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What is Social Ecology?

We are clearly beleaguered by an ecological crisis ofmonumental proportions-a crisis that visibly stemsfrom the ruthless exploitation and pollution of theplanet. We rightly attribute the social sources of thiscrisis to a competitive marketplace spirit that reducesthe entire world of life, including humanity, tomerchandisable objects, to mere commodities withprice tags that are to be sold for profit and economicexpansion. The ideology of this spirit is expressedin the notorious marketplace maxim: “Grow ordie!”- a maxim that identifies limitless growth with“progress” and the “mastery of nature” with“civilization.” The results of this tide of exploitationand pollution have been grim enough to yield seriousforecasts of complete planetary breakdown, a degreeof devastation of soil, forests, waterways, andatmosphere that has no precedent in the history ofour species.

In this respect, our market-oriented society isunique in contrast with other societies in that itplaces no limits on growth and egotism. Theantisocial principles that “rugged individualism” isthe primary motive for social improvement andcompetition the engine for social progress stand

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sharply at odds with a11 past eras that valuedselflessness as the authentic trait of human nobilityand cooperation as the authentic evidence of socialvirtue, however much these prized attributes werehonored in the breach. Our marketplace society has,in effect, made the worst features of earlier times intoits more honored values and exhibited a degree ofbrutality in the global wars of this century that makesthe cruelties of history seem mild by comparison,

In our discussions of modern ecological and socialcrises, we tend to ignore a more underlying mentalityof domination that humans have used for centuriesto justify the domination of each other and, byextension, of nature. I refer to an image of the naturalworld that sees nature itself es “blind,” “mute,”“cruel ,” ”competitive,” and “stingy,” a seeminglydemonic “realm of necessity” that opposes “man’s”striving for freedom and self-realization. Here, “man”seems to confront a hostile “ot harness” against whichhe must oppose his own powers of toil and guile.History is thus presented to us as a Promethean dramain which “man” heroically defies and willfullyasserts himself against a brutally hostile andunyielding natural world. Progress is seen as theextrication of humanity from the muck of a mindless,unthinking, and brutish domain or what Jean PaulSartre so contemptuously cullud the “slime ofhistory,” into the presumably clear light of reasonand civilization.

This image of a demonic and hostile nature goesback to the Greek world and oven earlier, to theGilgamesh Epic of Sumerian society. But it reachedits high point during the past two centuries,particularly in the Victorian Age, and persists in our

What Is Sodal Ecology? I 51

thinking today. Ironically, the idea of a “blind,”“mute, ** “cruel,” 6, competitive,” and “stingy” natureforms the basis for the very social sciences andhumanities that profess to provide us with a civilizedalternative to nature’s “brutishness”and “law of clawand fang.” Even as these disciplines stress the“unbridgeable gulf” between nature and society inthe classical tradition of a dualism between thephysical and the mental, economics literally definesitself as the study of “scarce resources” (read: “stingynature”) and “unlimited needs,” essentially rearingitself on the interconnection between nature andhumanity. By the same token, sociology sees itself asthe analysis of “man’s” ascent from “animality.”Psychology, in turn, particularly in its Freudian form,is focused on the control of humanity’s unruly“internal nature” through rationality and theimperatives imposed on it by “civilization’‘-withthe hidden agenda of sublimating human powers inthe project of controlling “external nature.”

Many class theories of social development,particularly Marxian socialism, have been rooted inthe belief that the “domination of man by man”emerges from the need to “dominate nature,”presumably with the result that once nature issubjugated, humanity will be cleansed of the “slimeof history” and enter into a new era of freedom.However warped these self-definitions of our majorsocial and humanistic disciplines may be, they arestill embedded in nature and humanity’srelationships with the natural world, even as theytry to bifurcate the two and impart a unique autonomyto cultural development and social evolution.

Taken as a whole, however, it is difficult to convey

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the enormous amount of mischief this image of naturehas done to our ways of thinking, not to speak of theideological rationale it has provided for humandomination. More so than any single notion in thehistory of religion and philosophy, the image of a“blind,” “mute,” “cruel,” “competitive,” and “stingy”nature has opened a wide, often unbridgeable chasmbetween the social world and the natural world, andin its more exotic ramifications, between mind andbody, subject and object, reason and physicality,technology and “raw materials,” indeed, the wholegamut of dualisms that have fragmented not only theworld of nature and society but the human psycheend its biological matrix.

