolving human representations (H). In a system {H} the union of the sets L, K and C produces a matrix [N]

{H} = [(U+K.+CO = Nil ^ [(L2+K2+ C 2) = N2] ^ [(L3+K3+C3) = N3]—» ... 80

M e n t a l M o d els / / PERCEPTIONS \ / \ / \

KNOWLEDGE

LANGUAGES CULTURES L j f

•• T hinking'-. M odel \ '•••./ NARRATIVES : #: m • : CULTURE • : LANGUAGE \KNOWLEDGES/ / \ / *** .

Figure 8 Complexity of Human Representation

The Venn diagram that appears above shows how realms of human mental development, by communicating with each other, maintain their autonomy with a certain dependency. Moreover, it shows the dynamic of recursion: how the unity of a concept (or system) perpetuates itself in its multiplicities and vice versa; meaning that, for instance, “language” enables its plurality and diversity in “languages” and “languages” admit and 81

elaborate the unity of the idea of “language” (Morin, 2001:70). Moreover, what this diagram does not explicitly show, but fundamentally implies: the notion of “positive entropy” dynamic by which the matrix as a “force” is integrating and self-regulating its entropy (uncertainty, tendency to disorganization). For instance, “culture” implies unpredictable forms of “cultures” that will give more information about “culture”; by shedding light on “culture”, “cultures” reduce its entropy (and not by cultural relativism). Positive entropy here is understood as adding order to entropic forces in balancing dynamics of order and disorder. However, the complex roles of language and culture in producing knowledge are not only dialectical but also antagonistic, while culture allows us to learn and to know and simultaneously prevents us from doing so. As Morin puts it “culture... is also what prevents us from learning and knowing outside of its norms and of its imperatives, and thus there is an antagonism between the autonomous spirit and its culture.” (Morin,2001:34). The consensus view seems to be that we are cognitively limited and thus do not have a full access to understanding the knowledge that produces our knowledge. I shall argue here that our cognitive abilities do not allow us to bridge what is such an explanatory gap to satisfy objective epistemological expectations (Joseph Levine, McGinn). This echoes with Rorty when he articulates the subject/object problematic and makes the critique of modern epistemology as a “theory of knowledge”: “This is equivalent to saying that if we do not have the distinction between what is ‘given’ and what is ‘added by the mind’ (...) then we will not know what would count as a rational 82

construction of our knowledge” (Rorty, 2009:168-9). Nevertheless, our ability to self-reflect on our limitations does not solely alert us on the dualist ontological fallacy of man/nature or the expression of our scientific determinism; but it is conjointly the manifestation of a meta-epistemological opening. Meaning that if we cannot overcome the subject/object binding relationship, the self-reflection that acknowledges it widens our prospects to refine our epistemological consciousness. This resonates with the words of physicist Neils Bohr’s reported by Ruth Moore: “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” (Ruth Moore, Niels Bohr: The Man. His Science, & the World They Changed, 1966:196). Puzzles, problems and paradoxes drive and structure human inquiry, and this relates to Karl Popper position on the multiplicity of methodology in problem solving and also relates to my use of Einstein’s quote in this chapter’s epigraph: “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”. By shedding light on the underlying stakes of producing scientific narratives, self- awareness allows the development of a multidimensional vision that stands for the necessary epistemological breakthrough when thinking about nature in the context of the contemporary ecological crisis. In fine, the diagram in Figure 7 presents an organizational, complex matrix, whose realms are in communication and have the function of being mutually informative; similarly I shall undertake a “systemic approach” to the complex dynamic that assists the progress of the ecological crisis. In Bohr's words again we can conclude, “ Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It 83

forces us to change our thinking in order to find it”. From the polysemy of a word and its representation to scientific narratives or social narratives and their productions, we have put forward the idea that what we know and how we know it, highly depends on: a) the rhetorical structures of ideology, narratives and language in claiming knowledge, b) our epistemological approach and formulation of a question and, c) our relation as subject with the object. The problematic of contextualized discourses ties into Jim Cheney’s idea that it seems to “emerge as a mother tongue; a totalizing, essentializing language emerges as the voice of the constructed subjective self, the voice of dissociated, Gnostic alienation” (Gnostics believe in the dual nature of the world that is given by a divine entity, a God) (Cheney in Oelschlaeger, 1995:27). As a result we understand that language, in those terms, produces ideology and shapes political discourses. To resort to the problem that the intention of finding an ethical narrative faces, while the inevitable contextual character of the discourse, the postmodernist approach aims to deconstruct the conventional domineering concepts and resists the systematic oppressive totalizing effect of anthropo-centered modern theories. In this section, I focused on how we conceive knowledge and the practical issues of the traditional epistemology to produce knowledge; the problem addressed by such a method is the symptomatic agent for what I diagnose as the cause of the contemporary thought’s maladies: in regards to knowledge, the issue is not “within science” that assumes an agreement on problems, but “about science” as we differ in the methods of synthesizing the problems. I align my conclusion here with Morin's idea that we are not 84

facing a scientific crisis but a paradigmatic crisis.

Chapter 3: A Postmodern Approach: Identity, Culture, Centrism and Dualistic Logic.

As we understood in the previous section, the modern scientific articulation of “knowledge”, which conceptualized the structures of the world we live in, allocated scientifically authoritative and autocratic interpretations of truths, whose one-dimensional view denies equality by rejecting or interiorizing “otherness”. This is what the postmodern approach recognizes while refusing to adopt any given normative narrative as absolute truths, but rather deconstructing them, which I will discuss below. While perpetually challenging the common understandings we have of the world, this process allows us to resist the indirect coercions produced by philosophical dogmas or ideologies, as well as to evaluate the performative/prescriptive effect of language applied by the unavoidable, arbitrary and dichotomous representation of the world given by its modern scientific constative (true or false) description. Because I am limited by the scope of my research topic of the ecological crisis, as fascinating as it would be, I do not attempt to ground my thought in a specific of philosophical-epistemological standpoint or phenomenology and hermeneutics. However, it is essential to be mindful about the subject’s presumptive role, unconscious intentions and interpretations. Nor will I concede to lessen the question to a “linguistic relativism”, however the performative effects of language are key to understanding the pragmatic aspects of utterances. The initiative of undertaking a postmodern approach is to look at the environmental crisis 85

with the purpose of deconstructing the existing categorization and rhetorical totalizing effect of modern thought while broaching towards an epistemological opening to undertake the ecological question. Consequently, I commit to engaging in a multidimensional approach under which I appoint my thought process to embrace the paradigm of complexity, that is, to provide a trans-analytical examination of the power relations and ideological structures that assist the process through which humanity wrecks its own ecosystem.

H. The role of culture and identity

The System of Human Identities In this section I shall discuss why Edgar Morin’s notion of “human identity” fulfills a better role than traditional accounts of “human nature” in understanding the contemporary human patterns of oppression and domination of “otherness”. For a lack of concrete grounds to elaborate an anthropology of human nature without fabricating its origins in a historical fiction and falling into the reductionist trap that lessen man to its presupposed natural state, as contractualists Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau did, I take a chance to contemplate “human identity/identities”, mobilizing Edgar Morin’s outlooks on the complexity of humanity. In his rather rigorous work, The Method, more precisely in the fifth volume, Humanity of Humanity (2001), Edgar Morin examines human knowledge and attempts to reconnect science with humanities. The effort of combining the different sciences, under the prism 86

of complexity, rests in the idea that human identity can only be understood in its complex fabric, meaning understanding “man” as having simultaniously, a biological identity (as a specie), psychological identity (as an individual/subject) and a social identity (as part of society) (Morin, back cover). Morin’s vision of human identity constitutes and reconciles the basis of human complexity. The human identity is “hologramic”; meaning that it is at the junction of the interaction between the biological, social and psychological aspects that remain embedded; in fact, for him the distinction made by the opposition of binary concepts, such as nature versus culture or as biological versus social, reflects the human limited state of a mode of knowledge: the one that is disjointed, that separates and compartmentalizes (Morin, 2001:57). According to Morin, human identity is comprehensible within and outside nature throughout what he calls the “human trinity”: species - society - individual; as respectively belonging to and within the three spheres of: biological - social - psychological (Morin, 2001:54). The spheres complement each other recursively as shown one Venn diagram on Figure 8 and on Figure 9 below. Morin explains that each one of those realms contains and produces the others: They have a cooperative and dialogical as well as contentious and antagonistic relationship: despite the fact that each one generates the others they also dispel each other (Morin, 2001:54). This means that the “individual” is “a species” within a “society”, however, when we come to observe the “psychological” aspect for instance; our consideration of the “social” factors fades; just as we lose the “biological” focus. Reciprocally, for giving attention to the “social”, we tend to lose “psychological” and “biological” perspectives, and analogously for the “biological”: 87

the complexity of humanity disappears. It is a matter of putting the emphasis on a selective attention and focus, while foregrounding one we background the others. It is by putting the spotlight on one that we obscure the significance of the others and their interrelations.They are complementary conceptual spheres because they are in a dialogical relationship (Morin, 2001:54): Society lives for the individual, who lives for society, society and the individual live for the species, who lives for the individual and society. Each of these terms are, at the same time, each other’s means and ends: it is culture and society that enables the individual’s accomplishment, and the interaction between individuals that enable the perpetuation of culture and society’s self-organization

(

Figure 9 Morin’s Human Trinity 88

From Morin’s human trinity portrayed in Figure 8, I draw his analogous account of irreducible traits of human identity in Figure 9 below.

Figure 10 Human complex Identities

Therefore we understand the human identity as a “generic unit” shared by all, but also as “complex unit” because infinitely diverse in each and everyone: we commonly dispose of a mutual biological identity (e.g. a sole method reproduction but specific genetic heritage, morphology; a primary linguistic ability but developed in different languages), a mutual social identity (e.g. we are prone to interact: violently, courteously, economically according to specific interpretation of shared senses such as justice or equality), and a mutual individual identity (e.g. Paul Ekman’s account of six basic common human 89

emotions: disgust, joy, anger, fear, sadness and surprise that we express differently on a spectrum of intensity) (Morin, 62-64). The sameness we share as a species and as individual is understood and expressed in various, specific and distinctive ways among societies, what they mean is manifested in different ways among cultures: “Racial, ethnic and cultural differences have not altered the affective unity, but rather could have altered the comprehension, from a culture to another, of a smile or a laughter” (Morin, 64). Egocentrism Moreover, the notion of identity in the individual situates itself by defining itself as a subject, as we previously encountered in the Cartesian famous “ I think, therefore I am”. The idea of being subject implies situating yourself in time and space and asserting yourself in the “I”, indivisible non-sharable individual, statements (Morin, 78). Thereby, the subject positions himself at the center of his experience and environment, thus the subject is de facto egocentric (Morin, 78). Explicitly, in a very literal example: when I say “I”, I exclude any other subject and only include myself, additionally, “I” ‘s identity is constructed in contrast to “you” or “the other”. In this manner, the egocentric “I” can be transposed on a cultural level and produce sociocentric “us” as Morin puts it: “Within every society, each individual is an egocentric subject and, at the same time, a moment/ an element of a sociocentric entity” (Morin, 190). For example if a human, masculine or white “I” subject can biologically and socially build his identity in contrast to nature, the feminine or the colored “other”, as social “us” can build its cultural identity in contrast to the “them”. The background of human identity given with Morin’s trinity recognizes what is left by the modern scientific disjunction of 90

disciplines; it aims reintegrates them in the complexity of the human sphere, of humanity as a system. This helps understanding human tendencies as an ensemble of multiple interconnected levels that generate one another: egocentrism (individual/psychological, self centered) operating with sociocentrism (society/cultural, group centered) human tendency. In the same fashion, I would like to extand on the idea of the complex interconnection of egocentrism and sociocentrism by including the one of anthropocentrism (specie/biological, human-centered) that corroborates and completes the back grounding of human identity in our contemporary society. 91

Figure 11 Polycentric Human Identity

A social identity The social identity is the one that is generated and organized by culture (Morin, 188). Culture operates as a driving force to condition, generate and perpetuate the complexity of the individual and collective human psyche; it embodies, together a society’s and an individual’s, identity. Therefore, in order to understand the relationship 92

between the individual and society I examine what connects, fuels and reciprocally shape their identity: culture. Culture plays a storytelling role, there are myths to which a society refers and identifies its to with narratives. A culture holds a society’s identity, as a group’s traditions, language, beliefs, values, practices, rules, permissions, interdictions and so on; culture transmits these traits of social identity to the individual at an early stage of his development. An individual’s cultural identity is not chosen but imposed by the social dynamics of his group (c.f. previous section on gender and sexual identity, when children or young individuals do not chose gender image in society). The social identity, as we defined it, is the one of interaction, and culture in that sense guides the individual and social behaviors, however one can think of cross-dressers who do not change sex however chose to dress as the opposite gender. The social identities of men and women embody a rather eloquent example of culture constructing identities while shaping power relations and defining dominant/dominated roles based on gender. Culture of social domination I adopt Edgar Morin’s account of “culture” as an “organizational heritage” in the sense that a society carries a “cultural capital” that is passed on constituting a “cultural legacy” (Morin, 2001:188). Morin admits a twofold cultural capital that with language enable its transmission from generation to generation. The first aspect is a cognitive capital that is the one of knowledge and skills; the second one is a mythological capital of beliefs, norms, values and so on (Morin, 2001:188). In Figure 11 below, I exemplify role of culture in producing social narratives with a three- 93

stepped diagram in which I decompose the construction and development of gender and sexual identities. I attempt to deconstruct the traditional essentializing view that naturalizes domination in the realms of gender, race or the ecosystem. Here, I build my argument upon Morin’s distinction between “archaic societies” and “historical societies” which I expand by adding the category of “contemporary societies” to clarify and nuance my argument. The first step takes place in a pre-historical context of egalitarian societies with very little social stratification. In those “archaic societies” consisted in attributing social roles to members of the community based on the biological class, predominantly social roles are distributed according to bioclasses: the role of the male is designated to hunt and the female social role is to gather (Morin, 2001:186). The etymology of “prehistory” relates to the times “before knowledge acquired by investigation”, thus we understand the limited the “cognitive capital” of prehistoric societies which knowledge was based observation of physiological appearances. Yet, 200,000 years of human evolution later in modern “historical societies”, the distinctions between “man” and “woman” are still based on the “cultural legacy” of the archaic “cognitive capital” that separates the roles of “male” and “female”. The normalization of prehistoric biosocial organization adapted by religious texts (e.g. Genesis) and the modern scientific dualistic logic that, by making essential, naturalized the physiological differences to legitimate superior and inferior classes and thus, forms of domination: Humanity over nature, man over women, master over servant, white over black, colonized over colonized (the modern dualistic logic will be reviewed in details in 94

the next section). Consequently, the modern self-entitlement to detaining the keys to knowledge proves that its “scientific cognitive capital” and reasoning that allows domination is, in reality structured upon a traditional appeal to the limited “archaic cognitive capital”. Instead of innovating and acquiring new knowledge on our relationship to “otherness”, the modern thought perpetuates a “mythological capital” by transposing the complementary relationship of male/female of the prehistoric social organization into the domination relationship of man over women cemented in the Western modern social hierarchy. The modern dualistic logic does not withstand closer scrutiny, the discontinuity between cognitive and mythical in its reasoning which is evidence for a logical gap that proves the founding reasons of domination to be logically fallacious. In “contemporary societies” never mind the scientific and social progress made throughout history and power struggles in the course of which minorities emancipate themselves from disastrous cultural beliefs; oppression may not be as blatant in today’s societies but it is still very present, sometimes underlying the very structures that attempt to eradicate domination as I will exemplify with the Affirmative Action policy. Western societies capitalize on the differences made by the cultural hegemony of a ruling class that normalized the biosocial organization of “male” and “female” and organized its hierarchy as “man” superior to “woman”. Minority groups remain considered as the passive victims in a culture where the active white male hero representing the ruling class, has the authority and paternalist mission to save them and free them from his oppression. This is problematic as we live in a society that visibly accepts “otherness”, but simultaneously 95

discriminates it by trying to organize it and control it. Here I expand on the idea of the “mythological capital” and admit the existence of a “stereotype stocks” that adapts the cultural narratives to maintain the structures of domination: after recognizing the “other” ’s equal essence and status, the ruling class demonizes “otherness” by standards of moral virtue (c.f. Medieval Inquisition regarding non-Christian).

ARCHAIC "COGNITIVE CAPITAL": PREHISTORICAL SOCIO-BIOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION

Bioclass based on appearences normalizes physical .. .. , i r , „ . . n .. distinction because it is "good" for the archaic social organization 1 eren !a lon- a e / emae-.uner/ a lerer

DUALISTIC LOGIC IN MODERN TIMES: INFERIORIZATION by REDUCTION & EXCLUSION by DISJONCTION OF THE "OTHER”

The modern logical fallacy based its "truth" on the archaic "good” ^ r . f. . • j ... » £ Compansion :Man / Women = Master / Servant = Superior / and naturalize such organization and creates the myth of r Inferior superiority

MYTHOLOGICAL CAPITAL OF CONTEMPORARY WORLD: IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY THAT CAPITALIZES ON DIFFERENCES

Narratives romanticize gendered and sexual identities Order: Masculinity / Feminity, LGBT and produce stereotypical roles = Active Hero/Passive Victim

Figure 12 Cultural capital of sexism: organizational heritage

Morin understands culture as a “self-organized” system, it is arranged upon its cultural capital, as a common historical and traditional legacy, to which individuals identify and compose with: “Culture feeds this identity by reference to its ancestors, its deaths, its traditions (...) A society has then a given name, its own personality (totem, then blazon, flag) its founders, ancestors, its language, its myths, its rites that ascribe their singularity 96

in each individual, whose belonging is then experienced as a filiations. It imprints the individual in his sociocentrism” (Morin, 188). Sociocentrism Morin admits that culture is simultaneously “open and closed”', it is closed, because somehow insulated by its taboos and superstitions to protect its mythological capital; it is open in the sense that it is sensitive and receptive to external methods and innovative knowledge that would potentially develop its cognitive capital (Morin, 2001:188). Next, he describes culture as “giving form and norm”, a culture imprints “prescriptions and interdiction (...) its educational system, its modes of behaviors (...) repress, inhibit, facilitate, stimulate, overdetermine the expression of individual abilities (...) and this way perform to co-organize, control and civilize a personality in its totality. Thusly, culture simultaneously subjugate and emancipates the individual.” (Morin, italics mine, 189). Therefore, according to Morin a society is “self-regenerating and self-perpetuating" by the agency of culture: “via the transmission of acquired knowledge/levels of attainment (culture); via sexual reproduction; via the interactions between individuals and between individuals and society” (Morin 189-190, italics mine). In conclusion, for an individual to subsist (feel autonomous and emancipated) in a group he needs to conform to (to submit and accept) the social dynamics given by cultural conventions. A society is structured by culture that represses and regulates the individual’s impulses: if one’s view and behavior aligns with the common culture, he is accepted and free; conversely, if one transgresses or refuses to adapt to the norm, he is 97

marginalized, criminalized, shamed or punished (e.g. the condition of homosexuals throughout history). Additionally, the individual holds a sociocentric perspective on the outside world; similarly to the social inner dynamic: the outer, different or “other” culture will be marginalized and judged for not fitting the social standards of his own. This double dynamic of subjection/emancipation, inclusion/exclusion given by culture animates dynamics of oppression and enables social stratification, hierarchical and relationship of domination. It is for these reason that is it key to understand the dynamics of human identity and the role cultures plays within and outside our societies to comprehend the complexity of their organization and how they are defined: in alterity, as in against the “other”, and fuelled by dynamics of oppression of the “otherness”. It is under this complex prism that we comprehend types of domination, gendered, racial, and environment (i.e. respectively feminine, colored and nature as the “other”) as being different in terms of rationale but analogous in terms of dynamics. Desecration Although the cultural influence may obstruct a reflective critical thought process it does not eliminate it. Then again, culture is open and close, meaning that to a certain extent it invites new ideas and innovation to come in, abruptly or gradually. However, improvement is carried by an individual not only that is able to think against the tide and be defiant enough to expose an idea contrary to the dominant narrative; but there more or less favorable contextual conditions (psychological, social, historical) for great changes to occur. Edgar Morin in Les Idees, identifies traits within the individual that enable her/him to 98

discover, theorize, think and emancipate themself from his cultural determination: “ Individuals are different from one to another, and there are very diverse individual dispositions: - to resist the imprinting, - to transgress, - to imagine, - to conceive” (Morin, 1991:70). In fact, in a culture, the design of a social rule automatically implies and conditions the existence of its contrary: “even though the social rule sanctifies its prescription and make taboo its interdiction, the very nature of language introduces the possibility of negation that a unruly or deviant individual spirit is virtually capable to seize (...)” (Morin, 1991: 71, translation mine).

