We’ve gotten this far in industrial civilization through hyper-confidence in our own knowledge, and I strongly suspect that we were able to think we had everything figured out because we had not yet run up against the finite nature of this world. Our interventions “worked” the way we imagined they did, in part because there was always a place where we could throw things away. That meant that a great deal never had to be thought about; out of sight, out of mind. Now, increasingly, we realize there is no “away.” There were still resources we had not tried to exploit, and no doubt there still are, but to circle back to the starting point of all this, the amount of water on planet Earth is finite and unchanging. We cannot make more H2O, and that is becoming one of several limiting factors. As is the realization that exploiting resources is not always an unambiguous good.
Our massive confidence in our explanations has rested for a long time on the fact that we weren’t aware of half of the repercussions of our actions. It’s important to remember that perhaps we still are not. We don’t know how much we don’t know, but we don’t like to admit that. We tend to think that our understanding of the natural world has reached completion, and all that remains is to work out the applications of our insights. The trouble is, we thought that in 1908 and 1808 as well. Looking back, that seems laughable, but how different are we today? Did the past century suddenly make it really true that we have godlike knowledge?
My view, in short, is that we’re not alone here. We’re not transcendent beings who operate in a way that puts us beyond category on this earth. We have astounding abilities, but they tend to blind us to the equally astounding abilities of the world around us. Sometimes we act as though we believe that evolution in and along with this environment gave rise to us only to then eject us from our context. As though we believe that we are the end of earth’s history. That nature completed its task by creating us, and it should now gracefully retire. But no. Assuming we survive as a species, I think we are going to do so in a relation of equality, dialogue and collaboration with the natural world and all its complex agency, which is no less than our own. The question is not whether this relationship will eventually happen, but how we will get there, and whether we will have to get there the hardest way.
Lowery Pei commented on our new site The Power Up Project - like minds found each other. Here is the conclusion of one of his posts - it rang a big bell for me.
He reminds us that we might just be on the verge of an entire new perspective - that we are not gods but part of nature - that we actually know very little about her right now.
That learning more might be the best thing we can do.