From Plato’s view of the body as a mere burdenencasing an ethereal soul, to Ron6 Descartes’ harshsplit between the God-given rational and the purelymechanistic physical, we are the heirs of a historicdualism: between, firstly, a misconceived nature asthe opponent of every humon endeavor, whose“domination” must be lifted from the shoulders ofhumanity (even if human beings themselves arereduced to mere instruments of production to beruthlessly exploited with a view toward theireventual liberation), and, secondly, a domineeringhumanity whose goal is to subjugate the naturalworld, including human nature itself. Nature, ineffect, emerges es an affliction that must be removedby the technology and methods of domination thatexcuse human domination in the name of “humanfreedom.”

This all-encompassing image of en intractablenature that must be tamed by a rational humanityhas given us a domineering form of reason, science,

What Is Social Ecology? 1 53

end technology-e fragmentation of humanity intohierarchies, classes, state institutions, gender, andethnic divisions. It has fostered nationalistic hatreds,imperialistic adventures, end a global philosophy ofrule that identifies order with dominance andsubmission. In slowly corroding every familial,economic, aesthetic, ideological, and cultural tie thatprovided a sense of place end meaning for theindividual in a vital human community, thisantinaturalistic mentality has filled the awesomevacuum created by an utterly nihilistic and antisocialdevelopment with massive urban entities that areneither cities nor villages, with ubiquitousbureaucracies that impersonally manipulate the livesof faceless masses of atomized human beings, withgiant corporate enterprises that spill beyond theboundaries of the world’s richest nations toconglomerate on a global scale and determine themateriel life of the most remote hamlets on the planet,end finally, with highly centralized State institutionsand military forces of unbridled power that threatennot only the freedom of the individual but thesurvival of the species.

The split that clerics and philosophers projectedcenturies ego in their visions of a soulless nature anda denatured soul has been realized in the form of adisastrous fragmentation of humanity end nature,indeed, in our time, of the human psyche itself. Adirect line or logic of events flows almostunrelentingly from a warped image of the naturalworld to the warped contours of the social world,threatening to bury society in a “slime of history”that is not of nature’s making but of man’s-specifically, the early hierarchies from which

!. .:’

54 1 THE MODERN CRlSiS

economic classes emerged; the systems ofdomination, initially of woman by man, that haveyielded highly rationalized systems of exploitation;and the vast armies of warriors, priests, monarchs,and bureaucrats who emerged from the simple statusgroups of tribal society to become theinstitutionalized tyrants of a market society.

That this authentic jungle of “claw and fang” wecall the “free market” is an extension of humancompetition into nature-an ideological, self-servingfiction that parades under such labels as socialDarwinism and sociobiology-hardly requiresemphasis any longer. Lions are turned into “Kingsof the Beasts” only by human kings, be they imperialmonarchs or corporate ones; ants belong to the“lowly” in nature only by virtue of ideologiesspawned in temples, palaces, manors, and, in ourown time, by subservient apologists of the powersthat be. The reality, as we shall see, is different, buta nature conceived as “hierarchical,” not to speak ofthe other “brutish” and very bourgeois traits imputedto it, merely reflects a human condition in whichdominance and submission are ends in themselves,which has brought the very existence of our biosphereinto question.

Far from being the mere “object” of culture(technology, science, and reason), nature is alwayswith us: as the parody of our self-image, as thecornerstone of the very disciplines which deny it aplace in our social and self-formation, even in theprotracted infancy of our young which renders themind open to cultural development and creates thoseextended parental and sibling ties from which anorganized society emerged.

What Is So&l Ecology? 1 55

And nature is always with us as the conscience ofthe transgressions we have visited on the planet-and the terrifying revenge that awaits us for ourviolation of the ecological balance.

