[P2P-F] How the 'ecosystem' myth has been used for sinister means

Mon May 30 10:36:58 CEST 2011

very useful Andy!

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hiya,
>
> Oh, wonderful...  another Hobbesian critique of autonomy...  just what
> the world needs :-(
>
> The theoretical error here is confusing the idea of self-organising
> networks with the much more widespread, older, and more insidious idea
> of a natural order.  The ideas are similar in that they both posit a
> certain form of organisation which, if realised and then left to its
> own devices, will be stable.  Where they differ, is that the old idea
> of natural order implies some kind of equilibrium model.  In fact if
> we want to trace this idea we have to go at least as far back as
> Aristotle, who also believed that everything in the world has a
> 'natural' function and if everything fulfilled its function, the world
> would be a harmonious order.
>
> Of course this view is very helpful for the process known as
> 'naturalisation' in discourse analysis: taking a contingent social
> fact and insulating it from critique by declaring it to be 'natural'
> (gender relations, heteronormativity, racial hierarchies, poverty,
> class differences and so on).  The trick is that the 'natural'
> situation still has to be actively socially constructed, and relies on
> hierarchy and violence to keep it in place.  This is what's going on
> in the South African case discussed.
>
> Hence the criticism is conflating self-organising networks with the
> equilibrium model of natural order, and the use of naturalisation in
> discourse.  A self-organising network is neither of these things for
> two reasons: 1) by definition it does not require a hierarchy to keep
> it in place, 2) it is a complex system and not a fixed order, ranking
> or equilibrium.  (That's not to say that complexity theory doesn't
> have its own skeletons in the closet - TBH I was expecting at least
> some reference to the sins of cybernetics here - Curtis isn't doing
> his research as well as he might).
>
> The 'Green movement = Romanticism' or 'Green movement = conservative
> views of natural order' trick has been pulled many times before.
> There was a certain love of the countryside and concern for
> conservation in pro-peasant Romanticism and rural aristocratic
> conservatism, but it's not much like Green thought, because the vision
> of nature is radically different, so too is the politics, and anyway,
> the main concern is with the virtues of peasants or aristocrats -
> conservation is almost an afterthought, keeping the rural folk in
> their 'natural environment'.  It's possible to write a history of
> ecological concern in that direction, but it's also possible to write
> one which goes through Morris, Kropotkin and other figures of the left
> (even Marx talks about alienation from nature).
>
> Note also that if we're playing reductio ad hitlerum (South Africa
> count as Nazi?), this author's stance can just as easily be debunked
> the same way, i.e. people who believe nature is a Hobbesian chaos
> quite often end up as control-freak eugenicists and ecocidal maniacs
> (Herbert Spencer comes to mind); people who believe social movements
> need strong organisation and leadership are repeating what the
> Stalinists did in Russia, and are going to shoot us like partridges or
> betray us like in Spain; the view of power as definitive in social
> life is shared with Carl Schmitt, who of course is a Nazi, etc etc.
> Seriously, an authoritarian Hobbesian does not want to start that
> particular game, particularly when arguing with anarchists (who are
> measurably the furthest possible one can be from Nazis on political
> compass - guaranteeing that whoever is using the argument is closer).
>
> The part of the article on Biosphere is a grotesque misreading...  all
> that it shows is that scientists don't (yet) know enough about how the
> elements in an ecosystem interrelate to be able to build an ecosystem
> at this level of complexity.  Maybe this is a case for further
> scientific research, maybe it's a case for trusting local knowledge
> over modern science when dealing with complex local systems.  I'd add
> that scientists *have* created homeostatic ecosystems in jars
> involving only a handful of species (I've seen one on display in a
> science centre).  Here we are:
> http://www.mlms.logan.k12.ut.us/science/BioJar.html  Hence very bad
> attempt to discredit a concept.
>
> Old leftists are very twitchy about the newest wave of social
> movements - if not downright hostile, and it's always attached to this
> same kind of suspicion that 1) they don't realise the need for
> discipline/authority/strong organisations and 2) they're really
> Thatcherites in disguise, too caught-up in self-expression to do
> 'serious' politics'.  It's really the same as the objections of old
> rightists, which far more explicitly whine about lost authority and
> the breakdown of values and how 'selfish' people are and 'in my day
> they'd all have been hung from the railings by their gonads'.  The
> leftist version is an echo of the same discourse, with the same
> objections to contemporary society and its social movements.  I think
> it's partly a psychological problem and partly a generational problem.
>  In fact there was a characteristic of the old pre-60s 'consensus'
> which has broken down, a kind of unquestioning acceptance of authority
> and discipline, and to someone who still believes in this lost world
> of proto-fascism which was shattered by the 60s rebellions, the New
> Left and New Right look strangely similar.  Hence the tropes we see
> here: new social movements = irresponsible individualism and refusal
> of normativity, autonomy = managerialism, social movements need
> discipline to be effective (instrumentalism vs expressionism), and a
> world without a strong boss to tell everyone what to do isn't going to
> work because the world just doesn't work that way goddamnit it'd be
> anarchy.
>
> It's a product of a desire for a strong 'trunk' and arborescent
> structures which is either a psychological disposition (think either
> 'Authoritarian Personality' and 'Fear of Freedom', or else maybe
> certain Myers-Briggs types), or a learnt cultural disposition which
> these people are having trouble unlearning (this is what they were
> socialised into, they were 'good subjects' then, and they hate the
> fact that they're not 'good subjects' any more, even though they've
> always just about played by the rules they were socialised into, that
> for them are 'just the way it is').  I've seen it a thousand times, it
> comes up whenever networked protest groups or direct action or the
> Black Bloc or subcultural deviance or any freedom vs collectivism
> dispute comes up, and it's almost identical in structure every single
> time.  It's not a good idea to take it too seriously, because these
> types seem pre-programmed to be unreflexive about the origins of their
> own assumptions, and therefore are unable to justify their selection
> of this particular set of assumptions - it isn't a conscious choice,
> it's a reflex.
>
> The real struggle now is not within the old industrial economy (old
> right vs old left) but within the new
> creative/informational/precarious economy (new right / new Third Way
> vs new left / newest social movements), and the way these kinds who
> want to go back to the old industrial economy relate to this struggle
> is invariably reactionary: their 'need' for greater order is met by
> the right-wing side of the current struggle, and they're therefore
> drawn into it on the 'wrong' side, even if precariously so.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:40 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Sam,
> >
> > I hope you survived the tornado?
> >
> > I hope some of our participants can react to this very interesting
> challenge
> > from Adam Curtis in the Guardian,
> >
> > Michel
> >
> > On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Kevin Flanagan <kev.flanagan at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> How the 'ecosystem' myth has been used for sinister means - Adam
> >> Curtis - Guardian
> >>
> >> When, in the 1920s, a botanist and a field marshal dreamed up rival
> >> theories of nature and society, no one could have guessed their ideas
> >> would influence the worldview of 70s hippies and 21st-century protest
> >> movements. But their faith in self-regulating systems has a sinister
> >> history
> >>
> >>
> >>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/adam-curtis-ecosystems-tansley-smuts
> >>
> >> Episode 1 of his current documentary is up on youtube
> >>
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5jImWRREc
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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