Nature and Mankind

[Nihilistic Seraph]

But what does it serve if we don't do anything?

Going from an existentialist view, the individual is what matters, and then branching out, the rest of humanity because we all tie together in a society. Those that don't matter are those that don't contribute, so by extension nature does matter, but still not as much as the individual.  

[Starlock]

Nihilistic Seraph

But what does it serve if we don't do anything?

Going from an existentialist view, the individual is what matters, and then branching out, the rest of humanity because we all tie together in a society. Those that don't matter are those that don't contribute, so by extension nature does matter, but still not as much as the individual.

This isn't just an existentialist view, I don't think. It's a Western view in general to put the individual before the collective. As someone who has studied things like ecology and social psychology, I think that that notion, taken to the extreme if often is in Western culture, is misguided. There is this very inspirational book I read recently entitled "You are, Therefore I Am" by Satish Kumar that really pegs all this well.

In the West we have such a strong tendancy to define ourselves by the "I" because of that tradition Descartes started yet there is another precident that says something very different. I loved this book enough to copy some quotes from it in my BoS as I think this guy's sentiment is also very in line with an Earthwalker or one who follows a Nature-centered path. Make of this what you will, but I found it quite inspirational.

Satish Kumar in 'You are, Therefore I am,' pages 175-6

'I think, therefore I am' (cogito, ergo sum), proclaimed Rene Descartes. This one phrase describes the direction of Western science, philosophy, politics and the social order. When I first heard it, I was puzzled by Cartesian logic; in India we have been speaking of the dissolution and even the nonexistence of the self for many centuries. But here was an eminent European philosopher basing the very foundation of existence on the self!

As I learnt more about Western culture, I realised how Cartesian dualism was an essential feature of a thought process which divided mind and matter, separated soul and body an dlooked at the world as a collection of objects to be analysed, compartmentalised, classified, and controlled. This Cartesian subject-object dualism or mind-matter split hs become the dominant paradigm of Western culture.

It is interesting to note that Descartes had his philosophical insight while literally sitting in a stove, in an isolated and lonely place, whereas the Buddah had his enlightenment sitting under a tree, by a river, observing nature. No wonder the Buddah saw reality as 'co-dependent arising', which could be roughly translated as "Only Connect'.

Descartes attracted everybody's attention because he was the fisrt philosopher to bring scientific methodology into philosophical investigation. The starting point of the Cartesian enquiry is to doubt, which was a useful tool at a time when questioning was quashed and blind beliefs imposed. But Cartesian doubt went too far - the baby was thrown out with the bath water.

My upbringing was rooted in faith and in trust. Descartes discarded trust altogether, and a new dogma of doubt and then dualism became the dominant paradigm of his thinking, and later of Western culture.

Of course Descartes was not the first dualist. Its origins lie in the story of Genesis, in which God is seperate frmo the world; God created the world and then He created Man in His own image, and gave humans dominion over the Earth. He instructed Man to subdue the Earth and multiply. Yet not all Christians interpreted the story in this way. The Celts saw the presence of God in creation itself and not outside it, and mystic Christians experienced the divine mystery present all around them. Nevertheless, the dominant Judaeo-Christian influence, which informed the affairs of the state, the minds of the educated and the activities of trade, technology, art and science, was dualistic.

In order to accomplish the materialistic ambitions of the eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century elites, it was necessary to marginalise the mystic and non-dualistic Christians, and to push upon mainstream Christians Cartesian philosophy, Newtonian physics, Darwinian biology and Freudian psychology, so that religion went hand in hand with colonial, industrial and polotical designs of the European rulers of the time.

Newton saw the universe as a machine, a sophisticated clock which could be controlled and reculated to human needs. In his view, human and animal bodies were also machines. Animals, according to Descartes, had no soul, no feelings and no consciousness; the universe was not a living organism. The only thing required in order to manipulate it was to understand the laws of nature. Darwin's theory of Evolution developed the notion that species and individuals within species are in constant competition with each other, that the strong species dominate the weak, and that only the strongest survive. The implication is that the only thing we need to do is become strong, and then we will be the master species. Similarly, in the field of psychology Freud seems to suggest that the psyche is wrapped in the skin, seperate from the body; that the self can be accessed through analysis, and that by strengthening the ego, the individual can gain power. All these ideas are centered around the self, and maintain a dualistic perspective.

These theories are, in my view, at the root of the ecological, social and spiritual crisis of our time. The dualistic world-view gives the illusion that I exist independently of the Other. This attitude is founded on the belief that there is a substantial, seperate, individual Self, which can act of its own accord, irrespective of the Other. Once we accept that the mind is more certain than matter and 'My mind' is more certain than the 'Other mind', we have already divided the world.

 

[safkef]

I'm not being a smart aleck when I say this but I think I just got smarter biggrin

This is so cool to be able to participate in intelligent discussions or just read them if I'm not going to actually speak up smile

Thanks all!  

[twilight insanity]

i want to say that i believe that yes, we may be deviding the world when we think and act for ourselves, but we DO gain the power still, the control. everyone and everything is made up of the same thing: energy. and everyone's and everything's energy affects everyone and everything else's energy. therefore we ARE all connected, but we are still individuals, and as individuals can become more powerfull by controling the rest. this is what i do all the time in my quest for knowledge. in learning i have to test out, prcatice, and experiment with all my newfound abilities, and put my theories to the test. i don't realy like to think of it in a scientific way, i am more inclined torwards philosophy, but i suppose that i am much more used to the scientific method.  