What distinguishes social ecology is that it negatesthe harsh image we have traditionally created of thenatural world and its evolution. And it does so notby dissolving the social into the natural, likesociobiology, or by imparting mystical properties tonature that place it beyond the reach of humancomprehension and rational insight. Indeed, as weshall see, social ecology places the human mind, likehumanity itself, within anatural context and exploresit in terms of its own natural history, so that the sharpcleavages between thought and nature, subject andobject, mind and body, and the social and naturalare overcome, and the traditional dualisms of westernculture are transcended by an evolutionaryinterpretation of consciousness with its rich wealthof gradations over the course of natural history.

bocial ecology “radicalizes” nature, or moreprecisely, our understanding of natural phenomena,by questioning the prevailing marketplace image ofnature from an ecological standpoint: nature as aconstellation of communities that are neither “blind”nor “mute,” “cruel” nor “competitive,” “stingy” nor“necessitarian” but, freed of all anthropocentricmoral trappings, a participatory realm of interactivelife-forms whose most outstanding attributes arefecundity, creativity, and directiveness, marked bycomplementarity that renders the natural world thegrounding for an ethics of freedom rather thandomination.]


Seen from an ecological standpoint, life-forms arerelated in an ecosystem not by the “rivalries” and“competitive” attributes imputed to them byDarwinian orthodoxy, but by the mutualisticattributes emphasized by a growing number ofcontemporary ecologists- a n image pioneered byPeter Kropotkin. Indeed, social ecology challengesthe very premises of “fitness” that enter into theDarwinian drama of evolutionary development withits fixation on “survival” rather than differentiationand fecundity. As William Trager has emphasized inhis insightful work on symbiosis:

The conflict in nature between different kindsof organisms has been popularly expressedin phmses like the “struggJe for existence”and the “survival of the fittest.” Yet fewpeople realized that mutual cooperationbetween organisms-symbiosis-is just asimportant, and that the ‘fittest” may be theone that helps another to survive.’

It is tempting to go beyond this pithy and highlyilluminating judgement to explore an ecologicalnotion of natural evolution based on the developmentof ecosystems, not merely individual species. Thisis a concept of evolution as the dialecticaldevelopment of evr:r-variegated, complex, andincreasingly fecund contexts of plant-animalcommunities as distinguished from the traditionalnotion of biological evolution based on the atomisticdevelopment of single life-forms, a characteristicallyentrepreneurial concept of the isolated “individual,”be it animal, plant, or bourgeois-a creature which

What Is Sodal Ecology? I 57

fends for itself and either “survives” or “perishes” ina marketplace “jungle.” As ecosystems become morecomplex and open a greater variety of evolutionarypathways, due to their own richness of diversity andincreasingly flexible forms of organic life, it is notonly the environment that “chooses” what “species”are “fit” to survive but species themselves, inmutualisitic complexes as well as singly, thatintroduce a dim element of “choice”-by no means“intersubjective” or “willful” in the human meaningof these terms.

Concomitantly, these ensembles of species alter theenvironment of which they are part and exercise anincreasingly active role in their own evolution. Life,in this ecological conception of evolution, ceases tobe the passive tabula rosa on which eternal forceswhich we loosely call “the environment” inscribethe destiny of “a species,” an atomistic term that ismeaningless outside the context of an ecosystemwithin which a life-form is truly definable withrespect to other species.*

Life is active, intemctive, procreative, relational,and contextual. It is not a passive lump of “stuff,” aform of metabolic “matter” that awaits the action of“forces” external to it and is mechanically “shaped”by them. Ever striving and always producing newlife-forms, there is a sense in which life is self-directive in its own evolutionary development, notpassively reactive to an inorganic or organic worldthat impinges upon it from outside and “determines”-.*The tradltional emphasis on an “active” environment thatdetermines the”survival”of a passive species, altered In a coemlcgame of chance by random mutations, is perhaps another reasonwhy the term “environmentalism,” as distinguished from socialecology, is a very unsatisfactory expression these days.


its destiny in isolation from the ecosystems which itconstitutes and of which it is a part.