I. Dualistic Logic: The modern Western governing narratives

Contemporary otherness The centric and dualistic thinking patterns that either separate and exclude or reduce and repress appear to be anchored not only in the modern scientific methods, but also in the depths of human identity, within our most archaic cultural traits. In fact the first societies were themselves socio-biologically organized in bioclasses of men/women and child/adults (Morin, 2001:186). In such regards it is imperative to understand how the modern logic is different, more elaborated in the sense that it does not only serve society, but a specific group or community. How it extrapolated on human biological features and the archaic social organization of a family’s patriarchal power, to make a peer biologically unequal and socially inferior when they belong to the same specie and have different culture. I shall 99

explain why the modern dualistic logic is not only fallacious and archaic, but also “barbarian” as Morin would say, in the sense that is inane and outdated. Val Plumwood in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature throws light upon the Modern’s construction of the logical dualistic structures that naturalizes the systematic design of domination; the one that conceives a relationship between superior and inferior and, by extension, the one of man’s mastery over nature. Plumwood transposes the domination relationship of the colonizer and the colonized with between men and woman and with the one between humans and nature. It is by directing its focus towards its identity of “the master” that men underestimate the essential role of otherness even though that very vision requires more than the assumed ancillary contribution of the other. Inherently correlated to the dualistic logic of domination, Val Plumwood_discusses the notion of otherness and “The logic of Othering” (Plumwood, Environmental Culture, 2002). 100

Figure 13 A step further on a Foucauldian note 101

Contemporary Disembeddedness Analysis of Edgar Morin and Val Plumwood on human identity articulated with notions of “centrism” and “otherness” and a culture of domination correlate with an evident view of systemic “disembeddedness” that the anthropocentric paradigmatic frame specifically characterizes. Val Plumwood’s argument in Environmental Culture corroborate with my line of reasoning according to which the paradoxical situation of ecological crisis and its contemporary denial stems from the distorted perspective of centrism (Val Plumwood, 2002:98). In her chapter The Blindspots of Centrism and Human Self-enclosure, the author suggests that our relation to nature is structurally flawed by the hegemony of the centric perspective that universalizes “experiences of the dominant ‘center’” and establishes the mastery of is environment (Plumwood, 2002:99). Furthermore, in her analysis of human-centeredness Val Plumwood addresses the ecological denial as “The Illusion of Disembeddedness” and imparts the cognitive aspect of centrism which produces hierarchy and domination; and the ‘moral epistemological framework’ of centrism shaping our perception of rationality that naturalize and keep out of sight the control the inferior spheres, behind the veil of a “false universalism”(Plumwood, 2002:98-9). Additionally, the illusion of centrism coupled with the one that disembeds human from the ecological system engenders the backgrounding of nature and assumes its control over it: “This framework of assumptions provide the ethical underpinning for capitalism and the commodification of nature.” (Plumwood, 2002:99). The modern dualistic logic 102

Val Plumwood in both her books Feminism and the Mastery of Nature and Environmental Culture elaborates on the modern dualistic logic of centrism; she identifies five constitutive attributes of the anthropocentric dualistic logic by which the mechanisms of dominion operate. She starts her expose by bringing out the background of the master/servant relationship, how by subordinating nature and using it as an environmental service, man denied the importance and essential character of nature by formalizing his mastery against it (Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 1993:47). Nature becomes the “environment” when considered as the “other”. She calls attention on the dynamics of human’s reliance on nature and unmasks the feature of 1) denial: the idea of nature, as an intrinsic and direct need for humanity’s subsistence, is repressed and blurred by mechanisms of inferiorization and lessening nature as a background, as humanity’s environment. In other words, the modern anthropocentric perspective reduces the value of nature to rationalize its domination, the blinders worn by the modern thought obscures and obstructs man to recognize nature's essence and lead man to denying its essentiality (Plumwood, 1993:48). Along with this idea of otherness comes the second characteristic of the dualistic logic of colonization. The differentiation implied by the idea of otherness and as inferior, is stressed and entrenched in the dualistic logic by the mechanism of 2) a radical exclusion or hyperseparation (Plumwood, 1993:49). This way of building concepts in dichotomy and extreme polarization that organizes groups, separates and isolates things in hermetic categories is, in Plumwood words, the one that by “setting up sets of complementary qualities formed through exclusion and denial of overlap (...) these very 103

qualities then confirm the slave’s different nature and fate, for she or he is ‘a slave by nature’ (...) such dualistic construal, and how or bridging characteristics are ignored, discouraged or actually eliminated by such conceptual construction. (...) What is actually a sociological point comes to be labeled as being biological or, preferably, metaphysical ” (Plumwood, 1993:50, emphasis mine). Thus, the naturalization of hierarchical orders testifies and legitimates the machinery of domination of man over nature, women or colonized by man-made conceptual spheres that establish essential identities and organize their status in strata. The third feature that Plumwood attributes to the dualistic logic is the one of 3) incorporation in defining the relationship between two realms of the One and the Other (Plumwood, 1993:52, 2002:104). The identity of “otherness” as nature, women or the colonized is, in the One/master’s eyes, conceptualized as relative to his own identity which qualities are considered as standard values; meaning that everything the “other” is not, the “other” is then lacking, missing what, the “One’Vmaster thinks he embodies or detain himself. This negative vision of the “other” holds a modern anthropocentric focus at its core, the master only acknowledge and admits the other’s feature that are similar to his own, thus the other is not independent, “the master consciousness cannot tolerate unassimilated otherness” (Plumwood, 1993:52) and “the Other’s deficiency invites the One ‘to control, contain and otherwise govern (...) the Other’ ” (Said, 1978: 48 in Plumwood, 2002:105). Corollary to feature 2) hyperseparation and 3) incorporation is 4) the instrumentalization or objectification of the subordinated. In the dualistic logic we understand that the other’s 104

identity is external to the One and its inner central self; however, also in relation to and at the periphery of the master’s; the other’s identity is therefore not a natural condition but derives from a social circumstance or construction. Similarly the other’s role and purpose is defined upon, not his essential accounts, but according to the master’s needs and desires (Plumwood, 1993:53). The inferior is made an object at the periphery, an instrument to serve the center: the superior’s end. In Plumwood words “the identity of the underside is constructed instrumentally, and the canons of virtue for a good wife, a good colonized, or a good worker are written in terms of usefulness to the center” (Plumwood, 1993:53). The fifth and last element of the dualistic logic is the one of 5) homogenization (Plumwood, 1993:54). The process of homogenizing the master’s perspective is key to making his logic accepted, incorporated and appear universal. A good example of homogenization can be find in common gender stereotypes that assigns and generalizes traits to male or female by nature and denies particularities and individual differences by creating homogeneous wholes, which naturalizes and excuses domination (Plumwood, 1993:54). The dualistic structures of the modern anthropocentric logic instituted a conceptual framework that promulgates social narratives based on the naturalization of mutually exclusive orders, which are classified upon the standard of self-proclaimed superior class. The master’s dualistic rhetoric justifies by calling “natural” what really is the cultural construction of structures allowing the domination and exploitation, by objectification, of the superior on the inferior. The predominance of domination dynamics in the social 105

fabric are achieved by a discourse that romanticizes/novelizes differences while generating essentializing and totalizing ideology around these narratives. As Val Plumwood specifically notes: “Dualism should not be seen as creating differences where none exists. Rather it tends to capitalize on existing patterns of difference, rendering these in ways which grounds hierarchy (...) it provides cultural grounding for class- centered hegemony” (Plumwood, 1993:55). Plumwood nuances her thought about transposition of the dualistic logic of mastery of otherness with regards to nature: “The logic of Othering in the case of nature need not to be completely parallel to that of human oppression (which includes features associated with reciprocal consciousness that are not mirror here) for us to be able to draw some useful and perhaps even startling conclusion from it.” (Plumwood, 2002:117). After the examination of the Illusion of Disembeddednes and the modern dualistic logic of Othering, the contemporary anthropocentric model of mastery and power domination does not only abuse “otherness”, but by denial of its dependency to nature, humanity’s centrism launches its own decline. We live in a complex world in which everything is in intercommunication, we dispose of specialized knowledge in a diversity of disciplines that equips us with exceptionally advanced technologies; however, our thinking remains underdeveloped and deluding to the point that the anthropocentric framework disables us from self-reflection and prevent us from mobilizing our intellectual attainments to appropriately connect the dots. We overlook how dysfunctional the structures of contemporary Western life are, as we do not question our mental models and the myths they create. Thus, our thinking 106

processes are deluded and we remain in the crudeness of the dominant culture of exclusion and exploitation as fail to put the logic and dynamics of domination in communication

J. Paradoxes of Individual and Collective Psyche.

The focus on knowledge, language and epistemological issues exposed how narratives relate to culture, however, it calls for thorough understanding of what culture is, how it affect the individual and effects the role it plays in a society’s ideological dynamics of oppression. A language, knowledge, culture and sets of narratives are necessary but not sufficient elements to understand human identity, the development of domination and the longevity of oppression in society. The notions of political consciousness and ideology deserve a conscientious examination to understand how the rhetorical use of language impedes philosophical knowledge and political consciousness. First I shall discuss the contemporary paradoxes of Western societies in the political enterprise against social fragmentation and domination, I analyze the rhetorical structures of ideological discourse to illustrate how similar belief and behavioral patterns perpetuate the human domination of nature. Contemporary paradoxes Typically, the political structures of contemporary Western societies are founded on the democratic ideal. Before pursuing our reflection, it is important to be reminded that democracy is a concept, modeled an ideal type of government. In theory, 107

democracy's principles promote values such as justice, equality and freedom. However, in practice, a gap between theory and its application affects different communities in the strata of the social fabric (e.g. inequalities and social injustice experienced by women, lower economic classes, persons of color etc.). In its implementation, democracy does not reflect the ideals it presupposes in theory. A paradox arises from the democratic ideal and its application, from what we know (e.g. justice) and what we do (e.g. injustices). While equality remains a democratic ideal that structures the political process throughout elections for instance, nonetheless, legal and institutional practices tend to neglect or misrepresent minorities and thus social justice proves to be fragile and easily undermined. History or an examination of democracy exhibit the tension between theory and practice and show that elements of democratic principles are not achieved in its political exercise; it is the conflict between ideal and real, between theory and practice that proves the fallibility of human politics particularly in the West’s democratic states. How can we imagine disposing of and benefiting of protecting rights, if they are corrupted by their own institutionalization? In such regards, if we cannot talk about democracy, however, we can still argue and support the idea of a “democratic experience”, meaning that we conceive democracy as an edifice in on-going construction: democracy happens by successive strokes in a context of opposition to the instauration of its principles (e.g. civil rights movement). Therefore, democracy does not define itself by fixed criteria or a set-in-stone government, it is both fragile and sustainable because it maintains plurality and requires to be fuelled, defined and 108

improved by it endemic conflicts (Morin, 2001:225). Democracy exists within the process of its own advancement, meaning that a democratic government ought to perpetually endeavor to bridge the gap between theory and practice; it ought to enable us to progress by taking action upon our knowledge. Similarly, with respect to what we factually know about the ecological crisis (e.g. scientific measures and prediction on global warming, speed of climate changing etc, and the levels of the biosphere’s erosion in general), and how humanity’s subsistence, as a specie, depends on those related environmental conditions that enables life on Earth (temperature, potable water, clean air, fertile soil etc.); how is it, that human rational beings, endowed with the great and mighty reason, conform to the narratives provided by an ideology that jeopardizes, not only its progress, but its own survival? In order to understand how dynamics of domination occurs in our democratic contemporary societies, we ought to understand the conceptual framework of oppression and the rhetorical justifications that enable the othering and marginalization of certain spheres, in classes, orders or groups. Ideographs, Rhetoric and Ideology Michael Calvin McGee in his article The “Ideograph”: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology analyzes the power of abstract philosophical concepts in political discourses and how it affects collective political consciousness. First he distinguishes the “individual mind” and “mass consciousness” and argues that the latter is “ ‘always false’ because ‘truths” in politics are always an illusion” (McGee, The “Ideograph”: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1980:4). He defines 109

ideology as a ‘normative commitment’ produced by rhetorical persuasion with the use of “ideographs” in political discourse (McGee, 1980:5). He calls “ideographs” ordinary terms we are socially conditioned to understand (e.g. justice, freedom and equality) and whose projected meanings suggest a given collective commitment to what they would “logically” represent (McGee, 1980:14). Moreover, their significations are conceptually abstract enough to persuade an audience: when articulated with each other in a discourse ideographs produce the illusion of a collective common understanding and agreement on acceptable beliefs and behaviors (M.C. McGee, 1980). In relation to our democratic contemporary paradox, McGee’s analysis sheds light on the methodological gap between theory and practice: we are socially conditioned to express our thoughts with very limited linguistic tools, we let words or slogans assume the role of “meaning” and we take for granted their application. This assumes that labeling an argument, promoting “justice” and “equality” for instance, is a sufficient empirical justification for proving existence of “justice” and “equality in the phenomenon it claims to describe. According to McGee, ideographs are rhetorical forces, connectors that imply and refer to one another in ideological discourses. He recognizes a “grammatical ideology” that works as diachronic pattern of political consciousness because a word’s present definition is in relation to its historical meaning; along with a “rhetorical ideology” that is synchronic because a word has simultaneously a contextual meaning while “maintaining fundamental consonance and unity” in its definition (McGee, 1980:14). The paradox of rhetorical ideology: Affirmative Action Considering McGee’s claim when he suggests that: in McGee’s words: “Ideology 110

in practice is political language, preserved in rhetorical documents, with the capacity to dictate decisions and control public belief and behavior. Further, the political language, which manifests ideology, seems characterized by slogan, a vocabulary of “ideographs” easily mistaken for the technical terminology in political philosophy.” (McGee, 1980:6). I shall argue that the rhetoric and ideological line of the Affirmative Action policy epitomizes the role of ideograph in political discourses and stands as an example of a normative commitment based on political ideographs. Nowadays in the United State of American, the most threatening and noxious form of racism is not one that is necessarily blatant at first sight, the public exhibition of discrimination by acts of racial hatred remain marginal today. However, there are more invisible discriminating behaviors that were shaped by ideological beliefs of a passed discriminating system, which is now perpetuated by institutional policies that maintain minorities in a second-class status. It is with an “equalitarian” approach that the government encouraged employers with a bonus structure “to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin" (Executive Order 11246 — Equal Employment Opportunity, Part II, sec 202). On logical grounds there is no compelling reasons to argue against the noble project of compensating the disfranchised and carrying out positive initiative regarding social justice and equality. However, the ideological rhetoric used by the Affirmative Action undermines political consciousness and inherently social justice and equality. Moreover, the institutionalization of non-discriminatory actions infantilizes the public and can I l l

generate negative long-term outcomes by strengthening existing discrimination that it attempts to correct or remedy. Privatizing what ought to be public responsibilities (i.e. implementing justice equality or freedom) has shown to worsen social justice in favor of economic profits. The privatization of the prison system for instance engender mass incarceration of African Americans after the civil rights movement, and today the controversial rates of black police control and arrests remain vertiginous and stand as evidence for the government's failure to fight racial discrimination. More specifically and with regards to the reasons of the failure of Affirmative Action, I shall briefly go over backfire effects. First, Affirmative Action tends to divide instead of unify, by increasing competition, tension and animosity between communities (it separates, differentiates and accentuates the fear of the “other”). Second, such compensatory justice admits and safeguards the idea that minorities are undesirable (expands on the idea of “naturally inferior”, as unwanted, flawed characters, negative assets and detrimental). Finally, it anchors their identity in a historical perspective that situates them as the passive, awaiting the ruling class grants them equal rights. Instead of embodying an empowered, active and emancipated community, they are expected to hang in until the hero, that also oppresses them, liberates them. The Affirmative action rhetoric and the socialization of its ideographs in its application strengthens to collective commitment to more “equality”, however it enshrines the symbolic representation of minorities and perpetuates the ideological building block: the rhetoric that conditioned inequalities in the first place. The cultural narratives and ideological rhetoric hold and attribute romanticized ideas, 112

misperceptions and pre-conceptions of what “man”, “woman” and “colored people” represent and control how their interact in society. Cultural narrative, myths and ideologies of the Western ruling class romanticize (novelizes and exaggerates) and stigmatize (shapes cognitive frames with language) racial, gender and sexual identities. Thus, political ideologies dictate the social behavioral expectations of communities and arrange discrimination according to stereotypes, which develop misconstructions and rationalize a sense of hatred. For instance, a standard white man’s “masculinity” is positively defined: active, rational, autonomous, strong, collected, heroic; a woman’s “femininity” will be defined in terms of “lack”, and reduced in strict opposition of “masculinity” as its negative pole: passive, emotional, dependent, weak, insecure. Likewise, a colored person’s “blackness” will be characterized in flaws, as negative of the social “white ideal”: passive, uneducated, deficient, criminal, unemployed, social pariah, underdog, self-inflicted misfortune etc. to cite existing prejudicial stereotypes. When a minority endangers the existing structure of social domination the fitting “stereotype stock” is reactivated and the outdated corresponding discriminatory myth resurfaces in the dominant narratives of the collective psyche. The ideological rhetoric impoverishes political consciousness; it safeguards a culture of domination while protecting its ruling class to be overthrown by the public. While its institutions mollify the disfranchised communities by granting them a right before a larger movement births, thus preventing an unpredictable and contentious emancipation process in the course of a disruptive political struggle or social insurgency. These are the equalizing mechanisms 113

that Meadows refers to as “leveling the playing field” archetypes and that “ may derive from simple morality, or they may come from the practical understanding that losers, if they are unable to get out of the game of success to the successful, and if they have no hope of winning, could get frustrated enough to destroy the playing field.” (Meadows, 2008:130). Thus, it is via the compilation of “grammatical ideology” and “rhetorical ideology” that political consciousness is hindered in McGee’s words they: “structures of public motives” that are “’diachronic’ and ‘synchronic’ patterns of political consciousness which have the capacity to both control “power” and to influence (if not determine) the shape and texture of each individual’s reality.” (McGee, 1980:5). The state fails at considering the reality of individuals and instead treats them as abstract classes, groups and communities; which denies the broad spectrum of identities each individual embodies; which facilitates and perpetuates social stigmas and stereotypes. The Affirmative Action policy, in that sense, was an attempt to put a band-aid on the social cancer of oppression and domination, by trying to cure the disease by remedying or eliminating its symptoms. The weaknesses of governmental policies and their rhetorical use of ideographs: “like Chinese symbols, they signify and “contain” a unique ideological commitment; further they presumptuously suggest that each member of a community will see as a gestalt every complex nuance in them."(McGee, 1980:7) Analogously, with regards to the ecological paradox, the ideological rhetoric of environmentalist paradoxical effect compare with the one given by the ideological rhetoric on equality underlying social domination. In a talk given The Great Hall of 114

Cooper Union in New-York City in October 2014, Tom Butler environmental activist, writer and staff member of the foundation for Deep Ecology criticizes the rhetoric of environmentalist movements. He argues that the lexicon and linguistic patterns of the contemporary environmentalist rhetoric adopted a “language of dominion”. He illustrates his argument with a printed ad of The Nature Conservancy with the caption: “Nature Cleans Our Air”. In his critical commentary of the campaign he identifies two foundational rhetorical devices of the ideological discourse of domination. First, the campaign’s paternalist perspective and the feminization of nature is glaring; Tom Butler he equivocally spells it out with the paraphrase “nature as a planetary cleaning lady”. Secondly, he puts the emphasis on the use of the possessive “our planet” and calls attention the rhetorical appropriation of nature; which also echoes, perhaps more obviously in other campaigns, the patronization of nature and its reduction to serviceable a resource stock. Specifically, he insists on the “linguistic patterns that shape our cognitive frames”; and condemns environmentalist movements for using the anthropocentric frames of domination that disembeds humanity and commodifies nature which views abstract nature as an economical resource and puts nature at the service of humanity. In the attempt to promote the protection of our ecological environment, the virtuous endeavors of the mainstream green culture by rhetorically, othering, inferiorizing and instrumentalizing nature fail at changing the very dominative structures they claim to work against. Although the consequences of climate change act as indiscriminate violent responses to humanity’s abuse of nature, nature cannot use of reason or political consciousness to rebel against humanity. However, nature’s “representatives” in 115

Western civilization find themselves tamed and enslaved by the anthropocentric mental models that penetrates and frames their ideological discourse rhetoric. In conclusion, we shall consider the interaction and interdependency between the Humanity and Nature in a super-system and expose their inherent embeddedness. The basic structures of the Human system depend on the structures of the Ecosystem. The embeddedness and reciprocal impact between our mental model and patterns of behavior exposed some paradoxes: while defending justice and equality for instance, in many instances the oppressive conceptual frameworks transpired in the discourse using the typical language and rhetoric of domination. With regards to Plumwood’s “Illusion of Disembeddedness” and its symptomatic paradoxes I shall expand and suggest a comprehensive diagnosis with “The illusion of reincorporation”: as the inter-rhetorical inconsistency and self-refuting logic that presents an idea (i.e. embeddedness) in a rhetorical manner (i.e. disembedded) that discredits its initial proposition. There births the double-denial: illusion of autonomy, acting as a disembedded, independent superior sphere; and illusion of control and proving self- awareness admitting embeddedness in disembedding terms that are deeply ingrained in centric conceptions. Illusion 2 attempts to admit the fallacy of 1 but ironically, reinforces 1 in its rhetorical delivery. Balancing and reinforcing feedback loops For the sake of a system's sustainability the self-organizing dynamics ought to maintain a balancing feedback loop, which endogenously creates problem and solves them in a self-correcting enterprise. However, it is not the case of in the contemporary 116

approach to a dysfunctional system as our perspective appeals to immediate behavioral change without undertaking structural transformation. These contemporary examples shows how in the attempts to guide and achieve social change, the statements of intent’s rhetoric and its practical outcomes fortify the dynamics that generate the problem in the first place (e.g. of centrism, differentiation, othering, stigmatizing etc.). While seeking paradigmatic goals of equality for instance, the supposedly balancing feedback loop (e.g. implementing structural equality at the bottom to remedy built-up inequalities); paradoxically our method reinforces the dynamic of domination it attempts to correct (e.g. enshrines and magnify inequalities), hence the reinforcing feedback loops that produce oppression and its dominative power grows exponentially overtime. In Donella Meadows words: ‘Reducing the gain around a reinforcing loop - slowing the growth - is usually a more powerful leverage point in systems than strengthening balancing loops, and far more preferable than letting the reinforcing loop run (...) There are many reinforcing feedback loops in society that reward the winners of a competition with the resources to win even bigger next time - the ‘success to the successful’ trap. (...) If the wealthy can influence government to weaken rather than strengthen, those measures, then the government itself shifts from a balancing structure to the one that reinforces success to the successful!” (Meadows, 2008:156) This way the Western contemporary cultural collective narratives uses of stereotypes coupled with and ideological rhetoric use of ideographs, depersonalize and minimize identities that represent “otherness” (i.e. African Americans, women or nature). The dominative and centrist culture of the ruling class infantilize and paternalize the interests 117

of “otherness”, and patronize “the other” controlling their social normative contribution (e.g. nature), image (e.g. African American) identity (e.g. gender). For these reasons and with regard to McGee’s argument it can be conclude that social regulation, control and domination, is fundamentally rhetorical. In other words, our mental models employs conceptual and rhetorical short-cuts that encourage the implementation of superficial solution while expecting short-term return on investment. At the contrary, radical change of long-established paradigmatic model requires advancing in-depth analysis of the structural causes of an issue to develop efficient and sustainable resolution focusing on long-term impact of thorough and integral transformation. These examples reveal the structural adversity of our cognitive frames that hinders not only the implementation of adequate balancing feedback loops, but also prevents us from curtailing or engaging in the necessary devitalizing of the reinforcing feedback loops.