[twilight insanity]

Starlock

Nihilistic Seraph

Eh, that's a tricky argument, because humanity is still the one that's made the bagel, and shaped the wood to shelter us from the rain. I understand the point, but I'm wondering where the line gets drawn. Do I have a right to enjoy reading books when the paper is made from killing trees? Saying yes right away gives human entertainment a greater value than plant life.

I'm not sure saying yes to that gives human entertainment 'greater value' though from some points of view it certainly does. What it really says to me is that all species intrinsically looking out for their own good, not for the good of anything else. They stop to consider the wellfare of someone else (including, often, members of their own species) when it in some way benefits them, be it symbiotic cooperative or just needing to preserve a resource. From each individual species' point of view, anything that serves them has 'greater value' and that's part of why I have issues with making those kinds of value judgements in general. We all do it anyway, of course, but stoping to think about it every once and a while can be eye-opening.

human's and nature should co-exist, just like they did before. no need for sueriority. however, it may seem hypocritical of me to also add that everyone and everything should still do whatever it perseeves as right, wrong, or acceptible, allowing for humans to still be in control of their world. and to answer anhil's responce, it would NOT be safe, and yes, we ould not affect or be affected by nature. that is bad thing.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Starlock - an interesting piece, but it doesn't really do it for me. I've heard the argument that a dualistic world-view has led to ecologic crisis, but I don't entirely buy it. It ends up depending on how you define yourself in the duality, and you can easily lump mankind in with nature and oppose it to something else.

You can also talk about one-ness, but look at Parmenides. He preached a doctrine of unity and denied change because of it.  

[Starlock]

Either extreme is bad. Satish really is talking about the extreme dualism though in this passage, hence his reference to the fact that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Excessive dualism does lead to ways of thinking that make it easy to abuse both other people and the environment. In our society we get very caught up creating mutually exclusive groups, us vs. them constructs, and stories of good vs. evil. In doing that we create constructs that justify differential treatment of various groups and can rationalize things from the genocide of the Jews because they're one of those 'other' groups to neglecting the environment. If you see yourself as intimately interconnected to all things, there is no 'other' group and you see your own fate as inexorably linked to theirs. That tends to discourage somewhat any sort of genocide against a group since there is no 'otherness' rationalization for doing so.

So perhaps it isn't dualism in itself, but us-versus-them or in-group and out-group categorization that's the culprit. Dualism perpetuates that sort of thinking, so they're linked at any rate. confused  

[twilight insanity]

Starlock

Either extreme is bad. Satish really is talking about the extreme dualism though in this passage, hence his reference to the fact that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Excessive dualism does lead to ways of thinking that make it easy to abuse both other people and the environment. In our society we get very caught up creating mutually exclusive groups, us vs. them constructs, and stories of good vs. evil. In doing that we create constructs that justify differential treatment of various groups and can rationalize things from the genocide of the Jews because they're one of those 'other' groups to neglecting the environment. If you see yourself as intimately interconnected to all things, there is no 'other' group and you see your own fate as inexorably linked to theirs. That tends to discourage somewhat any sort of genocide against a group since there is no 'otherness' rationalization for doing so.

So perhaps it isn't dualism in itself, but us-versus-them or in-group and out-group categorization that's the culprit. Dualism perpetuates that sort of thinking, so they're linked at any rate. confused

...an obvious pacifist. yes, i just labled you. what does that do to you? now, i am treating you as a test experimen t here for a second (yes, once again something you were against.) i want to see what reaction you make. because that will be YOUR PERSONAL REACTION. get it? however, we are ALL going to affected by it. that is what i was getting at.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Starlock

Either extreme is bad. Satish really is talking about the extreme dualism though in this passage, hence his reference to the fact that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Excessive dualism does lead to ways of thinking that make it easy to abuse both other people and the environment. In our society we get very caught up creating mutually exclusive groups, us vs. them constructs, and stories of good vs. evil. In doing that we create constructs that justify differential treatment of various groups and can rationalize things from the genocide of the Jews because they're one of those 'other' groups to neglecting the environment. If you see yourself as intimately interconnected to all things, there is no 'other' group and you see your own fate as inexorably linked to theirs. That tends to discourage somewhat any sort of genocide against a group since there is no 'otherness' rationalization for doing so.

So perhaps it isn't dualism in itself, but us-versus-them or in-group and out-group categorization that's the culprit. Dualism perpetuates that sort of thinking, so they're linked at any rate. confused

Watch out, verging on slippery slope there.

In any case, I'd say it's stupidity linked with dualism that does it, as you don't need a philosophy that deals with everything being interconnected to see causality and the effects of humans on the world.

...

How did we get to talking about dualism vs collective?  

[Starlock]

The relationship between humanity and nature and how an individual sees it is often a reflection of their tendancies to see either dualistically or as a web of relationships. The supposed split between humanity and nature comes from very dualistic thinking, so all of this does relate back to the topic. wink  

[twilight insanity]

Starlock

The relationship between humanity and nature and how an individual sees it is often a reflection of their tendancies to see either dualistically or as a web of relationships. The supposed split between humanity and nature comes from very dualistic thinking, so all of this does relate back to the topic. wink

took the words right out of my mouth there, star! ^_^