And this much is clear in social ecology: ourstudies of “food webs” (a not quite satisfactory termfor describing the interactivity that occurs in anecosystem or, more properly, an ecologicalcommunity) demonstrate that the complexity ofbiotic interrelationships, their diversity andintricacy, is a crucial factor in assessing anecosystem’s stability. In contrast to bioticallycomplex temperate zones, relatively simple desertand arctic ecosystems are very fragile and break downeasily with the loss or numerical decline of only afew species. The thrust of biotic evolution over greateras of organic evolution has been toward theincreasing diversification of species and theirinterlocking into highly complex, basicallymutualistic relationships, without which thewidespread colonization of the planet by life wouldhave been impossible.

Unity in diversity (a concept deeply rooted in thewestern philosophical tradition) is not only thedeterminant of an ecosystem’s stability; it is thesource of an ecosystem’s fecundity, of i t sinnovativeness. of its evolutionary potential to createnewer, still more complex life-forms and bioticinterrelationships, even in the most inhospitableareas of the planet. Ecologists have not sufficientlystressed the fact that a multiplicity of life-forms andorganic interrelationships in a biotic communityopens new evolutionary pathways of development,a greater variety of evolutionary interactions,variations, and degrees of flexibility in the capacity

What Is Social Ecology? I 59

to evolve, and is hence crucial not only in thecommunity’s stability but also in its innovativenessin the natural history of life.

The ecological principle of unity in diversitygrades into a richly mediated social principle, hencemy use of the term social ecology.* Society, in turn,attains its “truth,” its self-actualization, in the formof richly articulated, mutualistic networks of peoplebased on community, roundedness of personality,diversity of stimuli and activities, an increasingwealth of experience, and a variety of tasks. Is thisgrading of ecosystem diversity into social diversity,b a s e d o n humanly scaled, decentralizedcommunities, merely analogic reasoning?

My answer would be that it is not a superficialanalogy but u deep-seated continuity between natureand society that social ecology recovers fromtraditional nature philosophy without its archaicdross of cosmic hierarchies, static absolutes, and

____*My use of the word “social” cannot be emphasized too strongly.Words like"human." “deep.“and “cultural,” while very valuableas general terms. do not explicitly pinpoint the extent to whichour image of nature is formed by the kind of society in whichwe live and by the abiding natural harts of all social life. Theevolution of society out of nature and the ongoing interactionbetween the two tend to be lort in words that do not tell usenough about the vltal association between nature and rocietyand about the importance of defining such disciplines aseconomics, psychology, and sociology in natural as well as socialterms. Recent uses of “social ecology” to advance a rathersuperfidel account of social life in fairly conventional ecologicalterma are particularly deplorable. Boob like Habits of the Heartwhich glibly pick up the term serve to coopt a powerfulexpression for rat her banal ends and tend to compromise effortsto deepen our understanding of nature and society as interactiverather than opposed domains.


cycles. In the case of social ecology, it is not in theparticulars of differentiation that plant-animalcommunities are ecologically united with humancommunities; rather, it is the logic of differentiationthat makes it possible to relate the mediations ofnature and society into a continuum.

What makes unity in diversity in nature more thana suggestive ecological metaphor for unity indiversity in society is the underlying fact ofwholeness. By wholeness I do not mean any finalityof closure in a development, any “totality” that leadsto a terminal “reconciliation” of all “Being” in acomplete identity of subject and object or a realityin which no further development is possible ormeaningful. Rather, I mean varying degrees of theactualization of potentialities, the organic unfoldingof the wealth of particularities that are latent in theas-yet-undeveloped potentiality. This potentialitycan be a newly planted seed, a newly born infant, anewly formed community, a newly emergingsociety-yet, given I heir radically differentspecificity, they are all united by a processual reality,a shared “metabolism” of development, a unifiedcatalysis of growth ;tis distinguished from mere“change” that providt:s US with the most insightfulway of understanding t Ibt,rn we can possibly achieve.Wholeness is literally the unity that finally givesorder to the particularity of each of these phenomena;it is what has emerged from the process, whatintegrates the particularities into a unified form, whatrenders the unity an operable reality and a “being”in the literal sense of the term-an order as the