K. Defining the Derridean concept of “Deconstruction”

Postmodern anti-humanism After identifying and condemning the modern dualistic with Val Plumwood, I consider strategic approach to confront it, challenge it and resist its corrupting concepts and logic. Hopefully, reforming our thinking methods will enable us to realize its noxious theoretical shortcuts (reduction) and abstracting (disjunction) chain reactions is, and how damaging its practical bigotry can be. Jean-Michel Salanskis’ account of the Derridean thought in Deconstruction and 118

Linguistic Turn, epitomizes the philosophical consequences under study while delivering a message: “ the signification of the sentence I just said is overloaded or overdetermined by the action I just perpetrated by saying it” (Salanskis, 2005:31). This suggests that underlying forces come into play while articulating a message, meaning and significance escaped from the subject’s control while operating with language. Derrida’s “deconstruction” for that matter will operate as fransanalytical process to question and resist the founding principles of the Modern thought. Deconstruction is also a tool to stay observant about the dissemination of meanings ”as for the 'plurality of filiations’ and the necessity of a 'more differentiated perception’ ” (Jacques Derrida, 1995:224); in other words, it rejects the limitations of fixed binary oppositions in given meanings: essentialization of ideas as them existing and given by nature. Finally, deconstruction can operate as, or at least open to finding a political strategy while unraveling the modern structures of power and the oppressiveness of systematizing principles: totalization. In order to enliven the eminence of the concept of “deconstruction”, let it guide us, step-by-step, enquiring the modern discourse and let it illuminate the stakes that lay within the question of the environmental crisis. Deconstruction To put it such framework in communication with reality, we incorporate the case of the ecological crisis with Fred Poche’s four-dimensional account of the Derridean deconstructive process. First, it takes to 1) identify the conceptual construction of a theoretical field by pointing out dichotic and irreducible conceptual couples; our subject being environmental ethics I listed a few conceptual pairs in relation to we came across 119

so far: Modern/Ancient, humanity/nature, man/women, anthropocentrism/biocentrism, material/spiritual, nature/culture, interior/exterior. The second steps consist of 2) shedding light on the hierarchical order of these binary pairs in the modern discourse: we value humanity over nature, material over spiritual, man over woman, white over black etc. Next, a third step suggests 3) reversing the hierarchical values, showing, with the use of reason, that nature can exceed humanity or that the material is negative and the spiritual positive etc. Such a prism reveals that the hierarchical organization does not correspond to inherent character of the concepts but rather: it reflects types of strategies to secure domination and put forward specific ideological choices. The fourth dimension suggests 4) adding a third term to each pair of concepts to upset the binary original structure. Dismantling the terms and disrupting their prevailing meaning by adding a third one, deconstruction aims to deform, reform and transform discourses as a form of resistance to rework the imposed hierarchical construction (Fred Poche, Penser Avec Jacques Derrida: Comprendre La Deconstruction, 2007:54, translation and synthesis mine). The fourth dimension characterizes our approach by intending to destabilize the dominant order. With no intentions for praising the restoration of the Ancient ecological values in our contemporary world, but rather we intend to step out of such a dualistic approach, and allow alternative outlooks to come into play promoting plurality over binary. Oppression of ideological narratives Under such considerations we reject the mirror inversion of concepts that are fundamentally entrenched in the mainstream modern thought by mechanisms of 120

opposition. As I pointed out with the deconstructive approach, the world’s phenomena are conceptualized under a very limited range of only two options in contradiction, according to the dualistic logic of disjunctive thinking: this or that, this rather than that. In such organizational system only offers a one-dimensional and hierarchical view of the world, and it goes with any discipline under such methodological research; once one is chosen over the other there is no going back, that one becomes the one while the other is dissolved, oppressed and only abstractly, marginally present maybe just to remind us we selected the right one. Instead of integrating and embracing the world’s disorder and examining its multileveled dynamics which I suggest in the next chapter; the modern thought tends to systematically exclude and categorize and produce in its narrative an imaginary organizational order that it legitimates by calling it “science”, the only source of knowledge. The essentializing and totalizing effect of scientific discourse and grand cultural narrative is undeniable: they reduces the complex realities of the world to categorized area of compartmentalized knowledge, within which, sets of mutually exclusive concepts are taken for granted and rarely questioned, impugned or re­ evaluated. However, if narratives tend to have essentializing and totalizing effects, we should be reminded that it simultaneously allows opportunities to its own fragmentation, meaning that the structures that help the dissemination of a norm or ideology are the ones that enable antagonist and subversive narratives to arise and disturb and challenge the dominant dogma. THEN WHAT When deconstruction happens: the depths of the Western social structures of 121

domination In order to reconnect the deconstructionist approach with reality, it adds coherence to consider its practical value and relevance with a referential example. As we previously encountered the thematic of gender in relationships of domination and oppression, I use it again to corroborate with my arguments (i.e. domination of humanity over nature and to illustrate the power of language on social norms); in this section, we apply the deconstructive approach, to reforming norms and narratives, takes shape on functioning on practical grounds. Primo, as we shown with the concept of “nature”, the origins of the social and political understandings of gender roles can equally be retraced to its religious interpretation. In fact, the distinction between male and female can also be found in the Genesis: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”(Genesis, 1:28). The Bible recognizes two biological genders with two very distinct roles brought by the story of Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden’s narrative established the modern conceptions of gender roles, it is spelled out in the Biblical words as follow: “To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”" (Genesis, 1:16). And in the Corinthians Specific Epistles: ’’For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Cor. 11:9-10). It is relatively clear, in both Old and New Testaments that men are superior to woman, and they ought to abide to such hierarchical organization. Henceforth, for the concept of “nature”, the Bible’s description 122

of gender roles is structured upon a relation of domination. This is relevant to our case as such social accounts of “man” and “woman” are observable in the social structures of Western modern societies. In pursuance of demonstrating the performance of Derrida’s transanalytical procedure, let us put it in parallel accordingly, step-by-step, with the illustrating example of the evolution and deconstruction of gender categorizations in queer theory: Taking the traditional gender roles (1) the conceptual couple of man/woman has always been clearly identified. As many gender theories show, based on that traditional logic of opposition, (2) the structures of the dominant Western ideology position “men” as superior to “women”, and define “women” as “men” that lacking something, that are not enough. Reversing with (3) the hierarchical patriarchal order that places “men” above “women”, taken on similar, yet matriarchal grounds “women” would be considered as superior to ’’men” and the similar argument could be made that “men” are “women” lacking constructed feminine standards. As Judith Butler criticizes the artificial division of gender, similar work helped demonstrate the absurdity of the hegemonic binary conception of man and women, and allowed social awareness on the phallocentric structures of our societies that, by mechanisms of opposition and domination, exclude and oppress women benefitting to the male community. Last but not least (4) queer theory has introduced “third party” terms that disturb the dichotic male/female gender marker, such as “transgender” to cite only one generic example. Finally, the impact of the deconstructive process in Gender Theory has been a 123

revolutionary one that can be witness in our contemporary societies. In fact, the multiplication of gender markers is now culturally admitted and legally recognized in many countries, the Nepalese government for instance recognizes a third gender marker on official identity document (SOURCE). Thus, the deconstructive work on gender in Queer Theory had a significant practical and cultural impact on Western societies, which assesses the proficiency of the deconstructive process. Taking everything in mind, this example shows the importance of stepping out of the common and arbitrary centralization of knowledge that, by mechanisms of reduction and disjunction, conceals the complexity of the world’s structures and phenomena. The traditional organization of knowledge, which deconstruction aims to dismantle and reconstruct, distracts us from coming to the realization that those ideas, presented and accepted as “knowledge”, are intrinsically the vector producing and legitimizing oppressive ideologies. It teaches us the circumstances under which such “ideas” operate in the organization and transmission of culture as dominant paradigms (“knowledge” as “power” as I previously discussed with Habermas and will later approach with Foucault). We ought to resist the one-dimensional narrative delivery by confronting the underlying and overarching complex fabric and structures of phenomena all sciences attempt to comprehend separately. The incorporation of alternative gender markers disorganized the social authoritative paradigms and unlocks new perspectives for the expansion of scientific knowledge and progress towards social equality and justice. 124

Conclusion In the first chapter of this part, I investigated the different conceptualizations of nature while retracing the founding principles of the modern thought across different historical times and events. I mentioned the Ancient’s cosmology which admitted a sense of equality resting among the different order of nature and the Greek’ mythology which gave a spiritual attribute to nature interpreting its phenomena with their personification as Gods. From there, I elaborated on the self-extraction of man from nature that beholds a significant turn in to our ecological conception. Exploring the evolution of narratives, I found that the modern experience of anthropocentrism is deeply rooted in its theological, philosophical and scientific rationalizations. Using of a diversified literature relating to different stages of man’s relationship with nature I identified an evident epistemological shift in the 18th Century: the social and political rupture with the clergy that came with the Enlightenment period revolutionized and secularized Western societies. I compile some arguments from Hobbes’ fictional anthropological account of human nature and Locke’s groundbreaking liberal theory to relate them to our modern Western society’s narratives. Discussing the contemporary conception of nature, I argue that the modern anthropocentric turn transformed nature into what we now call “environment”. Additionally, I examine the new political structures with and emergence of capitalism articulated by Hobbes and Locke’s narratives and how they legitimated the abusive exploitation of nature. Then I broached into the contemporary conception of nature and the discriminatory 125

perception and prejudicial practices that enable the ecological crisis. I explore the scientific, capitalistic and patriarchal structures of oppression that allow the domination of man over nature (equally allowing the coercion of the rich over the poor and of man over women). In the second chapter, I engaged in identifying the totalizing and essentializing effects of produced knowledge while building theory. I discussed the epistemological issues to conceptualizing nature and the impact of language in producing narrative. The rhetorical structures that allow narrative to take root in the social fabric are the vector to producing political ideology. Looking at gender categorization, Judith Butler showed how the repetition of gendered constative claims performed into producing and perpetuating the gender roles, by totalizing and essentializing their meanings. However, the discursive techniques employed to enshrine a social model are also the ones that allow and let in the possibility of alternative narratives to emerge. Hereby, I emphasize how knowledge functions in a society: it gives coherence to the individual, produces social norms and narratives for the group and sets ideological frame to structure the whole. Next, I address the metaphysical problem of the subject and object relationship in doing research and the impossibility get a hold of a definitive account of reality. This argument expressed the importance of accepting the idea that human knowledge is necessarily uncertain and self-contradictory (as the dominant dogma was challenged and contradicted in scientific revolutions). Then I assess the richness of conceptual knowledge exposing different possible definitions of “nature” which exposed the impossibility for conceptions to be established 126

as absolute truths but rather paradigmatic frames and accounts of reality. The importance of showing a variety of interpretation and conceptualization of a given idea rests in the fact that: domains of science are given frontiers by human thinking but the realms of knowledge remain open-ended. Furthermore, with insights from critical theory I use Habermas’ work in Knowledge and Human Interests in which he identifies three types of knowledge that serves human interests. For him sciences are used as instruments for the pursuit of three kinds of human interests: technological, practical and emancipating. This critical account of “knowledge” highlights the ambivalence of science employment and its malleability to answer the purpose of ideological ambitions and goals. Globally, chapter two emphasized the necessity to integrate the subject, and put it in communication with the object within their environment. I argue that language is the cognitive ability that simultaneously gave humanity access to knowledge as well as hindering it. I examine the complex mechanism that links the realms of human experience that I illustrate with “knowledge”, “culture” and “language” in a diagram putting forward the complex connection of the human representational system. | conclude with this illustration that a paradigmatic reform in our thinking methods is necessary and suggest taking a multidimensional approach to the problem of the ecological crisis with the paradigm of complexity in the system theory. In the third chapter, we use a postmodern approach to deconstructing the totalizing modern thought in order to eventually apply it to the ecological question. We broached into the topic by rejecting the rationalist philosophy that categorizes the world in 127

oppositional and hierarchical conceptualization. From there, I introduce the concept of “deconstruction” that ought to avoid the one-dimensional vision given by the modern Western narratives. The transanalytical approach sheds light on the way we organize knowledge in terms and systems of idea that are inherently producing ideology. By identifying the dualistic conceptual organization of the world, it suggests to challenge its narratives by dismantling and disorganizing the traditional paradigms and their irreducible opposing concept (man/woman, human/nature, nature/culture etc.). It is in this light that we considered the deconstructive approach as a theoretical framework to discuss the conditions under which systemic changes ought to be made to act in response to the environmental crisis. Extensively, gender theory resonates with the ecological situation as it substantiates the imperativeness of and reframing the question of the ecological crisis through reforming the medium of social and ideological conceptions. In other words, the ecological crisis is therefore to be understood as, first and foremost, a philosophical problem. 128

PART 3: SYSTEM MODELS: CONTEXT, STRUCTURES,

DYNAMICS, ORGANIZATIONAL FORCES REGULATING THE

ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

In reference to Figure 6 and in pursuance of understanding the destructive patterns of behavior that engender the environmental crisis, we started with an investigation on the mental models systems that shape our perceptions of nature and thus constrain our ability to implement a non-dominant relationship with our ecological environment. In this part, I examine the intricate structures of the social, political and economic systems that cause and constraint destructive behavioral patterns that produce the Western ecological paradox. If the social, political and economic powers are considered as distinct spheres of human organization, the study of power is generally developed in dialogical analysis between the ideological product of two spheres and the excluded third sphere. Here, I try to incorporate the three irreducible and necessary power systems of Western civilization and the patterns they produce within the paradigm of complexity. I undertake the examination of the convoluted organizational dynamics of power systems in contemporary Western civilization and provide a concrete framework of analysis in order to contextualize the phenomena relative to the ecological crisis. 129

Chapter 1: Embeddedness of mental models, power structures and behavioral patterns

Charles Bonini’s Paradox articulated by John M. Dutton and William H. Starbuck as: "A model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable. Alternatively, as a model grows more realistic, it also becomes just as difficult to understand as the real-world processes it represents" in Computer Simulation of Human Behaviour (1971).

L. Foundational structures of Western civilization

Mental model and conceptual frameworks While investigating the ecological crisis as relative to the human system’s environment, I elaborated on the mental models and analyzed with Morin (1991, 2001) and expanded sets of three irreducible embedded characteristics of the human mind. Let us synthesize the notions covered in the last part and consider these embedded realms and their elements themselves respectively tied to that of another realm: 3 spheres of representation: psychological, social and bio-historical 3 identities as: an individual, a society and humanity 3 perspectives: egocentrism, sociocentrism and anthropocentrism 3 conceptual frameworks: differentiation by othering, competition by classifying, and exploitation by organizing Before proceeding to the examination of the structure of Western civilization, I shall 130

briefly outline some of the key aspects of the last part, notably the dominative logic and characteristics of our mental model. Karen Warren in Ecofeminist Philosophy describes as “oppressive conceptual framework” (Karen J. Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy, 2000:46). In the third chapter of her book, Warren helps recapitulate my argument and lays out the features of the “oppressive conceptual framework” in five points (2000:46-8): 1) “ value-hierarchical thinking” 2) “oppositional value dualism”, 3) “Power as ‘power- over” as the subordination of the other/inferior/lower sphere. The first three points I believe I have covered with an analysis of Plumwood’s “Illusion of Disembeddedness” (2002) and of the dominant discourse’s grammar and ideological rhetoric (McGee, 1980); 4) “perpetuate a conception and practice of privileges” characterized what I earlier identified as reinforcing feedback loop with Meadows’ “success for the successful” illustration and 5) “logic of domination” as the rhetoric that justifies and legitimate the oppressive model that I introduced with Plumwood’s work (1993, 2002) on the dualistic logic that rationalizes and naturalizes the domination of otherness. Furthermore, Warren exposes the fallacious reasoning underlying the logic of domination, that she summarizes in two premises: if one accepts that 1) the moral superiority of human over nonhuman entities because being endowed with a conscience and self-determination that “plants and rocks lack”, and accepts 2) humanity’s moral superiority justifies morally the subordination of nonhuman (2000:49). The author concludes that, whether or not premise 1) is true, it does not constitute a sufficient condition for premise 2) to be true (2000:49). One may, in fact, be superior to another, however, that does not mean the former can rightfully dominate the latter, moral 131

superiority does not justify domination of humans on animals. Therefore the logic of domination in an oppressive conceptual framework holds and relies on the basic belief of 1) and 2) as a self-justifying enterprise or belief (i.e. the existence of God in the Bible), and not a valid reasoning between two claims. Karen Warren’s “logic of domination” deconstructs the rhetoric that serves as a justification to subordinating nature. The oppressive conceptual framework that justifies the subordination of the “other” needs to be understood as an overarching logic that operates systematically in different types of domination, that may be anthropocentrism, sexism, racism etc. Moreover, the reason why I bring Karen Warren’s thought to this discussion is because she specifies that, within the interdependency between the logic of domination and the oppressive conceptual framework, it is key to make the distinction between oppression and domination (2000:54). She defines “oppression” as the “institutional structures, strategies and processes whereby some groups (...) are limited, inhibited, coerced (...) by limiting their choices and options” (Warren, 2000:54, emphasis mine). Whereas she defines “domination” as “the tools of subjugation” which oppressive institutions use to “reinforce the power and privileges (...) in relationships of domination and subordination” (Warren, 2000:54-5 emphasis mine). Ultimately, she concludes that: “All oppression involves domination. By contrast, not all domination involves oppression”, as nonhuman entities can be dominated but not oppressed as in limited in their self-determination (Warren, 2000:55). This is helpful to understand the embeddedness of the dominative structures and the oppressive mental model that produces them. In the Figure below I condensed the main theoretical points I made so 132

far investigating the contemporary Western mental model borrowing Warren’s notion of “oppressive conceptual framework”. The dotted lines represent the openness of each system.

1 OPPRESSIVE CONCEPTUAL . / FRAMEWORK \ i## * ^ m CONSCIOUSNESS \ / < > LOGIC ATTITUDE / ANTROPOCENTRISM / @SPECIES \ I \ ...... # '"I : V /* : \ Exploitation X ^differentiation ! \ "ORGANIZING** / \ ‘ OTHERING* /

: /OPPRESSION s \ , / # DOMINATION : SOCIOCENTRISM j **«****».*«•*•** i EGOCENTRISM SOCIETY \ #competition i & INDIVIDUALS \ \ V 'CLASSIFYING* / / \ / / \ \ // ......

Figure 14 Oppressive Conceptual Frameworks

What defines a system is what it comprises and what it precludes, we characterize the identity of a system according to what it includes and what it excludes. Thus, boundaries are crucial in the sense that they determine what is inside and outside of the system. 133

Accordingly, the identity of an individual, society or species will be determine by the conditional existence and/or absence of characteristics which are the constitutive to each system’s singularity and unity/coherence. For Edgar Morin, the egocentric construction of self, of a subject’s identity is carried out and assessed by the individual upon the principle of exclusion and the principle of inclusion (Morin, 2001:78, emphasis mine). From there, let us investigate on contemporary social structures and individual patterns of behavior of Western societies when founded on dynamics of domination, exploitation and oppression.

M. Modern Identities

In this section I shall define the concept of ‘identity’ in Modernity while exploring the complex dynamics of its social construction and representation. In Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi (2004), Zygmunt Bauman observes how Modernity scientifically changed the overall conception of human identity: “once modernity replaced premodern estates (which determined identity by birth and hence provide few if any occasion for the question of ‘who am I?’ to arise) with classes, identities became tasks which individuals had to perform” (Zygmunt Bauman, Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi, 2004:11). The notion of ‘identity’ does not appertain to a human ‘naturality’, it falls within someone’s ability and achievements as opposed to being something innate. Thus, it is a social construct shaped around human 134

experiences, alike the meaning of the word ‘culture’ according to Bauman’s definition, it is “denoting such human features, in stark opposition to the obstinate facts of nature, are products, sediments or side-effects of human choices. Human made, they can in principle be human unmade” (Bauman, 2004:32). Bauman says that identities are fluid, “in modern times human identities became malleable, meaning that they are not secured by a life long guarantee, that they are eminently negotiable and revocable” (Bauman, 2004:11, original emphasis). Edgar Morin in L’Humanite de L’Humanite addresses the themes of plurality and unity around the idea of “the multifold one”: On one hand, the “one” as a unit within which an “infinite diversity” can be developed, and simultaneously on another hand, “the multifold” as a diversity within which a unit can be retraced (Morin, 2001:59-69). For instance, humans’ biological identities (i.e. homo sapiens) can be retraced in the unity of the human species, each human being’s genetic structure presents 23 pairs of chromosomes, whose organization display incommensurable allelic combinations creating a diversity of unique individuals with different physiological, social and psychological attributes. Along the same lines, we showed how the concept of “culture” for instance related to, and allowed a variety of “cultures” and recursively how different cultures permitted the conceptualization of its generic unit with the notion of “culture”. It is the recognition of otherness. In similar respect, an individual’s social or psychological “identity” comprises generic traits and is unique throughout the specific experiences and manifestations of its multilayered composition. This way, the ‘one’ individual is also the ‘multifold’ developing 135

their identity into a diversity of identities. Inasmuch as individuals are structured upon a generic unit, one as a human being like others, have a body, a soul, a spirit, a will, a reason, communities, ideas, tastes, interests and so on. It is then upon these constitutive biological cognitive, social and psychological traits that one, as a subject or agent, can chose to unfold his identity and flourish pursuant to their personal preferences: I can convert to Christianity, be a parent, a plumber and/or a baker, a musician, a communist, a woman, a German and a Spanish all at same time. There is otherness within oneness, and unity within diversity. Bauman says: “Few if any of us can avoid the passage through more than one genuine or putative, well-integrated or ephemeral ‘community of ideas and principles' “(Bauman 2004:13) relating to Morin’s idea of the “multifold one” (Morin, 2001) we understand that the notion of identity/identities can be flexible and contradictory (see table on The Homo Complexus). Furthermore, a culture or identity can only exist and subsist as adaptable systems in relation to their environment and to others. Morin writes that each given culture is open as well as it is closed, a culture withstands by a double process of integration and conservation that sustains itself through cultural syncretism; he emphasized the idea that if these two processes appear to be antagonistic or contradictory, they are, in fact, fundamentally complementary (Edgar Morin, Vers L’AbTme?, 2007:66, 106). Likewise, the construction of one’s identity entails peculiar selection mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion which are inherent dynamics in human experience and that allow the expression and construction of an egocentric “I” and of sociocentric or cultural “us” in opposition to an othering “them”. This reveals the how identity/identities are open-ended 136

and uncertain. For this reason, the complexity of human identity should be understood as a self-fulfilling construction of the subject over time that is determined in multiple environmental referential sphere: in one’s corporeality, relation to others/intersubjectivity, time perceptions, one’s agency and narratives given by historical, cultural and personal experience.

