A thought from an email conversation today:
I am quite convinced that big business will rape the Earth near the point of no return, or beyond it -- in terms of habitability by humans -- the only question is which of the two it will be before the Earth is finally roused into itching the rash they produce. Water, plants, animals, minerals, and human beings are not commodities, and thinking of them as such produces a global suicide-machine. Because these things can be reduced to numbers in a spreadsheet does not mean that that reduction actually applies to them. (Nor does this evaluation apply to all business-- they can even serve a social function, as Drucker lays out in Management.)(As I said previously, we're all a little complicit- but not to the extent of those who cut corners and reap absurd profits.)
I wonder if the people truly responsible for disasters like the BP spill, or the wholesale purchase of water rights etc etc. know and simply don't care, or whether they are so taken in by their myths, (the values that those myths engender), that they can't see it any other way. It really doesn't matter, except inasmuch as whether they are spiritually as well as morally culpable.
I spent most of today going around the city spoiling Jazmin and reading Robertson Davies. She saw him on the "free books" shelf in front of the anarchist hangout nearby, and thought I would like the beardy man. As it turns out, I do indeed like the beardy man. After reading One Half Of Robertson Davies -- a collection of speeches -- I decided to order his Deptford Trilogy. I have been reading so much non-fiction for the Immanence of Myth, it's time to dig into a good novel. I hope this is one. (Or three.)
so, if I get you right, we live in a society of carefully, preselected myths masquerading as "accepted truths", one of them being "we don't really need to care about our environment", because if "they" are clever enough, they can always manage for themselves and make profit even in times of great sorrow and injustice, because there are still profits to make?
ReplyDelete>if I get you right, we live in a society of carefully, preselected myths masquerading as "accepted truths"
ReplyDeleteYes. Though let's be clear- all cultures exist within the confines of their myths- the myths just differ.
>"we don't really need to care about our environment", because if "they" are clever enough, they can always manage for themselves and make profit even in times of great sorrow and injustice, because there are still profits to make?
Hm, I wouldn't quite put it this way. First off, the very concept of profit is a part of the myth- but the root of it is a valuation about nature, that it is something that must be overcome, and can be restructured and dominated in the name of progress (teleology.) The roots of this of course can be found in the history of western civilization, beginning with zoroastrianism, manicheism, judiasm, etc.
One of the pieces for IoM deals with this...