Whet/s Soda/Ecology? / 61

actualized unity of its diversity from the flowing andajmergent process that yields its self-realization, thefixing of its directiveness into a clearly contouredform. and the creation in a dim sense of a “self” thatis identifiable with respect to the”others” with whichit interacts. Wholeness is the relative completion ofa phenomenon’s potentiality, the fulfillment of latentpossibility as such, all its concrete manifestationsaside, to become more than the realm of merepossibility and attain the “truth” or fulfilled realityof possibility. To think this way-in terms ofpotentiality, process, mediation, and wholeness-isto reach into the most underlying nature of things,just as to know the biography of a human being andthe history of a society is to know them in theiraut hontic reality and depth.

‘The natural world is no less encompassed by thisprocessual dialectic and developmental ecology thanthe social, although in ways that do not involve will,degrees of choice, values, ethical goals, and the like.Life itself, as distinguished from the nonliving,however, emerges from the inorganic latent with allthe potentialities and particularities it hasimmanently produced from the logic of its ownnascent forms of self-organization. Obviously, sodoes society as distinguished from biology, humanityas distinguished from animality, and individualityas distinguished from humanity in the generic senseof the word. But these distinctions are not absolutes.They are the unique and closely interrelated phasesof a shared continuum, of a process that is unitedprecisely by its own differentiations just as the phasesthrough which an embryo develops are both distinct

62 1 THE MODERN CRISIS

from and incorporated into its complete gestationand its organic specificity.

This continuum is not simply a philosophicalconstruct. It is an earthy anthropological fact whichlives with us daily as surely as it explains theemergence of humanity out of mere animality.Individual socialization is the highly nuanced“biography” of that development in everyday life andin everyone as surc!ly as the anthropologicalsocialization of our species is part of its history. 1refer to the biological basis of all human socialization:the protracted infancy of the human child thatrenders its cultural development possible, in contrastto the rapid growth of nonhuman animals, a rate ofgrowth that quickly forecloses their ability to form aculture and develop sibling affinities of a lastingnature; the instinctual maternal drives that extendfeelings of care, sharing. intimate consociation, andfinally love and a sense! of responsibility for one’sown kin into the institutional forms we call “society”;and the sexual division of labor, age-ranking, andkin-relationships which, however culturallyconditioned and even mythic in some cases, formedand still inform so much of social institutionalizationtoday. These formative elements of society rest onbiological facts and, placed in the contextual analysisI have argued for, require ecological analysis.

In emphasizing the nature-society continuum withall its gradations and “mediations,” I do not wish toleave the impression that the known ways and formsin which society emc:rged from nature and stillembodies the natural world in a shared process ofcumulative growth follow a logic that is “inexorable”

Whaf Is Soclal Ecology? I 63

or “preordained” by a telos that mystically guidesthe unfolding by a supranatural and suprasocialprocess. Potentiality is not necessity: the logic of aprocess is not a form of inexorable “law”; the truthof a development Is what is implicit in any unfoldingand defined by the extent to which it achievesstability, variety, fecundity, and enlarges the “realmof freedom,” however dimly freedom is conceived.

No specific “stage” of a process necessarily yieldsa still later one or is “presupposed” by it-but certainobvious conditions, however varied, blurred, or evenidiosyncratic, form the determining ground for stillother conditions that can be expected to emerge.Freedom and, ultimately, a degree of subjectivity thatmake choice and will possible along rational linesmay be desiderata that the natural world renderspossible and in a “self”-directive way plays an activerole in achieving. But in no sense are these desideratapredetermined certainties that must unfold, nor isany such unfolding spared the very real possibilitythat it will become entirely regressive or remainunfulfilled and incomplete. That the potentiality forfreedom and consciousness exists in nature andsociety; that nature and society are not merely“passive” in a development toward freedom andconsciousness, a passivity that would make the verynotion of potentiality mystical just as the notion of“necessity” would make it meaningless by definition;that natural and social history bear existentialwitness to the potentiality and processes that formsubjectivity and bring consciousness more visibly onthe horizon in the very natural history of mind-allconstitute no guarantee that these latent desiderata

64 I THE M OD E R N C R IS I S

are certainties or lend themselves to systematicelucidation and teleological explanations in anytraditional philosophical sense.