N. Globalization and Development: Planetary Context

In contemporary Western societies the patterns of behaviors that produce the ecological crisis exhibit the same complex organizational structures of interrelation and embeddedness found within the ones of mental models and power structures. They also consist in a multi-leveled system of dynamical forces; however, the pursuance of my analysis will conform to the tri-dimensional methodological commitment I applied myself to. The table below presents the dynamics and concepts relative to the planetary context of globalization. 137

The planetary context of globalization Structures Economy Culture Politics Western Arts and Modern Ideological models Neo-capitalism Sciences Democracy

End & Forces Growth Development Progress

Production and Creation and Distribution and Means & Dynamics Exchange Communication Regulation Table 1 The Planetary context of globalization

The complex and the context Edgar Morin in La Voie (2012) introduces his work towards envisaging a new path for humanity by addressing the “difficulty to reflect on the present” or the complexity in thinking about the world today as “knowledge is overwhelmed by the rapidity of contemporary evolutions and changes, and by globalization’s complexity: countless inter-retro-actions between extremely diverse processes (economic, social, demographic, political, ideological, religious, etc.)” (Morin, La Voie, 2012:23-24). This emphasizes the importance to contextualize our knowledge in order to understand the complexity of world phenomena. Here, in pursuance of understanding the power structures of the contemporary Western societies, I shall lay out the context in which they operate. 138

Development and globalization Let us here specify the meaning of the concepts relative to the dynamics of contemporary Western societies in the planetary context. First, the concept of ‘development’, as a means, refers to the dynamics leading towards ‘progress’ or to realize ‘growth’. As an end, ‘development’ refers to objectives and outcomes resulting from dynamics of ‘progress’ or ‘growth’. Here we see that the functions of ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘growth’ are interchangeable: as dynamical forces they assist the emergence of one another in an endless cycle. This is a reinforcing feedback loop, where scientific and technological developments assist economic growth, which itself stands behind scientific and technological development, doubtlessly overlooking democratic principles and thus undermining social progress towards a more democratic society. The danger here is that, conceptually speaking, neither the idea of ‘development’ nor of ‘progress’ nor of ‘growth’ comes with set limits. On the contrary, these forces can increase and expand infinitely and they do, to the point where they become out of control: the scientific community cannot contain nuclear proliferation, the deregulated economy cannot prevent financial crisis, the now privatized, state-owned enterprises are not to care for the people anymore, etc. Development, growth and progress are complex, dynamical forces in interaction and we should recognize their ambivalence inasmuch as they can have both positive (e.g. human rights) and negative effects (e.g. ecological problems) (Morin, 2012:35). According to Morin, we are blinded by our own rationality and that our idea of development ignores its vice, flaws, contradictions and their ravaging forces, he 139

condemns this misconception: “ The idea of development is an underdeveloped idea!” (Morin, 2012:39). Once again, for Morin, our inability to recognize and connect such phenomena, integrate them in the context and the complex speaks for the intellectual and cognitive shortcomings of the Western world. Now, in order to understand the concept of globalization I shall borrow Manfred B. Steger’s definition given in Globalization, A Very Short Introduction. Globalization presents the emergence of technological innovation facilitating “the creation of new and multiplication of existing social networks and activities that increasingly overcome traditional political economic cultural and geographical boundaries” (Manfred B. Steger, Globalization. A Very Short Introduction. 2003:9). Secondly, the process of globalization manifests the rapid expansion and spatial reach of social relations, markets, organizations etc. (Manfred B. Steger, 2003:11). Thirdly, globalization intensifies and accelerates dynamics, communication, processes, activities etc. overcoming the traditional barriers given by time and space, meaning different human systems at different scales are in interaction (e.g. local with global, local with distant): “Proceeding at an ever-accelerating pace, these innovations are reshaping the social landscape of human life” (Manfred B. Steger, 2003:11-12). Lastly, globalization presents the world in its multidimensionality “people [are] becoming increasingly conscious of growing manifestations of social interdependence and the enormous acceleration of human interaction” (Manfred B. Steger, Globalization, A Very Short Introduction. 2003:9). Globalization opens the human mind, and offers both a 140

sense of intersubjectivity and a collective experience of the world. It generates a global culture that shapes both individual and collective identities. Moreover, it is worthwhile to delineate the scope of the political, economic and social powers to be discussed. In this context the definition provided by Manfred B. Steger reflects my understanding of these concepts (Steger, 2003:69): - Political: “practices related to the generation and distribution of power in societies” Economic: “production, exchange and consumption of commodities” Social or cultural: “symbolic construction, articulation and dissemination of meaning” In short, Steger writes: “Globalization refers to a multidimensional set of social processes that create, multiply, stretch and intensify worldwide social interdependencies and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness of deepening connection between the local and the distant” (Manfred B. Steger, Globalization, A Very Short Introduction, 2003:13). In fact, the structures given by the dynamics of globalization assist the emergence of a ‘world-society’ that, in a process of planetary unification (e.g. techno-economical around the neoliberal model), becomes more homogenous (e.g. predominance of Western culture) (Morin, 2012:26-28). However, Edgar Morin explicates that the process of globalization is one that both unifies and separates: “Indeed, this way globalization is both the better (the possibility of the emergence of a new world) and the worse (the possibility of humanity’s self- destruction)” (Morin, 2012: 30,46). By all means, the process of globalization is ambivalent, and today faces its own crisis. 141

Here are a few ‘crisis’ taken from Morin’s account, and that we shall be exploring in this part (Morin, 2012:32): Its dynamism triggers multiple and diverse planetary crisis (...); The ecological crisis that itself triggers new economic, social and political crisis (...); The crisis of traditional societies that the process of Westernization tends to disintegrates (...); The Western society, which produces the crisis of globalization, is itself in a crisis. Individualism’s egoism effects destroy traditional solidarities. (...); The crisis of the political is aggravated by the incapacity to reflect on and face the problems’ novelty, scope and complexity.

O. The different facts of human behavior in postmodern societies

We discussed in Part two, the different intricate dimensions of human identity with Edgar Morin’s work in L’Humanite de L’Humanite (i.e. individual-societv-specie) (2001). I would like to explore the complexity of the human subject with Edgar Morin’s account of human consciousness. His expose suggests that in fact, humans are rational beings as: the homo sapiens is endowed with reason that as an Homo Faber he applies to creating tools developing his technique and as an Homo Oeconomicus he can anticipate and maximize utility and interest (Morin, 2001:132). However, the general characterization given by human rationality of ‘human rationality’ lacks of self- awareness, which speaks for its own irrationality that his reason here omits: its affectivity (emotions). This also relates to anthropocentrism and how humanity extracts itself from nature and seeks to dominate it (cf. nature/culture dualism); similarly humanity tends to 142

extract itself from its own animality opposing mind and body. This way of thinking alienated human reason itself opposing reason and sensation, emotion and passion. On such account, Morin suggests to develop the notion of Homo Sapiens and explore the relationship between human reason and human affectivity or emotion (Morin, 2001:133). Accordingly I synthesize his expose on the table below. HOMO COMPLEXUS Reason Emotion Examples Homo Sapiens Homo Demens Rationality Irrational Sciences Genocides, superstition Biased Homo Faber Homo Poeticus Practicality Meaning Tools Love, humour Language Homo Prosaicus Homo Ludens Responsability Player Duties Games, celebrations Fun Homo Economicus Homo Consumericus Utility Impulsive Interests Materialism, competition Insatiable Table 2 The different facets of the Homo Sapiens: Homo Complexus

With regard to the Morin's Homo Complexus we ought to conceptualize human 143

consciousness not only in terms of control and rationality but also with regard to the heat of its passions and emotions. The multidimensional aspects identified by Morin lays out a comprehensive insight as to the complexity of the human mind and allow for a deeper understanding of human behaviors. Thus, the development of individual and collective identity should be contemplated taking in consideration of the ambivalent and interdependent layers that constitute the human psyche. Here, we shall investigate how the processes of globalization changed the social fabric of contemporary societies and how its dynamics influenced individual patterns of behavior. The table below organizes and synthesizes the analysis I will advance in the section.

The social context of globalization and ambivalent behaviors

Historical Individual Social Narratives/ Identities Personality/Singularity Group/Community Representation

Differentiation Domination Means Conformity -* Acceptation —►Superiority —►Authority

Recognition Integration Self-realization Goals —►Uniqueness —►Privilege —►Success Behaviors Consumption Competition Discrimination

Table 3 Contemporary patterns of behavior 144

From solid to liquid Zygmunt Bauman, in Liquid Life (2005) and in Liquid Times, Living in an Age of Uncertainty (2007), investigates the negative effects of globalization on contemporary societies. He refers to a ‘liquid modern society’ that suffers from the dynamics of globalization, as a ‘society of the present’ with an uncertain future, as its forms are constantly and rapidly changing (Bauman, 2007:1): A condition in which social forms (structures (...) institutions (...) patterns of acceptable behaviour) can no longer (and are not expected) to keep their shape for long, because they decompose and melt faster than the time it takes to cast them, and once they are cast for them to set. In a nutshell, globalization and the neoliberal ideology facilitated the privatization of governmental function and state-owned enterprises, leaving the responsibilities and protections previously assured by political institutions in the hands of the market and private individuals (Bauman, 2007:2). The erosion of state Sovereignty, and disempowerment of collective action and institutions, instills a sense of insecurity and forces individual initiatives to compete with one another while facing the uncertainties of an ever-changing world and stressing the fragmentation and atomization of society. In Bauman’s words (Bauman, 2007:14): They preclude the possibility of existential security, which rests on collective foundations and so offer no inducement to solidary actions; instead, they encourage their listeners to focus on their individual survival in the style of ‘everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost’. 145

The structure of the social fabric broke down, and dynamics of competition replaced those of cooperation. Now the individual is left to his own devices and is expected to deploy his own strategies and resources to come up against the challenges of liquid Modern society. The individual has to rely on his identity, or more precisely on his individuality or uniqueness, to stay in the game. In a world of ‘constant uncertainty’, Bauman says: “The true stake in the race is (temporary) rescue from being excluded into the ranks of the destroyed and avoiding being consigned to waste” (Bauman, 2005:3). In the quest to building and maintaining individuality, one needs at all times, to be ready to change, adapt and transform their identity. Paradoxically, ‘individuality’ relies on society’s standard to define it as such, “as a task individuality is an end product of societal transformation, disguised as a personal discovery” (Bauman, 2005:19). Facing the impossibility to constantly reinvent oneself, consumerism, according to Bauman, “is such a response to the challenges posited by the society of individuals. The logic of consumerism is geared to the needs of men and women struggling to construct, preserve and refresh their individualities” (Bauman, 2005:23-4). In fact, the market provides an alternative and offers a range of ready-to-use products, tools and objects for people to buy and display ‘identity’ instantly (e.g. fashion). In this way mass consumption is a means for individuals to attempt to adopt social and material needs that mass production endlessly recreates, updating and diversifying its commodities, making the older one obsolete (e.g. fashion seasons, cars, smartphones etc.) (Bauman, 2005:24). Bauman points out how modern life creates and relies on insecurity (Baumann, 2005:34): 146

The market would suffer a mortal blow if the status of individuals felt secure, their achievement and possessions safe, their projects finite, and the end of their uphill struggles feasible (...) The emphasis here falls not on arousing new desires but on extinguishing the ‘old’ (...) in order to clear the site for new shopping escapade. Consumerism and the cultural industry With Bauman we assessed that in Modern liquid society the individual is left on his own, pressured to stand out in order to succeed. The Modern visage of success features the display of individuality, wealth and privileges signaled by the accumulation of consumer goods. Paradoxically, Modern liquid societies require one to pursue their individuality whilst implicitly pressuring the individuals to conform to the ideals of individuality established by the social standards of the masses. These social expectations are compelling the individuals to instantly compose their individuality through conspicuous consumption; commodities are acquired to instantly express one’s individuality and keep up in an ever-changing world of new trends. Furthermore, Bauman notes: “the struggle of uniqueness has become the main engine of mass production and mass consumption” (Bauman; 2005:26). It is also worth noting how this relates to Morin’s paradigm of complexity and the antagonisms that emerge from the social dynamics of human systems. Under this prism we understand that modern liquid society and its cultural system is both emancipating and oppressing; similarly, the individual’s identity is ambivalent and is composed of ‘uniqueness’ and ‘sameness’. Jean Baudrillard is a French philosopher whose work in The Consumer Society (1970; 147

1998) gives an account on the individual’s relationship to objects that is still relevant today in a postmodern world. Not far from Bauman, Baudrillard suggests objects are no longer exclusively acquired for their utility, but for their signification or ‘sign value’, what manifest within a larger collection of commodities and how they participate to the representation an overall ‘image’ (Baudrillard, 1970; 1998:27). This means that in the postmodern paradigm objects and commodities are “culturalized”: “since they are transformed into the substance of play and distinction, into luxury accessories, into one element among others in the general package of consumable (Baudrillard: 1998:28, original emphasis). According to Baudrillard, the process of consumption fulfills two functions that are, 1) a “process of signification and communication” objects are symbols or signs which meanings are manipulated in a system comparable to language; 2) a “a process of classification and social differentiation” where objects indicate a social distinctions in terms of sign/“status value” that implies a specific hierarchy in their dissemination (Baudrillard, 1970; 1998: 60-61). Here, we understand that consumption is a “class institution” of “radical discrimination (Baudrillard, 1970; 1998:59). The accelerated rhythm and greater space occupied by 'progress’, communication and production penetrates and transpires on the individual’s perceptions and expectations. In modern liquid societies, the individual is over-stimulated by new possibilities and opportunities making personal commitments, desires, projects or ideals’ become obsolete before their realization. As the traditional process to their achievements is perceived as a waste of time when instant gratification through consumption is an option. This way, individuals compulsively buy objects to put up with frustration and time 148

pressure as well as to compensate for their personal shortcomings. This also changes our perception of happiness that is now characterized by ‘signs’ and their accumulation, rather than by the personal journey of ‘experiences’ (i.e. end products vs. process from beginning to end; quantity vs. quality). For Baudrillard the accumulation of goods and growth of individual needs speaks for a “psychological pauperization” that only fulfills the needs of industrial growth (Baudrillard 1970; 1998:64-65). It is a system of discrimination that relies on dynamics of differentiation, prompting enough psychological tension and dissatisfaction to create a consumer demand. However, Baudrillard notes that goods and needs do not have the same production rate, the system is not “speculating upon this discrepancy between good and needs (...) but further implies the growth of that very disequilibrium between the growth of needs and the growth of productivity (...) is all the readier to hide behind the alibi of individual needs” (Baudrillard 1970; 1998:64-65). As we shall explain in more details later, Baudrillard concludes that poverty and disadvantage is a necessary condition for wealth and privilege to exist (for contrast). Therefore “Growth is not democracy. Profusion is a function of discrimination” (Baudrillard 1970; 1998:66). The proliferation of goods and commodities in society and the “private and collective consumer mentality” that Baudrillard refers to alienates individuals from “real life” on several levels (Baudrillard, 1970:31). Baudrillard argues that it is suggestive of a “magical thinking”, meaning the individual is blinded by the product (i.e. object/commodity) and disconnected from the social and historical process that lies behind it (i.e. extraction, production); “by grace of technology, which wipes out, so far as 149

the consumer’s consciousness is concerned, the very principles of social reality” (Baudrillard, 1970:31-32). The denial of the process of production also speaks for a generational entitlement to consumption, the appropriation of “a natural right to abundance” (Baudrillard, 1970:32). For that matter, the communication in mass-media stands as a good illustration, the daily profusion of ready-to-consume news items that both dramatize and banalize an event through distance and comforts the passive spectator-consumer from the reality it reports on (Baudrillard, 1970:34-35). This is the consumption of symbolically charged signs and images that allude to realities that replace and/or compensate for a lack experience, a lack of reality (e.g. advertisement, news, objects etc). In the pursuit of individuality or identity through consumption, the individual is, by denial, alienated from the social and historical reality of the world he lives in and thus loses touch with their humanity. In sum, the progress of science and technology developed worldwide communication and exchanges and accelerated the process of globalization. The structural transformation and amplification of the world’s dynamics significantly changed Modern societies and reshaped individuals’ mental models, reconditioning their experiences as well as the pace and their way of life. The dynamics I describe call attention to an underlying paradox that emerges from postmodern life; the contrast between the hyper-sophistication of humanity’s ‘means’ and the unrefined ends pursued by individuals. Morin’s words emphasize my point here: “To the scientific and technological hyper-development corresponds the mental and moral underdevelopment” (Morin, La Voie, 2007; 2012: 125). 150

The ecological repercussions of consumerism on populations The cultural industry and consumer society emerged during the course of accelerated globalization which process transformed Modern societies reorganizing the social economic and political spheres and distancing the individual from their new realities. The consumerist lifestyle advanced by Western contemporary societies is extremely wasteful and polluting. The tremendous environmental impacts of such human activity results in a global warming of the planet, the causes of such climate change include, but is not limited to, air and water pollution, droughts, loss of land, deforestation etc. Moreover, human-induced ecological degradation presents additional issues for the world’s organization. Not only we compromise our species’ preservation and the survival of future generations but, consumer society and Western lifestyle affect present-day distribution of resources and repartition of eco-contamination at a local-national and international scale. This addresses the problem of environmental justice that suggests an existing environmental discrimination resulting from a wealth gap between population that is increasing and perpetuating inequalities. On one hand, there is the wealthy privileged consumer population that bears the largest ecological footprint yet benefiting from the healthiest resources and environment (clean land, air, water). On another hand, there is the disadvantaged poor population who suffer the ecological consequences of the wealthy lifestyle of the privileged; they are economically pushed to live in undesirable locations, harmful environment often affordable because putting human health at risk (e.g. industrial toxic discharges). The way of life popularized all around the world by a globalized Western culture presents 151

itself as an inspirational model, as a “universal archetype for the rest of the planet. It suggests that Western societies constitute the ultimate end in human history” (Morin, 2012:39, translation mine). The problem is that such a model is not possibly attainable or sustainable for the whole population of the world. In fact, Tim de Chant (2012) gathered data from the Global Footprint Network website that he translated into an infograhic representation. His work shows that it would require 4.1 planets Earth for 7 billion people to live like U.S. Americans; and 2.5 planets Earth for the world population to live like French people. Clearly, the Western way of life is not sustainable and certainly not a model example for other countries to follow; yet, global economy and neoliberal policies force them to do so by pushing the State out of the economy (e.g. cutting welfare benefits, selling public property to private companies) The forces and consequences of a society of production and consumption see to veer off human control. The motives for growth, development and progress that once came from human rationality, find themselves today continued by human irrationality. The denial of the unsustainability of Western consumerism is facilitated by a fast pace environment that prevents people from reasoning and thus, instead, pressures them to rationalization. In society stormed by production and where objects of consumption saturate individuals’ lives, there is only little time left, if any at all, for the elaboration of existential reflections and higher aspirations. To conclude this chapter, I shall synthesize the new conditions emerging from the social structural shift engendered by the process of globalization. The following diagnosis 152

poses the symptoms of contemporary societies and negative consequences of globalization identified so far:

- Mutilation of the social web: Community and solidarity —► Separation/differentiation and atomization/privatization = Loss of compassion - Cultural emptiness and degradation of individual aspirations Experiences, skills, lifestyle and interests —► Consumer goods, services, trends and social status = Loss of meaning/aspirations - Intellectual impoverishment UtitityT quality, function of object —* Superficiality, quantity, symbolic of objects = Loss of coherence/integrity - Dissolution of social values Accountability, commitment and ethics —> Indifference, passivity and corruption = Loss of responsibility Table 4 Liquid life 153

Chapter 2: Structural organization of Western contemporary societies

P. Powers, actors, axiomatic system and ideologies

In spite of all the theoretical research in the study of the Western contemporary power structure, we can observe the prevalence of twofold analysis in academic research and publication. Typically, in such disembedded examination, one carries out the study of a power in concomitance with another, an ideology or an actor. For instance, one will put the “political power” in communication with “neoliberalism”, analyze “social power” in relation to “capitalism”, or elaborate on “the market” and “democracy”. Similarly, an ideology can be compared and analyzed in reference to another and according to a common power dynamic, however such dual approaches bypass fundamental structural and organizational dynamics, because the perspectives given by rotation of two spotlights, leaving the third element in the shadow distort and freeze our vision of a phenomenon reducing our mental flexibility, overlooking its complexity and embeddedness in a system. Thus, while drawing the parallel with the system theory, when Meadows writes: “missing information flows is one of the most common causes of system malfunction”, she puts in a nutshell the imperfection of the scientific method I describe here (Meadows, 2008:157). Allowing a system S with actors A, B and C, before the mind of an investigator foregrounding and backgrounding its elements. When one focuses on A and B (e.g. I taking C for granted), then one ignores, by omission, the existence of a third “factor”. 154

While foregrounding the isolated interaction between “actors” A and B: one blurs C into a passive and static backgrounding element, neglecting the dynamics of C as a significant and fundamental actor of the S system. Again, it is specifically such flawed epistemic configuration that falsifies our cognitive frames, shapes our mental models with oppressive conceptual frameworks, and puts dominative relations on a public scale. The central theoretical problem and challenge here is to avoid the reductionist twofold approach in order have an accurate comprehension of the power dynamics that structure the organization of our Western societies. In the last section, we followed a step-by-step guide to deconstructing binary visions of the world conveyed by opposing concepts. The fourth and final phase of the process suggested we added a third term to disrupt and resist the dominant narrative’s arbitrary and dominant organizational order. On these grounds, I suggest adding a third dimension in my analysis, which I believe constitutes the basal requirement to pursue an undivided and indivisible complex thought, that is one that consider the parts within the whole and the whole within its parts. Thus, it is important to be reminded that my presentation’s threefold is non- exhaustive, instead very much conceptually expandable. Conversely, I shall insist on the irreducibility of each set and the necessity of at least 3 elements as an alternative model of analysis in response to the shortcomings of modernity’s binary paradigm. In regards to the structures of the contemporary Western civilizations that enabled an ecological environmental crisis within the human and non-human life system, I chose then to look at the three irreducible embedded structures at different levels of embeddedness and entanglement: 155

3 powers: economic, social and political 3 axioms: freedom, equality and justice 3 actors and pursued ideals: free market (liberal), culture (parity) and government (fair) 3 ideologies: neoliberalism, Western culture, consumer society and democracy Although one could consider an extended inventory of the power structures that shape our societies; first, I choose to focus on the fundamental structures, irreducible elements and essential functions of state power: the political power, the social power and the economic power. In a civil society, the establishment of power aims to fulfill specific ideals contained in a set of founding principles bearing the essential function to produce civil order. In order to pursue their objectives, contemporary Western powers aim and act along the precepts of: justice, equality and freedom. Secondly, applying this analysis to the system approach, I shall identify the actors, as instruments for achievement, which implement and organize the authority and goals of each power. On these grounds, the government legitimates political power, the culture represents the social power and the market activates the economic power. These actors or collective agents of power remain abstract personification of power to produce order via their organizational institutional role. Thirdly, cohesive ideological frames are necessary to maintain the order and organization of society, as they frame and organize the way we think and behave. Correspondingly, I identify three essential ideologies designed to promote the goals of power achieved by actors: democracy, liberal capitalism or neoliberalism, consumer society/culture of Western arts and sciences. 156

From there in order to avoid confusion, I shall bring some conceptual clarification defining a frame of reference for these notions of power, axioms, actors and ideologies. Here, I approach “power” with Michel Foucault’s proposition to articulate it with the notion of “governmentality” that is to be understood as the “actors” here; in The birth of Biopolitics he says: “power, does no more designate a domain of relations which are entirely still to be analyzed, and what I have proposed to call governmentality, that is to say, the way in which one conduces the conduct of men, is no more than a proposed analytical grid for these relations of power.” (Michel Foucault, 2008:186). Then, although I already, in previous sections, gave a comprehensive recounting of what the concept of “ideology” entails, for all that I shall summarize my interpretation. I shall use of Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy’s definition (Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism, A Very Short Introduction, 2010:11, emphasis mine): Ideologies are systems of widely shared ideas and patterned beliefs that are accepted as truths by significant group in society (...) They not only offer a more or less coherent picture of the world as it is, but also as it ought to be. In doing so, ideologies organize their core ideas into fairly simple truth-claims that encourage people to act certain ways. These claims are assembled by codifiers of ideologies to legitimize certain political interests and to defend or challenge dominant power structure. Now as for “axioms”, that I also refer as “ideographs” in their instrumentalization by ideological discourses, are the commonly accepted definition of “freedom”, “justice” and “equality”; they are premises which general definitions are comprehensive and well- established.

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Moreover, the founding principles I identified relate again to McGee’s analysis in The “Ideograph”: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology (1980): they perform as rhetorical forces and ideological tools to shape beliefs and frame behaviors. The concepts of justice, freedom and equality are rhetorical connectors and carry an extensive symbolic baggage; what they mean in our mental representation go beyond the capabilities of linguistic translation and expression (e.g. defining ‘love’). This way, when these “ideographs” are employed in democratic, capitalist, and liberal ideological discourses; they simultaneously institute and legitimate axiomatic goals by substituting political consciousness to an abstract meaning supposedly collectively understood and accepted (McGee, 1980:15). In other words, principles, axioms or ideographs promoted by powers and articulated in a discourse operate as axiomatic systems to produce ideological enterprises. From there, in order to understand the inner working of the Western power structures machinery let us depict and synthesize, in Figure 15, the structures of power organization, distribution, administration and implementation in Western civil societies. The dotted lines circles in all figures indicate that the represented social systems are open and in interaction with other equivalent, larger or smaller systems. This also means systems impact each other and their environment, equally the environment influences the system in ways that the system itself cannot necessarily control. 158

WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS' v / @ ACTORS \ IDEOGRAPHS / \ # I d e o l o g ic a l POLITICAL POWER TOOLS \ ©GOVERNMENTS OPPRESSION <)USTICt'> I

\ #REPR£SENTAT1VEX. #LlBtftAL ‘-.DEMOCRACY \ CAPITALISM

SOCIAL POWER ECONOMIC POWER

©CULTURES -.#WESTERN ARTS • ©MARKETS \ AND SCIENCES / \ //

/ * \ \ X ...••/ ......

Figure 15 Oppressive structures of Western Civil Societies

At the center of the Venn diagram above, the stripped area exposes what these ideological models had originally in common: they derive from an oppressive conceptual framework. The # symbol functions as the sign of oppression indicating the ideological paradoxes of the West: the concepts of “justice”, “freedom” and “equality” used as rhetorical ideographs promote ideological models that obliterate their practical 159

application, creating their opposites: injustice, inequality and constraint (as I discussed in part 2 with McGee, 1980). Certainly, when put in connection, in the democratic ideological model the two Western ideals of “political justice” and “social equality” assume the third: “freedom”; in reality however, the democratic rule of the numerical majority can constrains social minorities, thus impedes freedom. Likewise, the concepts of “political justice” and “free-market” justifies in theory “equality” behind the dollar sign in the capitalist ideological model. However, then again in practice, with capitalism and the concentration of wealth, the monopoly of numerical minority oppresses a numerical majority and thus produces social inequalities. Finally, the notion of “economic freedom” articulated with “social equality” promotes the idea of a “justice” among the cultural diversities; however, in its application, the focus put on the privatization of the economy engenders abuses and corruption, it is the exploitation of a numerical majority, that is Third World minorities by a First World numerical minority which is inherently unjust. 160

_ _ < > IDEOGRAPHS / ' O pr r essiv e co nceptual *■ / \ = Pa r a d o x ic a l F r a m w o r k / \ o u tc o m e / \ 00 j Cyclic Pattern L__ —.....- _____ J / \

/ I...... -••• i >.* \INEQUALITY / \ =1NJuyrjCE

: 00 DOMINATION \

< D e m o c r a c y > 1 \ C onstraint/ / \ \ / /

\ ♦ ,■ / ** •* X ......

Figure 16 Power of Language in Western Ideologies Furthermore, I would like to illustrate how the ideological models of democracy, capitalism and liberalism are also adaptable for ideographic use in ideological rhetoric in political discourses. In the United States of America, this is exemplified in the mundane characterization of the “Democratic” political party, self-proclaimed “liberals” in opposition to the “Republican” political party, self-labeled as “conservative”. However, if anything, 161

we shall note that the difference between a democracy and a Republic is not necessarily ideological; to put it simply, democracy (majority rule) would be laying out the general framework and a Republic (elite rule) implementing it. So, contrary to received wisdom these concepts used as qualitative terms are not mutually exclusive; all the more so considering that a so-called “Republican” voter in contemporary times is not anti- Democratic, similarly a “Democrat” voter is not anti-Republic. Hence, both promote and ideals along with , or as social values, these parties ultimately capitalize on such names, axioms or ideographs to promote their political agenda. This example reveals the how these concepts of “democracy” or “republic” are undermined in the public sphere and stripped of their original meanings. This is how political parties instrumentalize commonly accepted concepts and hijack their presumed meanings to promote a specific ideological model and justify their political agendas. Ultimately, the usage of ideographs fuels futile ideological clashes that divide and distract the public creating false oppositions: the political discourses tend to overload public debate with false issue diverting the attention of the audience from recognizing the social stakes and original purposes of political affairs. The way political parties interact with each other and the public frame the way people think about politics and shapes the way they behave in society. Their ideological rhetoric works with dynamics of domination, transforming the public sphere into an oppressive “might makes right” democratic space with ideological rivalry and confrontational dynamics; instead of democratic platform where problems can be prioritized, solutions can be discussed and 162

under what conditions they can be implemented. Figure 16 sheds light on what these ideographs in a oppressive conceptual framework produce in dual arrangements, systematically the outcome appears to embody their practical contrary which consequently bolster the system’s dynamic of domination. Moreover, put side by side, it appears that Figures 15 and 16 have ‘democracy’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’ in common, as ideologies or ideographs. This way I adumbrated the relationship between oppression and the intermediary ideological power structures generating domination. The combination of the two results reveal, or at least help us, visualize the impact of oppressive conceptual frameworks producing dominative reinforcing feedback loops and understand the architecture of power relationships that enshrines and perpetuate the dominative model it specifically strives against. Clearly, these ideologies do not act as counter agents of injustice, inequality and constraint, I identify their outcome as paradoxical reactions: analogously imagining a medication for muscular pain whose side effects cause muscular pain. Ideological models are designed to unify a social body by normalizing ideas, beliefs and experiences and establish effective structures for society’s political, economical and cultural spheres. While aspiring to generate more justice, equality and freedom, they appear to be eroding these values adopting dynamics of domination.

Q. Structural dynamics of contemporary societies. 163

Before examining the structural intertwining between powers, that comprise also their actors as well as their anchorage in the imbrications of different ideological models, I suggest setting forth schematically my angle of attack, as a way to conciliate my multidimensional approach with the linear analytical enterprise I am compelled to as a result of writing. As I already explored some structural political and social democratic challenges (i.e. in policy making with regards to justice and equality in the Affirmative Action plan), I shall start from there and examine each sphere in the context of its appearance, in the dynamical relationships with powers, actors and competing ideologies. Within the constraints of such a format, Figure 17 below presents the structural embeddedness of the Western powers and reveals methodological obligations of going one way or another. Inasmuch as it is self-evident to eliminate the option of an inductive logical process in a synthetic approach (that generalizes from the particular), while holding onto my ambitions of providing an emancipating, deconstructive and creative analysis that I draw what will look like a deductive process; that would, however, by no means imply reducing the totality to a part, property or attribute. Below, the arrow displays the insidious result of my surrender to picking an order as the presented graph conflicts with my multidimensional approach. 164

Figure 17 Road Map

Here, I shall present the internal structure of contemporary democracies using the system theory nomenclature. The itemization I offer in the inventory below entails a non- exhaustive list of elements relative to the working of democracy in a political system. ■ System: Contemporary Democracy • Actors: Individuals and collective (electorate, citizens, parties, institutions, politicians, enterprises, organizations, states, etc.) • Rules: Governmental representation, universal suffrage, rule of the majority, minority rights, equal rights, freedom of speech ■ Goals: Political Pluralism, cultural diversity, social justice, security, etc. ■ Dynamics: Election processes, social movements, rebellion, vote, policy- 165

making, debate, referendums, flows of idea and suggestions etc. • Stock: Constitutions, laws, charts, legal judicial systems, police and military forces etc. ■ Inputs and outputs: Public demands input and Governmental policy output ■ Structural embeddedness: dependency on the external infrastructure (see Figure 15) Throughout the discussion, I elaborated on the grammatical and rhetorical formation of “truths” in terms of coherence as opposed to correspondence. In that sense, I refused to admit the existence of absolute and universal truths pursuant to postmodern thinking. With regards to the formation of truths within the democratic ideological framework, I intended to layout some of the paradoxes arising from the political structures of Western contemporary societies: I elaborated on the model’s substantial limits to its theoretical ideal as I examined the practical results of the rhetorical construction of ideological “truths” in policy-making (producing injustice, inequalities and constraints, c.f. section on Affirmative Action). However I make further comments on the structural development of modern democracy as a system of governance. If we now turn to the contemporary political structures that rely on nature’s exploitation allowing and legitimizing environmental degradation we ought to revisit the establishment of modern political institutions that accompanied the rise of modern capitalism and neoliberalism. Beforehand, let us detour to resituate a promised background of democratic and liberal features that constitute the primary elements of the organizational development of the contemporary Western society. The ideological elaboration of democracy revolves around the principle of justice, and its 166

construction emerges from the development of a juridical process that ought to ensure the democratic praxis of the just, and the just praxis of democracy. Together with justice, the notions of freedom and equality prevail as the founding principles of democracy; however the Ancient and Modern conceptualizations and applications are at variance with each other. Let us explore, by contrast, the different democratic structures in relation to its social and political stakes. On one hand, the democratic model provided by the Ancient Greeks is strictly political and does not refer to the social organization of the city, which included slavery and sexism (i.e. excluding poor people, women, slaves); thus, qualifying as highly socially unequal and dominative according to contemporary standards. Regardless, the ancients put the emphasis on freedom; they envisioned democracy as the process of its own amendment through citizens’ political involvement and participation, meaning that a democracy is not one set in stone but carried out in its practice. The notion of freedom in that context related to that specific exercise of the political power as the individual's direct and constant participation to the sovereignty of the public sphere. It was both the political and social experience of a sovereignty theory that provided for the progress of its practice and as a praxis that edified and refined its theorization by democratizing the political sphere. One the other hand, the Modern vision of freedom and inequality differs from the one experienced by the Greeks in Athens. The Modern democracy is representative, meaning that its ‘indirect’ configuration does not require the Ancient freedom; it does not obligate or pressure citizens to participation to the political collective. 167

Alexis de Tocqueville in Of Democracy in America (1840) analyzes the conditions that allow the successful establishment of democracy in the United State (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, 1840:470-471). It is the context of political tension and class struggle in conjunction with the emergence of an anti-religious intellectual movement (separation of Church and State) that determine the fundamental stakes of creating a democratic society in order to attain a political democracy. Tocqueville formulated that social necessity as the “equality of conditions” between citizens that ought to be created and maintain to legitimate the democratically indispensable “the dogma of sovereignty of the people”(Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1840:470-471). In that sense, the modern’s approach gives prominence to equality and considers the constitutive process of a democratic Republic starting primarily from a democratic social state where all individuals are social equals in order to establish and perpetuate the democratic political state (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840: 494-495). Furthermore, Tocqueville identifies some risk in a democratic government where the majority rules: the tyranny of the majority; as it is not the interests of all that are defended but it is interest of the represented majority that are secured (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840:394). From there and along with the paradigmatic shift that arose with the modern era it is the democratic emancipation of the individual disrupted the traditional bonds of the social fabric. Tocqueville’s analysis shows that as individuals became free subjects, people tend to use that independence to withdraw and isolate himself from the public sphere launching the atomization process of the social body 168

(Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840:379). And, to the extent that a democratic political sovereignty depends on a cohesive engaged public, it is the alienation of the public from caring for political affairs that threatens democracy as it a fortiori lacks being represented as accurate expression of the will of the majority of the people. In fact, therefore, the democratic state ought reform and reengage and rebuild the social body in order to maintain and protect itself from individualism’s manifest result: despotism. In sum, it is in Tocqueville’s argument the expression of the importance and necessity for a social democracy (i.e. equality among all in a society) to be instituted in order to attain a political democracy. The Modern political challenges are endogenous to combination of the democratic and liberal ideals of equality and liberty; however, before turning to the question of liberalism, it will be necessary to review the foundational structures of capitalism system it stands behind. Economic system: Capitalism and Neocapitalism As we assessed that the political, social and economic systems were entangled systems of contemporary Western civilizations, the following will be a brief report on the structural organization of capitalism as an economic system. I shall begin with some remarks on the conditional framework within which capitalism can settle. In a civil society, for capitalist economic model to expand, prevail and manage the global economic sphere as it is constituted today, it requires a certain breeding ground provided by environmental, political, economic, social, technical and cultural dispositions. By the graph below, I put the focus on the preconditions conducive for an efficient realization of 169

a capitalist model; it displays the structural embeddedness from which capitalism emerges. For this, I label these circumstantial prerequisites as different types of “capital”, however not measurable or quantifiable, this appellation is strictly analogically referring to their qualitative aspects only.

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N a t u r a l c a p it a l

E n v ir o n n e m e n t a l

ttUMAN-SOOAL-CULTURAL CAPITAL P o l it ic a l c a p it a l

D ispositions participation a n d u se L e g a l p r o p e r t y r ig h t s

1 r l P r o d u c t io n c a p it a l E c o n o m ic c a p it a l

W a g e l a b o r P r iv a t e o w n e r s h ip ^ j ^ J

T e c h n ic a l c a p it a l

In d u s t r ia l te c h n o lo g y

Figure 18 Capitalism: Structural conditions or circumstantial prerequisites The schema above shows that a successful capitalism depends on the foundational 170

support of a multidimensional infrastructure in order to endogenously establish itself as a solid economical model. These dimensions form the necessary “structural stock” for the capitalist system to arise but also fortify. Turning now to the structural composition of capitalism itself, I suggest getting a grasp of its component ensemble in an exploded view of its assembly (see Figure 18 above). This way, I anticipate and set the stage to then layout its architecture, in order to understand thereafter, its engineering. Now, I shall expand on the necessity such variety of structural “capital” given by the graph above. At the top, the “natural capital” is the stock of the diverse resources available in the natural environment. These ecological assets include mineral, animal and vegetal are resources for humans (c.f. discussion of Genesis above); land and ecosystems constitute a primary stock for capitalism’s production capacity. Next, we have “political capital” which refers to a legal system that provides property right to legitimate the privatization of property outside the public sphere. From there, a private individual can claim private ownership over land and its resources to then, exploit what constitute its “economic capital” in a private entrepreneurship to make profit. From there, a society needs a “technical capital”, it is the availability of means of production for an enterprise, and it implies that a society needs to reach a threshold of industrial technology to maintain a reliable and profitable capitalist production. In order to launch the creation of goods and services, the “production capital” refers to the dependency of a wage labor to ensure the process manufacture that stands behind production (for further information pertaining the subject see Karl Marx’s work Capital. 1867). For this to be possible it requires a priori “social capital” that is both cultural and 171

economic, it designates the social value and involvement to participate in and use of networks: that appears in the financial investment in education or social networking and their commodification that is imperative for a capitalist enterprise (for further examination see Pierre Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital, 1986). What needs to be understood together with “social capital” is “human-cultural capital” that refers to an individual’s personal dispositions, attributes and resources which can be developed and transformed into an economic value and constitute a stock of wage labor enabling a cultural consumerism (ideology of consumer society) which also unlocks the supply and demand feedback loop that will be discussed later. Given this foundational stage, I shall set the decor using the system theory nomenclature to give an overview of the internal system structure of capitalism. Again, the itemization I offer in the inventory below entails a non-exhaustive list of elements relative to the working of capitalism as an economic system: System: Capitalism Actors: the market, private owners, enterprises, workers, buyers, sellers Rules: mode of production and distribution, legal property rights, accumulation of capital Goals: development, growth, profit, accumulation of capital Dynamics: exchange, competition, accumulation, regulation, intervention, transaction, investment Stock: Capital, private ownership, production, commodities, property, industrial technology, manpower Inputs and outputs: money, capital investment, production cost, sales, profit, value, surplus value, waste, pollution Structural embeddedness: dependency on the external infrastructure (see 172

Figure 15) With these concepts and their constitutive role in mind, I suggest calling them into play and visualize the capitalist logic and dynamic, while unveiling the reinforcing loop of its feedback system. See figure 19 below.

POLITICAL CAPITAL A L e g a l p r o p e r t y r i g h t s REINFORCING FEEDBACK LOOP PRIVATIZATION OF NATURE INVESTMENT

- ^ N a t u r a l c a p it a l REVENUE - COSTS = PROFIT FIUT FDD DICK? t [\ 1 tK I KI^L E xploitation o f CAPITAL RESO URCES j

I RE-INVESTMENT [OF PROFIT] \

D istribution M a n u f a c t u r e

•M a r k e t in g commodities Industrial technology E x c h a n g e v a lu e • * s e l l / b u y + = S u r p l u s v a lu e C o n s u m e r s W a g e W o r k f o r c e LABOR \ COMPETITION /

M a r k e t in g M a r k e t equilibrium •CREATING COMMODITIES L a w : s u p p l v / d e m a n d VALORIZATION OF = OUTPUT PRICE GOODS AND SERVICES

Figure 19 Commercial Logic of the Market Place In the capitalist system, one disposes of a political capital, the property rights making the privatization of nature possible and legally permitted. From there an entrepreneur can 173

invest in a natural capital and become the owner of the resources and raw material it provides. Then, by mobilizing a technical capital of industrial technology and a workforce an owner can initiate manufacturing products minimizing the cost and maximizing efficiency of their production in order to generate profit. The process of marketing valorizes the goods and services created, and increases the value of commodities that enter the market place. The output price as the value given to a service or commodity in the marketplace depends on the law of supply and demand. This means that the price is set according to the levels of demands relative to levels of supply as shown in the graphs below Figure 20. The exchange value of a commodity or service is set by the output prices and determine the surplus value, which is the profit made by the entrepreneur as his revenue minus the overall production cost. The capitalist entrepreneur may then reinvest his generated capital in the production process. This theoretically never-ending capitalist process of unlimited growth is a cycle that follows the commercial logic of the marketplace and practically considered and erroneously treated as inexhaustible disregarding existing environmental limits (as we shall discuss further). 174

H ig h e r m a r k e t Lo w e r m a r k e t EQUILIBRIUM EQUILIBRIUM

If supply d e c r e a s e s AND DEMAND STAGNATES IF DEMAND DECREASES Prices OR INCREASES AND SUPPLY STAGNATES RISE OR INCREASE P r ic e s fa ll

If demand increases AND SUPPLY STAGNATES IF SUPPLY INCREASES AND OR DECREASES DEMAND STAGNATES OR DECREASES

D e m a n d d e p e n d s o n S u p p l y d e p e n d s o n

• N umber of po tential c o n s u m e r s • R e g u l a t io n s

• T h e ir in c o m e • NUM8ER of suppliers • T h e ir o e s i r e s • P r o d u c t io n c o sts an d b en e fits