Our rurvey of organic and social experience maystir us to interpret a development we know to haveoccurred as reason to presuppose that potentiality,wholeness, and graded evolution are realities afterall, no less real than our own existence and personalhistories, but presuppositions they remain. Indeed,no outlook in philosophy can ever exist that is freeof presuppositions, any more than speculation canexist that is free of some stimulus by the objectiveworld. The only truth about “first philosophy,” fromGreek times onward, is that what is “first” in anyphilosophical outlook are the presuppositions itadopts, the background of unformulated experiencefrom which these presuppositions emerge, and theintuition of a coherence that must be validated byreality as well as speculative reason.

One of the IlIost provocative of the gradedcontinuities between nature and society is thenonhie ra rch ica l rc!lationships that exist in anecosystem, and the extent to which they provide agrounding for a nonhierarchical society.* It is

l Ciaimr of hierarchy as a ubiquitous natural fact cannot beignomd by still further widening the chasm between nature andsociety-or “natural necessity” and “cultural frwdom” as it Ismore elegantly worded. Justifying social hierarchy in terms ofnatural hierarchy is one of the most persistent assaults on anegalitarian eocial future that religion and philosophy have madeover the ages. It has surfaced recently In sociobiology endreinforebd the antinaturallstic rtamx that permeates 80 manylibemtory Ideologies in the modem era. To say that culture isprecisely the “emancipation of man from nature” Is to revert to

What Is Social Ecolcgy? I 65

meaningless to speak of hierarchy in an ecosystemand in the succession of ecosystems which, incontrast to a monadic species-oriented development,form the true story of natural evolution. There is no“king of the beasts” and no “lowly serf”-presumably, the lion and the ant-in ecosystemrelationships. Such terms, including words like“cruel nature,” “fallen nature,” “domineeringnature,” and even “mutualistic nature” (I prefer touse the word “complementary” here) are projectionsof our own social relationships into the natural world.Ants are as important as lions and eagles i necosystems: indeed, their recycling of organicmaterials gives them a considerable “eminence” inthe maintenance of the stability and integrity of anarea.

As to accounts of “dominance-submission”relationships between individuals such as “alpha”and “beta” males, utterly asymmetrical relationshipstend to be grouped under words like “hierarchy” thatare more annlogic. often more metaphoric, than real.It becomes absurd, I think, to say that the“dominance” of a “queen bee,” who in no way knowsthat she is a “queen” and whose sole function in abeehive is reproductive, is in any way equatable withan “alpha” male baboon, whose “status” tends tosuffer grave diminution when the baboon troopmoves from the plains to the forest. By the sametoken, it is absurd to equate “patriarchal harems”among red deer with “matriarchal” elephant herds,

Sertre’s “slime of history” notion of the natural world that notonly separates society from nature but mind from body andsubjectivity from objectivity.

66 1 THE MODERN CRISIS

which simply expel bul Is when they reach pubertyand in no sense “dominate” them. One could gothrough a whole range of ~tsymmetrical relationshipsto show that, even among our closest primaterelrtiver, which include the utterly “pacific”orangntans aa well as the seemingly “aggressive”chimpanzees, words l ike “dominance” and“submission” mean very different relationshipsdepending upon the species one singles out and thecircumstances under which they live.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that hierarchy insociety is an institutional phenomenon, not abiological one. It is a product of organized, carefullycrafted power relationships, not a product of the“morality of the gene,” to use E. 0. Wilson’sparticularly obtuse phrssc! in his Sodobiology. Onlyinrtitutions, formed by long periods of human historyand sustained by well-organized bureaucracies andmilitary forces, could have placed absolute rule inthe hands of mental defects like Nicholas II of Russiaand Louis XVI of France. We can find nothing evenremotely comparable to such institutionalizedsystems of command and obedience in other species,much less in ecosystems. It verges on the absurd todraw fast-and-loose comparisons between the“division of labor” (another anthropocentric phrasewhen placed in an ecological context) in a beehive,whose main function is reproducing bees, not makinghoney for breakfast tables, and human society, withits highly contrived State forms and organizedbureaucracies.