• T h e ir Expectations • E xpectations of fu tur e market

Figure 20 Market Equilibrium & Law of Demand and Supply 175

The law of demand and supply is a determinant factor of the capitalist market’s dynamics. However, the variability and extent to which such dynamics of competition, regulation or intervention does not depend on capitalism as a system itself but on its inclusion as a model in a specific political system (i.e. the neoliberal ideology that is to be discussed further). Cultural system: The West The social power of a culture relies then on group identity, coherence, determination and discipline that is, however, without being too refractory so that cohesiveness, cooperation and solidarity can grow among and between coexisting cultures. This means that cultural systems like most social systems are both open in some respect and closed in other respect: for a culture to subsist it ought to remain open to change, innovation and diversification; while protecting itself from extinction it ought to maintain a consistent sense of identity and unity. The geographical qualification from which originates the term “West” and representation of “Western world" has become obsolete in its literal sense in the context of modern globalization. I shall refer to the states greatly influenced by the networks and processes of modern globalization that industrialized and distributed at different levels the various layers of mainstream “Western culture” around the globe that is today widely disseminated. Here, I suggest the social power to be embodied by culture(s) within a society; and more specifically administered by the Western culture that prevails now in a remarkably globalized world. One more time, in order to provide a coherent and legible framework of 176

analysis I shall list some of the elements of the structural compound of Western Culture. The itemization I offer in the inventory below entails a non-exhaustive list of elements relative to the working of capitalism as an economic system. System: Western Culture Actors: Individuals and collective (artists, scientists, politicians, enterprises, organizations, institutions, states, etc.) Rules: Social norms and practices, language, set of beliefs, mode of behaviors Goals: Shape and regulate identity, social spheres and human interaction, multiculturalism/diversity, equality Dynamics: Creation, exchange, preservation, integration Stock: Heritage of skills, beliefs, rituals, arts and sciences Inputs and outputs: Interaction, syncretism, knowledge, language, Structural embeddedness: dependency on the external infrastructure (see Figure 15) Considering the discussion about democracy and political power, on one hand, together with capitalism and economic power, on the other hand, it is indubitable that both powers entail social stakes; in that members of cultural communities impact the political and economic powers politically as voters and as consumers; and conversely, political and economic actors shape cultural trends. The intricate organization reflects evident power interdependencies in the triptych “social-politic-economy” which are also apparent in the variations “western-democratic- capitalist” and “culture-government-market”. This means that an overarching system of cultural identity constitute politically and economically a powerful tool as well as a necessary target to achieve democracy and capitalism. Likewise, consumers and voters 177

are crucial actors to produce cultural identity and thus, social power. Multiculturalism With this in mind, we shall understand the strength and successful dissemination of the Western cultural identity. That is in the view that the model of the Western culture is an overarching and socially integrative system which cultural identity revolves around diversity and equality. More specifically, the catchall concept of “multiculturalism” to advance and promote cultural diversity within the ideal of social equality is an ideological product promoted by Western civilizations. This may certainly be the structural strength of the West: the risks of annihilation linked to openness are the very source of its power and allow Western cultural power to expand beyond national frontiers. The ideals that stimulate the growth and expansion of Western culture (i.e. U.S and Western European) are conjointly endorsed by democratic and capitalist ideologies with ideals political pluralism and economic freedom. This way cultural diversity and equality creates sustains the political pluralism of democracy by integrating identities and expanding the political processes of political participation representation. The process of democratization ought to protect emerging identities (social, cultural, political and economical) and maintain cultural diversity and equality. Furthermore, multiculturalism also feeds the Western capitalist economy as it on one hand diversifies the goods of industrial production; and on the other hand, such diversity feeds the capitalist machine by providing a bountiful of consumers with eclectic and endless needs, tastes and desires. The process of neoliberalization not only provides a free market where consumers’ and vendors’ needs and interests can be satisfied; but 178

also manages to convert the marketplace as a cultural sphere of expression where identity-building is projected, materialized and symbolized with the accumulation of consumer goods. This way, big industries assisted with contemporary technological advancements in communication (e.g. media, internet etc.) seeped into the strata of social life and facilitated the process of Westernization of modern societies. It is then by disposing of the means of production they can manipulate trends, influence consumers and have certain control in disseminating culture and identity in by marketing their product with a vision, ideals, and meanings. In such regards the Western cultural system, like the political and economical, bears a very integrative feature, however we shall see that its openness and adaptability only goes together with a certain resilience as we shall see with the case of Western or ‘modern science’. Generally speaking, we assessed previously that a culture promotes a certain social life and identity that is characterized by a set of beliefs, rules, norms, language, knowledge etc. Let us consider the instance of ‘knowledge’ and its intricate relationship with language and culture (cf. chapter 2). Here, one can recognize the scope of influence that Western culture advanced across the world while normalizing its scientific authority institutionalizing its methods of research and standardize its implementation procedures (e.g. Cartesian method c.f. chapter 2). An example of the Westernization of knowledge can be observed in the way the cultural legitimacy of “science-based” Western medicine took over while othering and devaluing non-Western cultures the marginalized their method described as “traditional” or “alternative”. It is in an analogous manner Western art, literature, philosophy etc. dominate in the mainstream cultural spheres and stand for 179

what we accept and recognize as general knowledge. It is important to acknowledge the confinements of Western culture and science as we also turn to different approaches when facing their limits. The resurgence of Eastern medicinal is the epitome of the West’s insufficiencies, that is, when patients turn to those alternatives to complement Western methods in the development of an integrative medicine for instance (e.g. use of aromatherapy before surgery). To conclude, the contemporary cultural system established and incarnated by Western culture’s way of life constitutes a “social power” that structures and feeds the dynamics of democracy and capitalism and which culture is animated by and developed within the political and economic structures themselves (see Figure 21 below). ( ...... V

M ulticulturalism WESTERNIZATION

>

P o l i t i c a l P l u r a l i s m E c o n o m ic L i b e r a l i s m DEMOCRATIZATION NEOLIBERALIZATION

>

Figure 21 Structural Interactions and Retroactions 180

The Ecosystem The Earth is a complex adaptive system that is self-regulated and self-sustaining. • System: Ecology ■ Actors: Biotic and abiotic components (biosphere (life), hydrosphere (water), atmosphere, lithosphere or geosphere (soils)) • Dynamics: Photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration, stoichiometry, decomposition, transformation, entropy, negentropy, regulation, adaptation, retroaction etc. Stock: Energy, matter, gases, organisms • Inputs and outputs: climate, temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, emergence, respiration, growth, transpiration, gases, different spheres of human life etc. ■ Structural embeddedness: dependency on internal su-systems (e.g. living communities) and external systems (e.g. Sun) With the aforementioned political, social and economic interrelations and interdependencies in mind, it is important to highlight the formative foundation on which each power was structured upon. The nature of the Earth presents an environment for these social entities to exist and subsist. After all, a political power is instituted within a geographical zone, a territory within and over which a government holds supreme authority. This way, the administration of natural land and creation of frontiers founded and circumscribed sovereignty of the modern nation-State creating a civil society: an inside and an outside, an identity: an us and a them (cf. part 2 chapter 1). A State legitimizes the sphere and the scope of its political power by dividing and mapping territories upon environmental conditions or eco-structure displayed by the topography of Earth’s surface. 181

Similarly, nature greatly structures human civilizations galvanizing their cultures. The cosmos fed human curiosity and knowledge providing its sciences inexhaustible mysteries for it to solve or to discover (e.g. natural sciences, biology and medicine). The representation of nature in the arts speaks for its inspirational role arousing human interest and creativity feeding the imagination of painters, sculptors, novelists and poets, pantomimists and dancers, musicians and filmmakers. Symbols, meanings and cultural identity are deeply rooted in the very ‘nature’ the Moderns opposed to culture. Certainly, the biosphere constitutes a natural resource stock to supply the means of production necessary to materialize trade and consumption in an economic system. In brief, we can retrace and find in nature foundational structures of political, social and economic power, and ought to recognize the constitutional interrelation of human systems not only between each other but also with the ecosystem that allowed the emergence, materialization and organization of complex human societies.

Chapter 3: Paradoxes and crisis relative to Western culture, democracy and neoliberal capitalism in the context of globalization

We explained how the mental models that emerged from the paradigmatic shift of the modern era revolutionized the political, social and economic structures of Western societies with the acquisition of scientific, technical and industrial knowledge. The multidimensional approach of the paradigm of complexity intends to get around the problems of one-dimensional modern reason which methodology separates and isolates objects of knowledge. It suggests to articulate and organize a way of thinking that 182

considers, recognizes and connects “the planetary context and complex” “(Morin, Vers I’Abtme 2007:56). According to Morin, this means we ought to generate a way of thinking that “always seeks the relation of inseparability and inter-retro-action between each phenomenon and its context, and each context with the planetary context (...) that considers the object under study throughout and within its auto-eco-organizational relation with its cultural, social, economic, political and natural environment” (Morin, 2007:60). This way, in order to understand the paradoxical human patterns behaviors in Western contemporary societies conducive to the degradation of the biosphere we ought to situate its complex anchor in a global planetary context and process. In this section, I shall delve into the modus operandi of the globalization apparatus and evaluate the ways it systemizes economies, politics and cultures over time. We ought to keep in mind that the ambivalence of evolutionary process of humanity displays a double dynamic of progress, growth, and proliferation on one hand; and backslide, decline and destruction on the other hand. It is the symbiosis of “positive” and “negative” feedback loops that determine a system’s behavior, affects its organization, stability, sustainability and the way it changes over time. The modern and contemporary processes of economic and cultural globalization beget processes of political fragmentation and ecological dwindling and degradation, and vice versa. The worldwide expansion of the capitalist economic and socio-cultural structures exhibits an undeniable erosion of political and ecological structures and reciprocally the political and ecological structures impact the economic and cultural structures. 183

The economy The market-based economic model of capitalism rests on the assumption that state intervention should be limited to ensure the protection of property rights, individual freedom of choice and enterprise; this is what the free market’s laissez-faire consists in. It is an economic model which legitimacy chiefly relies on its internal self­ regulating dynamic of competition to ensure freedom as well as the distribution of wealth and economic power. However, by disallowing external legal intervention the modern and contemporary capitalist laissez-faire presents the problematic and paradoxical situation where the dynamic of competition attains its apogee by eliminating most competitors, leads inevitably to the concentration and centralization of capital, and ultimately assist the rise of monopoly or oligarchy. Thus, the its principle of laissez-faire assists the capitalist dynamic of exponential growth and enables a corporation to cumulate capital, overthrow the market’s competition trait and aggregate its economic power into a conglomerate to reinvest and extend its operation in a different industrial sector or merge with competitors in the same sector leading to conglomerates (e.g. Walt Disney). I mentioned before the reinforcing feedback loop of the “success for the successful”, referring to this dynamic. Donnella Meadows in Thinking in Systems draws the analogy with the board game of Monopoly and identifies the trap of the model of economic system, also condemned by the Marxian critique of capitalism, as “market competition systematically eliminates market competition” (Meadows, 2008:128-129). The paradoxical effects of competition is not only the one of “success to the successful” and 184

its escalation into economic monopoly, Meadows points out the dramatic effect of such inequality on the poorer classes’ capability and liberties: lower income hinders one’s access to good and/or higher education and thus, better paying jobs, they also restrict access to loans and thus capital and property; all of which making the poor dependent of the rich who capitalizes on that dependency to increase their wealth while perpetuating poverty (Meadows, 2008:128-129). This dynamic of competition leading to economic monopolistic features of the market reveals the dominative paradox of capitalism that creates and reinforces inequalities on a structural level. With this in mind, I suggest looking at the global systemic level of capitalism within the process of globalization. First, let us understand what the term “globalization” refers to when understanding the structure of capitalism at the international level of global economic relations. In its most common understanding it ought to describe the rise of a world-economy, the notion of “globalization” would describe the worldwide expansion of capitalism, that is to say, the augmentation of commercial and financial exchanges, as well as the extension and intensification of information networks, social and cultural relations and migration flows. Globalization is generally perceived as a complex network of connections between state and international actors. However, there are different dimensions relative to the process of globalization, which are, agreed, economic but also political, social, cultural, military. The process of globalization is not a natural phenomenon; rather it is an ideology that presents itself as the inevitable path to take, that Margaret Thatcher’s slogan “There is no alternative” emphasizes. The ideological character of the concept globalization presents the idea of progress, of an unavoidable contemporary and universal 185

phenomenon the world ought to pursue. However, the liberal economic ideology that arranges the political and economic structures of nations is open to criticism. In fact, as the concepts relates to a process of standardization of the Western economic, social and political models, it appears that it is not that much of a global and worldwide phenomenon (e.g. countries in Africa). I shall look into the interrelationship of nations on a global scale to understand the structures of external elements that cause inequality and underdevelopment at both the national and transnational levels. Also reminiscent of the Marxist critique of capitalism and economic exploitation, the framework given by dependency theories is a good starting point for my analysis, however, we ought to keep in mind that it has been criticized for generalizing and oversimplifying the structures and dynamics of complex system. Dependency theory admits an international system with a global class struggle between the rich at the core and the poor at the periphery (cf. see foundational works of Raul Prebish and Hans Singer). Broadly speaking, it states that a dominant core capitalizes on and perpetuates such economic division nationally and transnationally. Let us elaborate and refine this analytical tool alongside the theories developed by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein of, respectively, a “world-economy” and “world-system”. In view of the methodology provided by the Annales School I shall then develop on the contradictions of capitalism taking an interdisciplinary approach to the economic system, as together a social, political and historical system. In order to understand capitalism’s paradoxes we ought to understand the structural constraints to the development of 186

certain localities and nations. We shall begin with the work of French historian Fernand Braudel; in the third volume of his work Civilization and Capitalism he presents a typology of different world-economies throughout history and brings out the archetypal traits of a world-economy (Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World. Civilization and Capitalism. 15th-18th Century. Volume III, 1979). Braudel then, identifies ground rules given by his comparative study to explain the structural configuration of a capitalist world-economy: 1) A world-economy covers a large geographical space whose boundaries or frontiers change at a very slow pace and its identity is defined within and delineated by these borders (Braudel, 1979:26). 2a) There is a center, slowly shifting “sites of accumulation” (i.e. generally taken over by super-cities, metropolis or world-cities) that embodies the heart of the system where the economic power is concentrated and centralized and depends economically on the existence of an exploitable periphery (Braudel, 1979:27-34). 2b) The economic development of the dominant urban center can vary according to the context of it economic and political power at a specific time in history (Braudel, 1979:34-35). 3a) A world-economy is hierarchically organized in zones that situates the patterns of domination where the city-center subordinates peripheral regions (Braudel, 1979:35-38) 3b) The dynamic of domination between the different territorial sphere generates great inequalities between the urban and rural zones (e.g. China) (Braudel, 1979:38-39) 3c) The different structural zones bare different levels of political, cultural and technological development: the most advanced and diversified is at the center, the middle zone is somewhat intermediate and the marginalized periphery representing “backwardness, and archaism and exploited by others”. The political and economic 187

inequalities are maintained and reinforced by the dominant center, Braudel describes such geographical discrimination as “both an explanation and a pitfall in the writing of world history - although the latter often creates the pitfalls itself by its connivance” (Braudel, 1979:39). Based on the premises advanced by the dependency theory and inspired by Fernand Braudel works, Immanuel Wallerstein developed for over thirty years the “world-system” analysis that aims to criticize and remedy the weaknesses of the binary model provided by the dependency theory (Immanuel Wallerstein, Modern World System I. 1974:122- 123). In his investigation, Wallerstein retraces the historical and geographical expansion of capitalism on a global scale since the 15th century and uses the approach of “world- system” as a unit of analysis. By departing from the binary normative view of dependence theory, In Modern World System I. Wallerstein suggests a tripartite model that reveal the embeddedness of the core, semi-periphery and periphery relations at the transnational state and interstate system levels and extends the interpretive scope of political, social and economic inequalities given by modes of organization of labor (Immanuel Wallerstein, Modern World System I. 1974). The ensemble of the world’s economy comprises a common global capitalist system with different political orientations at the state level, Wallerstein writes: “Capitalism has been able to flourish precisely because the world-economy has had within its bounds not one but a multiplicity of political systems” (Wallerstein, 1974:467). The world-economy relies on an unequal division of labor that Wallerstein’s model divides in three zones organized into a hierarchy, each zone conforms to a specific 188

function in the exploitation system of economic exchange; the core-peripheral relations are design to serve the interest of the wealthy core and consolidate its domination, “the ongoing process of world-economy tends to expand the economic and social gaps among its areas in the very process of its development” (Immanuel Wallerstein, Modern World System I. 1974:469). Thus, at the core converges the profits, where it concentrates the commercial and financial exchanges imported from the peripheral areas, the periphery represents the coerced weaker zone that is exploited for its cheap labor, raw material and agricultural production; the semi-periphery is an intermediate that is more developed than the periphery, however, it remains subservient of the core. The semi-peripheral area is key to the world-system’s stability, it manages to subdue the periphery in order to uphold they own position in the hierarchy and thus, helping to maintain the core’s hegemonic power; the semi-periphery “represents a midway point on a continuum running from the core to the periphery” (Wallerstein, 1974:134). If a world-system comprises a specific social organization of work with an extensive mode of division of labor, Wallerstein, like Braudel, imparts the importance of the historical and structural construction and transformation of the zones (Immanuel Wallerstein, Modern World System I. 1974:469): “It is in order to observe this crucial phenomenon clearly that we have insisted on the distinction between a peripheral area of a given world- economy and the external arena of the world-economy. The external arena of one century often becomes the periphery of the next—or its 189

semiperiphery. But, then too, core-states can become semiperipheral and semiperipheral ones peripheral. This point is key to understanding the cyclic dynamics of expansion and contraction in capitalism that enable the development of a world economy, its configuration changes over: time from the good operation of a world system and its collapse in the stage of a structural crisis when it cannot sustain anymore. In fact, in the reinforcing process of the core’s hegemonic expansion, simultaneously allows the development of an anti-system framework from which emerge the opportunities to subvert, potentially overthrow the dominant powers or indeed, trigger a structural systemic crisis. It is the result of the economical development of peripheral areas and adaptation to the capitalist and globalized international economic scene that constitutes the conditions for the world- economy’s -slow, transformation. In Figure 22 below, I gathered some of the key aspects from both Braudel and Wallerstein’s analysis to comprehend the global structural set up of a the world-economy from the world-system lens. 190

FLOWS*

PERIPHERY EXPLOITATION POOR OF LABOR _t DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH X ' SEMI-PERIPHERY MIDDLE-CLASS V \ -OCPENDCNT,' V C0RE SENEGAL' / S STATES ’ INTCRMCOIAT&' RICH ..... \ ®CHINA \ /DOMINANT p . yU S A. \ j

! nrum necn CAPITAL 1 i OEVilOPiNC \ D€v£L0PED PRODUCTION; ’ UNDER- \ \OWNERS ,6

LABOR MANUFACTURE

"*'* COMPETITION

® I CENTRALIZATION AND CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL LEADING POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND MILITARY POWERS CONTROLLING PERIPHERAL AREAS Figure 22 Structures of world-economy in the world-system

This illustration aims to convey the domination relationship of a state’s submission to the global commercial logic of the world-system where the political decisions are pressured by economic forces and carried out according to their implication in capital accumulation. In other words the financial power accelerate a state’s capital accumulation by means of political, economic and military power to protect its economic relations while weakening others’. 191

So far we understand that while globalized capitalism supposes the development of a certain freedom, independence, equality and opportunity, however a paradox arises as we witness the emergence of dependence, inequality and monopoly and thus injustice at both local and global level. The complex dynamics of contextualized capitalism (localized and globalized) ultimately result in the concentration and centralization of capital in the hands of a few industries and relatively few elites; and thus reinforces relations of domination and exploitation increasing the inequality gap between poor and rich stressing animosities within and between states. Therefore, the ambivalence of those concepts and dynamics of dependence and independence are not mutually exclusive, at the contrary this double movement is very much constitutive of the process of globalization. It organizes and transforms itself as well as the economic, social and political structures of the world themselves recursively transforming the process of globalization. D. The cultural Occidentalization I already mentioned the concept of Westernalization or occidentalization, which I shall elaborate on here with the works of Edgar Morin. In Vers I’Abime. Morin characterizes the process of globalization as a plural phenomenon operating and influencing within the economic, political and social-cultural spheres (Morin, 2007:63-64). Morin's analysis advances a great understanding of the process of cultural globalization and the planetary expansion of the cultural, artistic and scientific spheres carried out by the fast development of multimedia and internet; 192

according to him, it “can be considered at the same time as the emergence of the infrastructure of new type of society: a world-society” (Morin, Vers I’Abtme?, 2007:65). In reference to our past definition, we ought to remember that culture shapes social complexity with sets of values, beliefs, rules, knowledge, language, arts etc. And again, culture is a system that is both open and closed, that subsists through a double integrative and conservative process, it both assimilates and safeguards, includes and excludes; likewise, the process of globalization is a double process of emancipation and domination (Morin, 2007:64). In his book, Morin recounts the double process of homogenization and heterogenization inherent to globalization since the 1990s, and evaluates its repercussion on cultural movements and trends (Morin, 2007:93). The process of occidentalization would be defined as what Morin characterizes as a process of homogenization that capitalizes on culture in its globalized diffusion: through its industrialization and commercialization which production standardizes and cheapens products; a dynamic that operates in a double movement with a process of heterogeneization as the development of cultural diversity, where talent and individuality foster originality and creation (Morin, 2007:96). Here, Morin notes the complementary opposition between original creation and standardized production, where the former favors a certain authenticity and quality in the creation process, and where quantity prevails for the latter’s production process advanced for its mass consumption (Morin, 2007:96). . While the process of globalization and facilitated a global mainstream culture to surface and eventually predominate over local and national folklores, the process of standardize production yet 193

depends on the one of original creation: “there is a permanent conflict and complementarity between individuality, originality, creation and the standardized product, that is to say: between Creation and Production (Morin, 2007:96). This means that globalization is not homogenizing to the point of annihilating cultural diversity; as innovation, originality and thus a certain heterogeneity is still necessary today for ephemeral trends to continuously replace each other: “So, the cultural industry is animated by a contradiction which in the time it destroys the germs of creativity it also arouse them” (Morin, 2007:97). And this complex dialogical relationship between diversification and homogenization is retraceable throughout civilization; Morin notes that cultural praxis we like to think are the most authentic and traditionally deeply rooted never really bypass cultural fusion over time, he says: “Artistic creation feeds upon influences and confluences” (Morin, 2007:103, emphasis mine). He substantiates his argument with examples recounting the dawning of the Greco-Buddhist syncretism among other cultural legacies that emerged from Alexander The Great’s military conquests (Morin, 2007:102) or the origins and mutations of jazz and rock music overtime and across civilizations (Morin, 2007:106-7). Morin then concludes: “ At the roots of every culture, even those that appear to be the most singular, there is encounter, association, syncretism, hybridization” and then admits that culture holds identity (Morin, 2007: 108-110): (...) A double imperative complex, of which we cannot annul the intern contradiction - but can this contradiction be overcome or isn’t it necessary to cultural experiences itself? (...) How to integrate without disintegrating? (...) Despite their blistering advances, the processes of 194

standardization and the imperatives of profit will be counter balanced by processes of diversification and needs of individualization (...) Humanity is at the same time One and Multiple. Its richness rests in the diversity of cultures, but we have to communicate with each other within the same Earthling. The political I shall continue to draw on Edgar Morin’s analysis and identify contradictions relative to Western democracies in the contemporary context of cultural and economic globalization. We can detect ambivalences in the conceptualization of the ‘Other’ and we shall then elaborate on the paradoxes emerging from a lack of intersubjectivity in the unilateral misconstructions of perceived otherness. Edgar Morin exposes the extent to which we are utterly unconscious of our own contradictions, how such denials confuse diplomatic relations and misguide political decisions (Morin, 2007:115). In a straightforward presentation, he identifies a number of contradictions apropos the United States that help understanding how complexity manifests such an entanglement between opposition and complementarity and why it fundamentally imperative to recognizes those antagonistic phenomena. Looking at “The two faces of the United States of America”, Morin’s example unravels the paradoxes inherent to the American superpower. He presents the U.S. is as long- established democracy with an extremely powerful economy and which society is very open (Morin, 2007:113). Above all, Americans pride themselves on representing ‘the land of the free’ which is symbolically ubiquitous and publicized in their flag, architecture (e.g. the statue of Liberty) or national emblem (e.g. the bald eagle). However, the 195

internal contradictions relative to the U.S. identity have dramatic repercussions on a global scale. In spite of the overarching concept of freedom that prominently figures in the American ideology, culture, politics, and economy; Morin highlights the denial that lays behind American double standards: “by no means their democracy prevents them from supporting dictatorships when their interests command. Their humanism comprises a blind spot of inhumanity (...) Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sensitive to the suffering of the 6.000 victims of the World Trade Center, they are insensitive to the human disasters their bombings inflict to the Afghan populations. They are unconscious of the contradiction that the terror of their anti-terrorist bombing entails” (Morin, 2007:113-114, bold emphasis and translation mine). Morin’s analysis reveals the inconsistency of contemporary democracies when looking at the arbitrary conceptions of justice, freedom and equality in the West’s and international affairs and relations. This lack of intersubjectivity that Morin presents is transposable to the West’s relationship with the ecosystem considering and othering nature as foreign state, and that is the very root of the ecological problem. This way we see that the rationality that determines the democracy, political power and its policies is blind to its own defense mechanisms and denial “it is maintained by the illusion that rationality determines [the idea of] development, however it conflates techno-economical rationalization and human rationality (...) the idea of development it an underdeveloped idea! (...) Development presents the western model as a universal archetype for the planet (...) Product of occidental sociocentrism it is the driving force of an obsessive westernalization. ” (Edgar Morin, La Voie, 2012: 40-41, translation and 196

emphasis mine) The ecological Without delay I want to expose now how the establishment of economic, social and political power paradoxically rely on the biosphere in conflicting ways: needing nature for its stock availability in terms of resources while deteriorating the conditions of regenerating ecosystems. Let us explore then the environmental impact of the structures of the capitalist economy, mass culture and consumer societies in the context of globalization. The dynamics of exponential growth of market-based economic model implemented by reinforcing feedback loop illustrated in Figure 19, entails additional input and output flows within and outside the system itself: as it extracts raw material from the ecosystem to inject in the production machinery of the capitalist system and release polluting wasteful discharge back into the ecosystem. Figures 23 and 24 below provide a straightforward description of the process and consequence of capitalist activities on nature as the vital environment for human life. 197

/—\ Po lluters

EXTRACTION W a ste \ __ /

Polluters P o llu ters

DISCHARGE TRANSFORMATION

<( W aste W aste

r 'v Po llu t er s i r i Polluters^ ) i CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION Waste [W aste % 3 J V ______- . --J

Figure 23 Processes of Economic Production and the Biosphere’s Dilapidation

We assessed that the purposes of capitalism consisted in making profit through the processes of extraction, transformation, production and consumption; and that an economic model wherein unlimited exponential growth relies on extracting natural resources certainly atrophies and exhausts the stock it consumes and contaminates it at the same time. The processes by which capitalism is sustained deplete its foundational stock of resources, that is its “environment”; and because industrialization progress faster than the ecosystem can regenerate, the behavior of a globalized capitalist system affects the ecosystem’s self-regulative dynamic and changes it over time. Bauman's words take us to the next ecological/economic issue: "Capitalism draws its life-giving 198

energy from 'asset stripping' (...) yet sooner or later, once it is applied globally, supplies are bound to be exhausted, or reduced below the level required for its sustenance" (Bauman, 2007:27). Below, I use a simple graph to reveal the great stakes relative to the reinforcing feedback loop of capitalism: the depletion of its limited stock of resources and the ecological repercussions of extraction, transformation, production and consumption. In figure 22, the accuracy of scale and presence of units on the axes are not essential, my focus is set on the consequence of the behavior over time that transpires in the reversal of the stock situation in the process going from left to right: from full amount of resources and modest pollution and waste in our environment to shortage of resource and total depletion of the ecosystem.

STOCK CHANGE OVER TIME

100 %

WASTE o £co

AVAILABLE RESOURCES

0% CAPITALISM TIME PERIOD Figure 24 Change Time: Capitalism’s Sustainability 199

The couple of graphs above translate another paradox of capitalism as an unsustainable model, not only as an economic system but also as a structurally inapt to sustain human life at large actively liquidating and ravaging its biosphere with its industrialized efforts in resource consumption and their polluting effects (on the topic see Meadows, Limits To Growth. 1972). Moreover, I would like to point out that the extent to which human control nature has lead to nature needing human control to survive. This way, humanity’s autonomy is intrinsically dependent of its environment; simultaneously, while transforming and organizing it, humanity is also degrading it. In Morin’s words “The ecological crisis intensifies with the increasing degradation of the biosphere which itself spark off new economical, social and political crisis” (Morin, La Voie. 2012:31). Again this double movement may appear as antagonistic, yet it is also integrative; the action/reaction/retroaction dynamics shed light on how humanity’s independence obliges an indispensable dependence to its environment to facilitate its autonomy and control over it. Bauman points out: "there is a plausible prospect of capitalist modernity (or modern capitalism) choking on its own waste products which it can neither reassimilate or annihilate, nor detoxify" (Bauman, 2007:29). These inferential factors are elementary observations that fostered extensive concerns about the “ecological crisis” to which national and global authorities’ resolutions remained up to this time, relatively unsuccessful. On the grounds and in a context of globalization, contemporary Western democracies’ double standards manifest a global political crisis; the non-sustainable neoliberal model that increases existing inequalities unveils an economic crisis, and the Western culture individualistic and materialist value 200

system incites and glorify consumption at the expenses of intrinsic values exhibits a global social crisis. With regards to the ecological situation and the paradoxes given by the economic model of capitalism, democracy and Western culture, I understand the so-called “ecological crisis” is conceptual misconstruction by reduction, it only capture a result induced by a set of different phenomena or crisis. In reality the ecological crisis is inextricably tied with the crisis of human systems (political, economic and social) that facilitates it. Hence, the pressuring need for humanity to gain in self-awareness about their misconceptions, for Western civilization to readjust their political, economic and social structures to enable adequate and practically achievable modes of actions towards a sustainable way of living and governing. From Liberalism to Neoliberalism At the intersection of the political, economic and social spheres, I will delve into Michel Foucault’s thought and will thematically review some of his concepts to guide my investigation on the emergence of neoliberalism and the way it transformed the culture and social perceptions and relationships with political power and the market. In order to provide an accessible analysis to Foucault’s work I shall proceed methodologically. First, I introduce the concept of “governmentality” in order to understand the structural and perceptual shift of governmental sovereignty in the 18th century together with new means of control and regulation of population with the idea of a “political economy”. Secondly, I lay out his account on how liberalism operates and his explication on how the establishment of a free market transformed the legitimacy and 201

sphere of intervention of capitalist political power. Thirdly, I will examine the neoliberal critique and delegitimization of governmental practice and how it relates to my theoretical deconstructivist approach to contemporary environmental phenomena. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault, edited by and translated by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, gives a comprehensive examination of the concept of “governmentality” elaborated by Foucault in his lectures called “Security, territory and population” given at the College de France in 1978. “Governmentality” is a neologism formulated by Foucault to describe “the art of government” (Foucault 1978, 1991:87); it refers to: 1) the techniques by which the government manage to maintain social order, it specific ends being the “apparatuses of security”; 2) its practical methodology, the use of ‘political economy”, means operated by its bureaucratic machinery and 3) the evolutionary historical processes that resulted in the transformation of the medieval state of justice into the modern administrative state (Foucault, 1978:102-103). In other words, the term “governmentality” designates the means of power developed and the practices that it employs to achieve specific ends: “This state of government which bears essentially on population and both refers itself to and makes use of the instrumentation of economic savoir could be seen as corresponding to a type of society controlled by apparatuses of security” (Foucault 1978:104). This particular form of knowledge Foucault mentions as “economic savoir” is the rise in the 18th Century of a “political economy” introducing new dynamic networks between population, territory and 202

wealth as a governmental technique with “the apparatuses of security”, replacing the theoretical and juridical structure of sovereignty of the traditional government of the state of justice (Foucault, 1978:101-104). Next, I shall introduce the specificities of a liberal government that Michel Foucault addresses in The Birth of Biopolitics (2008), the collection of his translated course given at the College de France in 1979. In his second lecture, Foucault retraces the establishment of the market and explicates how such platform constituted a “site of jurisdiction”: a site of distributive justice where the qualitative standards of an object are regulated in the market (e.g. its fixed-priced) ensuring the lower sphere’s access to (basic) goods (Foucault, 1979:30). In his lectures Foucault examines then the transition in the 18th century that transformed the market and made the “site of jurisdiction”(i.e. of justice) become a “site of veridiction” (i.e. of truth) and notes: “when you allow the market to function by itself according to its nature, according to its natural truth [neoclassical economic truth] (...) it permits the formation of a certain price which will be called, metaphorically, the true price (...) “ (Foucault, 1979:31). In other words, the spontaneous mechanisms of an autonomous market, which sets a just “natural” price developed to fundamentally determine a value standard in terms of truth and act as “a site of verification-falsification for the governmental practice“(Foucault, 1979:32). This way the “site of jurisdiction” enabled the market to function as a “site of veridiction” that determines and prescribes the governmental reason, in Foucault’s words (Foucault, 1979:32): The market determines that a good government is not simply 203

government that function according to justice (...) Market now means that to be a good government, government has to function according to truth. (...) Henceforth, and merely secondarily, it is its role of veridiction that will command, dictate, and prescribe the jurisdictional mechanisms, or absence of such mechanisms, on which (the market) must be articulated. At the junction of jurisdiction and veridiction, the regime of truth established by a market ideology determines the juridical limits of political power, and imposes an analysis of governmental competence in terms of “interests”; this way the decisive factor for governmental intervention depends on a necessary “utility” (Foucault, 1979:40-44). In sum, Foucault retraces the processes that lead to a new form of governmentality that subordinates political rationality to an economic rationality. Before moving on to the third point, I shall emphasize specific aspects of Foucault’s lectures so far: the liberal redefinition and formalization of state power by arrogating and limiting its legitimacy and governmental practice with the birth of “political economy”; the role of the government to ensure security and well-being of a society is no longer perceived in jurisdictional term as in protection of equal right according to political justice, but rather in the protection of property and freedom according to economic “truth” (i.e. principles based on market economy); leading to a new social organization and governmentality structured on the basis of market economy and key to neoliberalism that I shall now evaluate (Foucault, 2008:117). A critique Here, I would like to go back to Michel Foucault analysis and draw attention to 204

the originality of his innovative approach to investigating the neoliberal logic. Geoffroy de Lagasnerie in La Derniere Lecon de Michel Foucault examines Foucault’s grasp of the neoliberal governmentality in The Birth of Biopolitics and describing the author’s endeavor as using of “the neoliberal theory as a tool for theoretical renewal", Foucault’s unusual outlook provides an analytical space to rethink juridical power, coercion and emancipation (de Lagasnerie, 2012:35). Foucault refuses to embark in the hackneyed critique of capitalism also projected on neoliberalism formulated by its opposition; to him such “negativity” ignores and veils the “singularity” of the neoliberal (de Lagasnerie, 2012:33-34). For these reasons, Foucault suggests a “positive” theoretical perspective on neoliberalism, without affiliating any kind of ideological support or endorsement: Neoliberalism constructs new perceptions of the State, of the market, of self-ownership. It enables the emergence of new democratic, social or cultural demands, new relations to violence, to morale, to diversity. He questions the legitimacy of a number of these traditional frameworks of control and regulation (de Lagasnerie, 2012:38). Neoliberalism needs to be understood as the ambitious project of marketing society by expanding breaking the boundaries of the market’s activity; facilitating the diffusion of market “everywhere”, incorporating it within and throughout the widest possible range of “realities” (de Lagasnerie, 2012: 51). Furthermore, the economic rationality of the neoliberal governmentality does not only regulate the sectors of social rationality, it administer political rationality by “taking he formal principles of a market economy and referring them and relating them to, of projecting them onto a general art of 205

government”(Foucault, 1979:131). From a neoliberal point of view, decentralized organization of society upon the market logic is not just “a coordination technique among others, but one that would have the characteristic of being the most efficient”, it presents it as an objective almost scientific, evaluation of productivity in comparison to alternative models (e.g. communism) (de Lagasnerie, 2012:59). In other words, de Lagasnerie underlines the neoliberal pretentions to assign a certain scientific authority to justify their politics by scientiyfing the technical efficiency of the economic model. This way, the neoliberal perspective blurs and oversteps the bounds of traditionally assigned economic sectors of activity. Theorists generally attribute the principle of “individual freedom” as the foundational value of the neoliberal model. Even though Foucault acknowledges the importance given to the notion of “liberty”, regardless, he recognizes the concept of “plurality” as quintessential of the neoliberal paradigm: Foucault’s positive approach admits the uniqueness of the neoliberal system’s mode of regulation that can adapt to the “fundamental diversity of sectors of activity and the plurality of forms of existence” of our contemporary society (de Lagasnerie, 2012:65). The impossibility for a centralized economic administration originates from the heterogeneity of society, which transpires through the incommensurable number of incompatible individualities (de Lagasnerie, 2012:66-67). Thus, no possible institution could embrace such diversity without automatically imposing a unifying, totalizing and thus oppressing framework. It is with idea of irreducible “plurality” that the neoliberal conceptual framework intersects with my deconstructive post-modern approach. The neoliberal vision stands against the political 206

ideals of “collective” or “general good” that was developed by the Modern contractuarian philosophers whom in practice their theories return to Ancient Greek ideals of universalism which they attempt to criticize in the first place (cf. Plato, Republic). Their contractualist theories (c.f. Hobbes, Locke), in that sense, embrace an undeniable monism by denying social diversity and create the illusion of a “common” to regulate, control and maintain social order (de Lagasnerie, 2012:86, translation mine). What I describe as the “universalism of Modernity” is the philosophical understanding of pluralism as something to politically unify in the “common”, but which theoretical vision ultimately totalizes society in its practice. Foucault then, uses the neoliberal theory as a tool to critique the theoretical unity of the political and scientific totalizing discourses; which formal perception of order suppress plurality, oppresses minority producing “effects of domination and occultation”(de Lagasnerie, 2012:105-107, translation mine). Foucault through the prism of the neoliberal vision, critiques the contemporary heritage of modern political theory which paternalist conception of power instrumentalizes law to homogenize, standardize, normalize the people. The neoliberal model is also another framework of analysis provided by Foucault shows how the discourse of law and the representations of criminality act as a disciplinary and dominative power. He opposes the “homo juridicus, subject of rights who accepts the negativity, the transcendence, the limitation, the obedience to the law” to the “homo oeconomicus who “never renounces his interests: he situates himself in a selfish dynamic, but most importantly, without transcendence; he never stops the process of maximization of utility in the name of demands presented as 207

‘superior’ ” (de Lagasnerie, 2012:153-154, translation mine). To summarize, Foucault observes on one hand that the modern political theories’ problematic originate from the negative perception of diversity, the fear of plurality, conflict and death, to legitimize Sovereignty (cf. Hobbes). The State of law is instituted for the “common good” and justifies the governmental practice of “citizens” themselves “subjects of rights”. The State’s prosperity is tributary to a certain social order ensured by a corpus of laws that aims to normalize and “rectify individuals from the inside, by internal mechanisms of subjection (...) by acting on subjectivities and regulate their consciences” (de Lagasnerie, 2012:170-171). For Foucault, the modern State’s sovereignty did not stem from liberating paradigm, but rather relates to a discourse of domination and submission (de Lagasnerie, 2012:137-138). On another hand, Foucault sees in the political conception of neoliberalism a form of resistance, a certain epistemological emancipation from the myths of the “intellectual narcissism” of modernity that cannot recognizes its own limits (de Lagasnerie, 2012:115). For him the neoliberal framework is liberating in such way that it does determine, force, prescribe or even pretend that a “social order that can be deduced from a theoretical construction a priori “ (de Lagasnerie, 2012:115). At the contrary, it embraces the spontaneity and immanence of diversity it “does not suppresses “systems of differences” but optimizes them” (de Lagasnerie, 2012:174). The model of economic rationality defended by the neoliberals is, for Foucault, a powerful theoretical tool to criticize, denaturalize the totalizing and coercive instances of governmental rationality; and which approach can potentially inspire a radical critique of neoliberalism itself. 208

The capitalist economic model and its contemporary paradoxes I presented in this section do not reflect an ideal of a globalized homogeneous and harmonious process. It rather reveals its ambivalences, exposing the heterogeneity that emerges from the specificities of different human systems, at a worldwide scale the variety and dissimilarities among, economic classes, political systems, social practices, values, cultures all of which adapt to contextual and environmental challenges. This is exactly how the market rationality of the neoliberal model overrules the governmental rationality because it successfully embraces and adapts to the diversity of an ever-changing world whose diversity stimulates the diffusion of its vision and expansion of its power. Once again, despite the negative impact of the neoliberal ideology (i.e. insecurity, instability, consumerism, materialism) the neoliberal project carries the tools and aspiration for the elaboration of new radical alternative, it subverted the system’s status quo and by emancipating itself from the very structures that oppressed the plurality it originally endorsed and the freedom that defends its expression. Conclusion In this third part, I attempted to provide a comprehensive model of the contemporary Western system I investigated the structures of Western contemporary societies looking at the organizational forces interacting in the context of globalization. We investigated on the oppressive frameworks and dynamics of domination operating within the socio-cultural, political and economic systems. The Figure below synthesizes the analysis of contemporary Western civilization along with the potentiality for change. 209

SEEKING TRANSFORMATION

CONTEMPORARY WESTERN CONCEPTUAL SOCIAL CONTEXT FRAMEWORK

Figure 25 Revolution

We looked at the process of globalization and explored the dynamics of development, growth, and progress and how they affect the social fabric as well as identity-building. In order to do so, we examined the machinery of the consumer society and identified the rules and mechanisms under which the system of the cultural industry works and affect the individual’s patterns of behaviors. Then, we presented the ecological challenges given by globalization and the development of consumerism. We addressed the question of environmental justice, and 210

the way such a system can produce environmental discrimination and oppression for the lower classes. Moreover, we recognized antagonistic dynamics of homogenization and heterogenization in political economic and cultural system, that is to say dynamics of reduction of socio-cultural “diversity” (i.e. the “multifold”) to edifying a virtual socio­ cultural '“community” (i.e. the “one”). The governmental reason of State sovereignty attempts to democratically unify or homogenize a certain human diversity into the idealized political unity of a nation’s social body. Conversely, the modern economic rationality of competition extols heterogeneity and launches the antagonistic process of diversification with the birth of the free market, which substantiated a platform enabling the variegation and pluralization of human lives and experiences. The double process of unification vs. diversification characterizes the complexity of modern life. Along with scientific progress, technology and communication developments, booming market economy and the pecuniary profit of Western nations the contemporary world enters a new era of globalization. The capitalist logic expands and the neoliberal economic rationality challenges the institutional monopoly held by governmental reason. The deregulation of the market on a worldwide scale translates the erosion of political state power, leading to the privatization of public services, that is putting what was of governmental rationality (justice) under the authority of economic rationality (profit). This way, the capitalist neoliberal ideology removes the structures that provided people with security and stability (see Figure 25 below). Again, modernity greatly affected the social, cultural and individual identities of 211

the contemporary world; Bauman sees along with the process of globalization the political withdrawal of institutional authorities (Zygmunt Bauman, Identity, 2004: 29): No longer monitored and protected, galvanized and invigorated by monopoly-seeking institutions - exposed instead to a free play of competitive forces - any hierarchies of peeking orders of identities, and particularly solid and durable hierarchies and pecking orders, are neither sought nor easy to construct (...) Identities were given a free run; and it is now up to individual men and women to catch them in flight, using their own wits and tools. 212

Globalized Western Democracy and Neoliberal Capitalism

Figure 26 Effects of globalization

In this section, I also analyzed the complexity foundational structures of Western civilizations as well as the intertwining dynamics of democracy, capitalism and (neo)liberalism within and traversing the political social and economic spheres. I also explored as the impact of contemporary structures and ideologies on the system of human life at national and transnational levels to expose the paradoxes lying behind the illusions of principles of equality, freedom and justice that unveil the existence of 213

oppressive conceptual frameworks. Economically, we can see that the capitalist model and the free market provide a platform everyone can compete, access to basic products and pursue their own interests. If capitalism gives entrepreneurial opportunities whose profits would allow the development of higher living standard, however, we observed that capitalism is indifferent to its own antagonisms. Its competitive and unlimited growth dynamics eventually leads to monopoly over time and suppresses the opportunity it creates and restricts the chances for life enhancement to a few privileged groups whose wealth relies on other’s impoverishment. Culturally open, the contemporary West builds its identity within cultural diversity it manages to reconcile the conflicting individualities: differences are unifying complementarities of Western culture. Yet we saw that its multiculturalism remains bounded, blinded by a traditional heritage (arts, science, religion etc.). Folklores inspire and regenerate Western culture and vice versa, dynamics from which emerge cultural syncretism. However, the developments of technologies (notably modes of production and communication) tend to amplify these exchanges and assist the progress of cultural industries to capitalize on folklore heritages. This way, Western culture overshadows traditional ones and distorts them: it trends exploit symbolic contents in ways that strips their original of meaning (e.g. yoga, Buddhism, Valentine’s Day). In the context of globalization West promotes an overpowering mainstream culture that tends to standardize and homogenize its savoir-faire for the economic benefits of capitalist production. Not only the West manipulate and capitalizes on cultures but it also 214

disfigured them. Politically, the democratic model provides an institutional apparatus to distribute justice and protect its citizens; nevertheless, it is also used to justify injustice and oppression. The democratic paradox rests in the risk of its own contradiction with the West’s double standards, however, in Edgar Morin’s words “The crisis of democracy favors the emergence of dictatorships, but fortunately, the crisis of dictatorship facilitate the emergence of democracy” (Morin, La Voie, 103, translation mine). Then, I questioned the myth of homogeneity, the misperception of unified political, social and economic corpses, which revealed latent challenges and constraints of the democratization of political, social and economic activities that feeds illusions social control, economic autonomy and governmental authority. In this light appears the structural establishment of the social political and economic paradoxes relative to the ecological crisis. Western contemporary societies display a set of antagonisms and contradictions that raise legitimate questions that I shall address in the next part: Scientifically advanced but incapable to charge its technology with a substantial ethical purpose. The extensive access to information and data makes knowledge widely available in Western societies, its reductive and disjunctive practices manifest its inability to mobilize and master its own sophistication, its own complexity. How the cultural sphere of the arts and science can take on responsibility regarding the degradation of the biosphere; define its purposes and organize, operate and reintegrate a sense of ethics to direct its activities? 215

Politically open and progressive however fails at generating a coherent distribution of social justice, as it is unable to expand its conceptualization beyond the frontiers of human life. Karren Warren’s analysis on “the logic of domination” in which she explains that the conceptual frameworks justifying subordination that may be sexism or racism cannot be rooted out unless we understand the overarching rationale permeated by the anthropocentrism that justifies the subordination of non-human life. How can the political concretize its democracy, recognize and renounce to its double standards, redefine its structure to fulfill its responsibilities develop commitment, fellowship and civic focus Leading economy unwilling to value and invest in long term and sustainable means of production and consumption, capitalism refuses to save itself and the societies it serves. How can the economy transform its dynamics of competition that led to the atomization of society, reform itself and redevelop a sense of solidarity and community in the social fabric? Overall, I believe the examination of the structural foundations of contemporary human life allow us to question the legitimacy of the paradigmatic groundwork and heritage addressed by the historical transformation of Western civilizations. The reintroduction of the notion of plurality and heterogeneity in our analysis provides a new theoretical framework to overcome a certain conceptual determination that constrains the endeavor of self-observation. This way, the perceptual emancipation that the lens of complexity offers brings the deconstructive tools necessary to challenge the totalizing, one­ dimensional, reductionist paradigmatic view embedded to the power structures of contemporary Western civilizations. 216

PART 4: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND PROPOSITIONS

In this final part I shall articulate a response to some of the problems I addressed throughout this paper. To do so, I suggest the reformation of an institution that is educational system, as well as the creation or refinement of a global political governance; those together I believe will facilitate the transformation of humanity’s value system and shift towards patterns of behavior in line with environmental ethics.

Chapter 1: From problems and paradoxes to alternative framework and approach

R. Mental Models

Problem of knowledge: Paradoxes of Modern scientific rationality The separation of Church and State gave birth to the Modern State, which self-governing “reason” critiqued and emancipated itself religious myths that administered the social structures providing a set of precepts and guidance for human life in the West’s pre­ modern era. The legitimacy of religious authority and belief system declined as the rationalizing modern thought ascended, which believed “truths” to be accessible through the quest of knowledge. The endeavor to elucidate the “reality” of world phenomenon consists then in reducing an incomprehensible whole into disjointed accessible parts. It is with what we introduced as the Cartesian methodology and the conceptual framework provided by its dualistic logic that reactivated an anthropocentric identity, by separating and hierarchy-zing a human-centered conceptual representations of the world (i.e. 217

reason/religion, man/nature, mind/body etc.). This way, modern scientific paradigm rationalizes man’s domination over nature assessing the superiority of the mind and its ability to master ‘the nature of things’ and ‘the things of nature’. Edgar Morin in Homeland Earth writes: “The Identity of humanity, that is, its complex unity and diversity, has been cloaked and betrayed, in the midst of the Planetary Era, by the specialized and compartmentalized unfolding of the science (Edgar Morin, Homeland Earth, 1999:43). Moreover, we assessed that the sciences that emerged from the modern epistemological revolution ignored the limits of human knowledge that never reflects reality much as a mirror (c.f. Richard Rorty). Morin qualifies the systematic rationalization of the world that critiques religious myths as “myopic”: “this Sovereign Reason becomes providentialized [sacralized] into a quasi-religious myth (Morin, 2007:36, translation mine). We also discussed the way the scientific and ideological discourses were intertwined, both instrumentalizing knowledge to prescribe truths in a normative discourse (Part 1: Chapter 2). We the concepts of “knowledge” or “truth” are intrinsically ambivalent as their manufactured products are tributary to/dependent upon the subject’s perception of the object. In his essay Vers L’Abime? (2007), Morin reaffirms that illusion of ‘knowing reality’: “it is necessary to know the risks of error and illusion that all knowledge carries. It is a banality, however, it ceaselessly needs to be repeated: all knowledge is a translation and a reconstruction” (Edgar Morin, Vers L’Abime? 2007:137, translation mine). In La Methode: la Vie de la Vie Morin encapsulates the paradox deriving from the denial of modern science: “Reality became a logical idea, that is to say ideo-logical, and it is this 218

ideology that claims ownership of the concept of science” (Edgar Morin, La Methode: la Vie de la Vie. 1980:387). Of education: impact on individual opportunity, social equality and ecological awareness We assess that contemporary the limits of Western scientific methods were socially and historically retraceable, notably within the Modern paradigm. We exposed the fundamental paradigmatic problem advanced by the Modern school of thought; that is, a type knowledge that separates and isolates it objects with mechanism of reduction and disjunction. We demonstrated such conceptual frameworks conditioned throughout history dynamics of domination and subjugation of otherness establishing and sometimes institutionalizing oppressive patterns behaviors to present days (e.g. anthropocentrism, racism, sexism and so on). In the global context of humanity’s environmental crisis, we identified the modern mental models as a fundamental problem where the justification for the oppression and subordination of nature takes its roots. Although we are knowledgeable of how the ecological situation compromises our survival as a species, the gap between our education and our behaviors seems to widen. It seems that we are unable to connect pieces of information into a form of knowledge and incapable to set it in a global context. Actually, the pace of scientific progress exceeds the one of human awareness when it only disposes of tools that confine its cognitive process and progress. The Modern paradigm confirms its limits in contemporary academia but more importantly it compromises the formative educational 219

system that teaches K-12 students. The overall idea is also to provide these learning tools to bring education outside the bounds of its own institutions. In fact learning takes place outside of school, however, all are not equal before life experiences and learning opportunities. The poor population does not benefit enough of the necessary resources (i.e. time and money) to take the lead of their children’s education and provide them with favorable learning conditions and extra curricular experiences and activities (i.e. exposure and initiation to different arts, sports, culture, languages etc.). In 1970, Ivan lllich, in Deschoolinq Society criticizes the establishment of universal education through schooling (Ivan lllich, Deschoolinq Society. 2012). For him, the schooling system exacerbates inequalities and “inevitably polarizes society” (lllich, 2012:9). Moreover, the specialization of education and the centralization of learning placed upon the school system predictably “discourages and disables the poor from taking control of their own learning... and in addition discourages other institutions from assuming educational tasks” (lllich, 2012:8). Moreover lllich views on mainstream education coincide with Morin’s concerns regarding the question, he writes (lllich, 2012:12): [School] is neither reasonable nor liberating. It is not reasonable because it does not link relevant qualities or competences to roles, but rather the process by which such qualities are supposed to be acquired. It is not liberating or educational because school reserves instruction to those whose every step in learning fits previously approved measures of social control. 220

According to lllich’s observations, an obligatory school system that holds the entire responsibility of education defeats its own purposes of providing equal chances. By setting minimum obligatory educational standards and certified diplomas, the educational system has a monopoly on learning and non-accredited skill sets become inappreciable and thus insignificant. This eliminates any other potential alternative for the poor, who cannot afford higher education, to attest and demonstrate competence, resulting in their marginalization on the job market. This way lllich demonstrates how the school system is a destructive institution that universalizes access to learning and its methods and its assessment in ways that invisibly perpetuates social inequalities. Further in his book, Ivan lllich points out that “everywhere the school system has the same structure” regardless of political, religious and cultural differences (lllich, 2012:74): Invariably, it shapes the consumer who values the institutional commodities above the nonprofessional ministration of a neighbor. Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. Everywhere this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production provides a better life. And everywhere it develops the habit of self-defeating consumption of services and alienating production, the tolerance for institutional dependence, and the recognition of institutional rankings. (...) In other words, schools are fundamentally alike in all countries, be they fascist democratic or socialist, big or small, rich or poor. This certainly leads us to question the adequacy of the modern educational system which institution perpetuates the status quo and which learning methods provide 221

debilitating educational standards instead of emancipating tools and knowledge. Moreover, school curricula are designed to clarify and simplify information, this ways it divides the world’s complexity into separate subjects that isolate knowledge and keep out of sight the multidimensionality of its phenomena. In Morin’s words these educational methods: “ reduce the complexity for simplicity, that is, to separate what is linked, to unify what is plural, to eliminate everything that generates disorder or contradiction in our understanding” (Morin, 2012:242). It is imperative to equip ourselves, and the next generations, with the proper thinking tools and thinking habits. Approaching learning differently There is a specific development of mental underdevelopment under the primacy of rationalization, quantification, abstraction, deresponsabilization, which together instigate the development of moral underdevelopment. Lessening the mental poverty of the developed would rapidly, in our scientific era, procure solutions to the problem of underdeveloped material poverty. Therefore, we are driven to the view that mental, emotional, human underdevelopment, even of the developed, is henceforth a key issue of homonization. Morin, 1999:84-85 For these reason, it is high time to reform the mainstream Western educational systems in order to meet the challenges addressed by the ecological situation. This means enabling students to situate and connect the information they are given within the context. Moreover, teaching, not only one, but also the different the forms of rationality will provide them with the tools to theorize, criticize and self reflect. Thus, teach them to deal with contradictions and understand ambiguities, improve argumentation and refine their overall reasoning inside and outside of class (Morin, 2012:254). Here, I suggest 222

integrating 'system thinking’ within school curricula and general pedagogy. This involves reunifying academic disciplines to encourage students to question world phenomena in their global and fundamental significance.

1) Identify a system within its context and complexity = Understanding levels of embeddedness and different relationships and interdependencies between systems and sub-systems 2) Identify the system’s elements, their role and organization = Understanding the rules of internal interactions, how the system operates a 3) Identify the purpose of the system = Understanding why it exists and what it achieves 4) Identify dynamics: inputs and outputs, stocks, flows and feedback loops of a system = Understanding how it regulates itself and manage to keep its equilibrium. 5) Identify patterns of behavior = Understanding how a system’s behavior is affected over time I______=_ =_ _ _ ==^ ^ ______Table 5 System Thinking

Following the steps listed above, supports the development of mental flexibility and the capacity to integrate different information and adjust our thinking accordingly while recognizing a certain degree of uncertainty of world phenomena and fallibility of human sciences. It emphasizes the impact of every individual or collective decision made and the importance of long-term thinking and elaborating strategies to face the world’s challenges. The Waters Foundation website provides a few examples of the incorporation of ‘system thinking’ be integrated to common core curricular standards; and how its concepts and 223

strategies can be introduced at different levels from kindergarten and into traditional subjects of elementary, middle school and high school curriculums (for further details find link in bibliographical references). Moreover, it is imperative to reintegrate learning outside the confinements of its institutionalized and routinized programs with patronizing methods designed to create good little soldiers. This means to reappraise the value of personal skills and experience and non-monetized work (i.e. house work, creative work, hobbies, passions) and allow more time for leisure-work, time for people to cultivate, develop and share those talents. I shall conclude here with Edgar Morin’s words: “We are thus led to the necessary task of democratizing knowledge, in other words, to a cognitive democracy” (Morin, 1999:91).

S. Social structures and behaviors

Of time: impact on individual freedom, social well-being and ecological sustainability Once Again Edgar Morin’s rigorous analysis on the question of human identity helps bridging the different realms of human life that were influenced by modernity and the compartmentalization of sciences: “(...) and the economics that has extracted from the Homo sapiens demens the bloodless residue of Homo economicus" (Edgar Morin, Homeland Earth. 1999:43). While investigating the structures and ideologies of Western contemporary civilizations and looking at organization of political and economic power and the interrelation 224

between democracy and (neo)liberalism, we recognized antagonistic dynamics of homogenization and heterogenization. The governmental reason of State sovereignty attempts to democratically unify or homogenize a certain human diversity into the idealized political unity of a nation’s social body. Conversely, the modern economic rationality of competition extols heterogeneity and launches the antagonistic process of diversification with the birth of the free-market, which substantiated a platform enabling the variegation and pluralization of human lives and experiences. The double processes of unification/diversification and reduction/disjunction characterize the complexity of modern life. Along with scientific progress, technology and communication developments, booming market economy and the pecuniary profit of Western nations the contemporary world enters a new era of globalization. The capitalist logic expands and the neoliberal economic rationality challenges the institutional monopoly held by governmental reason. The deregulation of the market on a worldwide scale translates the erosion of political State power, leading to the privatization of what remained of public authority, that is putting what was of governmental rationality (justice) under the authority of economic rationality (profit). Modernity greatly affected the social, cultural and individual identities of the contemporary world; Zygmunt Bauman sees that coupled with the globalization process, the political withdrawal of institutional authorities “no longer monitored and protected, galvanized and invigorated by monopoly-seeking institutions - exposed instead to a free play of competitive forces - any hierarchies of peeking orders of identities, and particularly solid and durable hierarchies and pecking orders, are neither sought nor 225

easy to construct (...) Identities were given a free run; and it is now up to individual men and women to catch them in flight, using their own wits and tools” (Zygmunt Bauman, Identity. 2004: 29).

Figure 27 Contemporary Western culture and society

In order to meet basic needs, access education and live comfortably in our Western contemporary societies requires for individuals to work at a full-time job or cumulate multiple part-time positions. Paid work has an emancipating purpose, it endows individual with capabilities as the freedom and opportunities to achieve their well being within free-market activities. However, work can be prejudicial and alienating by taking 226

away the time to use of, enjoy and preserve other liberties. Under pressure of economic necessity to meet basic needs, work has a propensity to compromise general well being and deteriorating mental, physical and social health (e.g. individuals are stressed, overworked, isolated). Moreover, an overload of working hours jeopardize individual freedom when leaving too little time and energy for self-realization, for people to indulge in the pleasures of personal projects and ventures or pursue different activities and interests. Under such conditions, the imperatives of individual basic needs become a burden: excessive working hours, the capitalist mode of production and ways of consumptions undermine individual freedoms, social wellbeing and the planet’s ecological balance. Supported by the works of Edgar Morin and Zygmunt Bauman, we assessed that in our contemporary globalized world people struggle for a sense of security and individuality. Society constantly changes, its standards and expectations too and the instability of such conditions energizes the dynamics of mass production and mass consumption: where people buy the things they don’t have time to make, pay for the skills they don’t have time to acquire and shop for objects and paraded brands to express the individuality they don't have time to build. Social atomization, individualism and consumerist behaviors leave individuals with a sense of incompletion, an existential void that intensifies feelings of insecurity, emptiness and loneliness. In Morin’s Words: “Production is subordinate to consumption, and the latter to products sold on the market, which in turn are subordinated to libidinal forces less and less controlled within the circular process that creates a consumer for the product, not just a product for the 227

consumer” (Morin, 1999:64). For a lack of time to build skills or community, individuals resort to different types of specialized services and outsourced domestic work (e.g. housework, cooking, gardening, repairing). As much as, for a lack time to build identity and nurture authenticity, individuals mask their dissatisfaction and compensate with marketed goods and what these commodities socially signify (e.g. brands, automobiles, technology, fashion accessories etc.). For a lack of time to cultivate inter-personal and social skills, develop and maintain interests and pursue fulfilling activities, individual lose a sense of will and creativity leading to the commodification of leisure (e.g. tourism, entertainment, film, TV, sports, music). The cultural industry transformed social interactions and activities, passiveness and spectatorship supplanted self-agency and real life experiences. The consumer society alienates the individual from realizing and appreciating the importance intrinsic values (as opposed to extrinsic, materialistic values); it glorifies the consumer mentality and reinforces the mechanisms of individual and cultural impoverishment that assists and speeds up the progress of ecological degradation. Approaching work, time and economy differently In True Wealth. How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light. Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy, Juliet Schor denounces the unsustainability of human activities facing the ecological reality. In the fourth chapter of her book she presents an insightful alternative way of thinking about time, value and consumption, “the point is to diversify uses of time and ways of meeting needs (...) It’s 228

time to reclaim hours, build skills, invest in people, save more, and perfect the art of self­ provisioning” (Juliet Schor, True Wealth. 2011:103). She makes a point emphasizing that, whether they are monetized or not, all activities produce some value; in the table below I shall synthesize her reasoning.

ACTIVITIES VALUES GAINS +-* d) = Money k. Employment Wages/salaries s03 0) -» $$$ >(TJ O E = Home production co o -> Savings: Housework o “Shadow wages” Gardening, cooked LU meals, childcare etc. 0) k. <0 = Skills cE Leisure Pleasure -> Hobbies, o ! to interests z a ® 03 O =3 = Community Volunteering Solidarity .2o S® -> Help if) O DC = Network Friendship Shared Experience -> Support Table 6 The overlooked values of non-market activities

Thus, she argues that reallocating our time in extra-market activity gives the opportunity to cut down paid work hours, thereby, improving social, physical and mental health while creating jobs. And by the same token, providing individuals with more time to 229

develop and diversify skill sets, engage in self-provisioning and save money. All of which, leads to lessen marketed consumption and thus, reduces the ecological footprint (Schor, 2011:112-123). In Schor’s words “through the triad of reductions in paid work, income, and marketed consumption. Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less” (Schor, 2011:112, emphasis mine). Such emancipatory goals entails a re-structuring of the social organization and expectations, here I shall draw a non-exhaustive list of propositions as a response to such objective. 230

Individual Autonomy Local Opportunity .. - Global Solidarity Emancipation of the Thriving individuals, / Event individual families and Cooperative Societies communities Less discrimination , . . . Less competition Less constraints ,, ..

More equality’ More freedom , „ More justice More Time= Ethical Deep Learnina= and Healthv Livina Mindfulness Self-realization and Collective Consciousness = Self determination, skill development Sustainable Cohabitation analytical and critical Ecological Symbiosis thinking skills Self-provisioning and Behavioral less marketed Global Accountability changes Integrity and consumption Responsibility Planetary Collaboration Building community Social and ecological and conviviality Worldwide Community awareness

Less labor/wage work hours Global Governance: Revolutionize K-12 Policy of humanity Educational Curricula More jobs Structural Policy of civilization reforms Available resources for Adopt universal extra-curricular activities revenue or make part-time work affordable Social and Ecological Ethics: Scientific Revolution Mental System thinking: Personal growth t Contextualize Models Shifts Integrating the complex Economic growth Globalize and the context in Creation * Multidimensionalize thinking processes Consumption

Problems Obscurantism Insecurity Domination Oppression Fear of the unknown Fear of uncertainty Fear of the other Table 7 Rupture with the modern episteme 231

T. Global Superstructure and local substructures

Of Governance: impact on social justice planetary unity and ecological equilibrium As defined earlier, development involves simultaneously the unfolding of individual autonomies and the increase in communal participations, both neighborly as well as planetary. More freedom and more community, more self and less selfishness are essential. Morin, 1999:83

In this section I shall present and synthesize ideas and propositions for the future of humanity’s quality of life in consideration of the contemporary political, social, cultural, political and ecological challenges advanced throughout the course of this discussion. Politics, Global governance for planetary global and local interests Throughout this thesis we assessed that the globalization of Western contemporary political, economic and cultural models and ideologies contradicted their own purposes weakening freedom, justice and equality, deteriorate life quality and fail to adapt to ecological reality, Morin says (Morin, 1999:93): If the nation-state has become powerful enough to destroy masses of people and societies, it has become too small to look after great planetary problems, and too big to look after the concrete individual problems of its citizens. The change of scale brought about by developing economic globalization has de facto rendered the powers of the nation-state outdated. Furthermore, the nation-state is unable to protect cultural identities which, being provincial, act in self-defense, 232

precisely by asking for state power to be curtailed. Morin suggests moving forward and institute a global governance with a double approach: “the policy of humanity” and “the policy of civilization” and the mission to “constantly consider the planetary, the continental, the national and the local”, that is to always take into account the complex and the context (Morin, 2012:69). He envisions a planetary association and mode of cooperation based on the idea of Earth as a Homeland upon which we can found a common identity: “The idea would be to move toward a universal society based on the genius of diversity (homogeneity lacks genius)” (Morin, 1999:95). The preliminary requirements for democratic global governance are: to realize a planetary citizenship and earthling rights for all, and materialize “a planetary public opinion” (Morin, 1999:94). In the table below, I translate and condense the ideas and some of the practical recommendations of Edgar Morin presented in La Voie (2012). These suppose that a fundamental paradigmatic shift is possible; together with local and global responses to contemporary ecological problems with political, social and economic transformations that are conceivable and convincing. 233

Political: Elaborate a global governance, world society, and common consciousness. Structure: Participatory democracy Requirements: Planetary citizenship, keep citizens active and informed, universal human rights (e.g. access to water). Institutions: Create global institutions with effective power to apply ecological and economic norms, prevent wars, reduce inequalities etc. Local participative platforms where local and global issues are discussed and where citizens can be involve in, partake in decision-making for projects, budget etc. Globalization and deqlobalization: Reinforce planetary interactions and cooperation, while preserving societies’ autonomy and respecting cultural identities (prevent war, reduce inequalities, regulate migration flows etc.) Humanitarian mission: Advance solutions according to context (not a standardized formula) in order to adjust to the different problems that different places face. Cultural: “The civilizing of civilization involves intercommunication between societies, and beyond this their organic association on a planetary scale” (Morin, 1999:93) Cognitive Requirements: Develop cultural awareness, recognize cultural pluralities, accept differences, share skills diversify knowledge. Transformation and conservation: Protect cultures from economic imperialism, recognize the qualities that occidental-centrism ignores and preserve the values that the process of westernization annihilates. Development and envelopment: maintain ethics, community and keep an integrative relationship with nature and the cosmos. Civilizational mission: Stimulate a planetary symbiosis; fight discrimination, racial, religious an xenophobic prejudices. Solidarize, resource, convivialize, educate and responsibalize communities. Economic: End the hegemony of profit and the reduction of politics to economics Ideological reguirement: Give up on unlimited growth 234

Institutional: Council of Economic Security, regulates the planetary economy, controls financial speculation. Deprivatization: Conservation or resurrection of public national services. Development of community banks and microcredits to fight poverty. Growth and Dearowth: Adopt differentiated rate of growth according to a nation’s need for wealthier nations, mobilize and provide resources and assistance where they are necessary). Proximity Economy: Develop small and medium enterprises in agriculture, market gardening and handcraft. Development of green economy: development of the economy upon all types renewable energies, and reform and reorganize different sectors of activity: reduce industrial production, redevelop agricultural production and pedestrianize urban area. Cooperation: Creation of economic unions to defend Southern economies. The South could adopt new economic standards of development based on domestic demands, social well being while focusing on expanding renewable energy. Moreover, southern countries could come together and pressure northern countries to invest in them. Those nations whose wealth and power was build on slaughter and colonial exploitation: they dispossessed them, enslaved them, indoctrinated them, ravaged their land, and spoiled the ecosystems. The South should reclaim their feedstock and benefit directly from the exploitation and exportation of their resources, which northern countries still greatly profit from. Figure 28 Morin's vision 235

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