What renders social ecology so important incomparing ecosystems to societies is that it decisivelychallenges the very function of hierarchy as a way

Whet Is Sock/ Ecobgy? I 67

of ordering reality, of dealing with differentiation andvariation-with “otherness” as such. Social ecologyruptures the association of order with hierarchy. Itposes the question of whether we can experience the“other,” not hierarchically on a “rcale of one to ten”with a continual emphasis on “inferior” and“superior,” but ecologically, as variety that enhancesthe unity of phenomena, enriches wholeness, andmore closely resembles a food-web than a pyramid.That hierarchy exists today as an even morefundamental problem than social classes, thatdomination exists today as an even morefundamental problem than economic exploitation,can be attested to by every conscious feminist, whocan justly claim that long before man began to exploitman through the formation of social classes, he beganto dominate woman in patriarchal and hierarchicalrelationships.

We would do well to remember that the abolitionof classes, exploitation, and even the State is noguarantee whatever that people will cease to beranked hierarchically and dominated according toage, gender, race, physical qualities, and often quitefrivolous and irrational categories, unless liberationfocuses as much on hierarchy and domination as itdoes on classes and exploitation. This is the pointwhere socialism, in my view, must extend itself intoa broader libertarian tradition that reaches back intothe tribal or band-type communities ancestral to whatwe so smugly call “civilization,” a tradition, indeedan abiding human impulse, that has surged to thesurface of society in every revolutionary period, onlyto be brutally contained by those purely societalforms called “hierarchies.”

66 / THE MOOERN CRiSls ISocial ecology raises all of these issues in a

fundamentiy new light, and establishes entirelynew way8 d resolving them. I have tried to showthat nature ir always present in the human condition,and in the very ideological constructions that denyits presence in societal relationships. The notion ofdominating nature literally defines all our socialdisciplines, Including socialism and psychoanalysis.It is the apologia par excellence for the dominationof human by human. Until that apologia is removedfrom our senaibilltier in the rearing of the young, theflmt step in oocialization as such, and replaced byan ecological sensibility that sass “otherness” interms of complementarity rather than rivalry, we willnever achieve human emancipation. Nature lives inus ontogenetically as different layers of experiencewhich analytic rationalism often conceals from us:in the sensitivity of our cells, the remarkableautonomy of our organ systems, our so-called layeredbrain which experiences the world in different waysand attests to different worlds, which analytic reason,left to its own imperialistic claims, tends to close tous-indeed, in the natural history of the nervoussystem and mind, which bypasses the chasm betweenmind and body, or subjectivity and objectivity, withan organic continuum in which body grades intomind and objectivity illto subjectivity. Herein liesthe most compelling refutation of the traditionaldualism in religion, philosophy, and sensibility thatgave ideological credence to the myth of a“dominating” nature, borne by the suffering andbrutalization of a dominated humanity.

Moreover, this natural history of the nervoussystem and mind is a cumulative one, not merely a

W h a t I s Soda/ Eco/ogy? I 6 9

successive one-a history whose past lies in oureveryday present. It is not for nothing that one ofAmerica’s greatest physiologists, Walter B. Cannon,titled his great work on homeostasis The Wisdom ofthe Body. Running through our entire experientialapparatus and organizing experience for us are notonly the categories of Kant’s first Critique and Hegel’sLogic, but also the natuml history of sensibility as itexists in us hormonally, from our undifferentiatednerve networks to the hemispheres of our brains. Wemetabolize with nature in production in such a waythat the materials with which we work and the toolswe use to work on them enter reciprocally into thetechnological imagination we form and the socialmatrix in which our technologies exist. Nor can weever permit ourselves to forget, all our overridingideologies of class, economic interest, and the likenotwithstanding, that we socialize with each othernot only as producers and property owners, but alsoas children and parents, young and old, female andmale, with our bodies as well as our minds, andaccording to graded and varied impulses that are asarchaic as they are fairly recent in the naturalevolution of sensibility.

Hence, to become conscious of this vast ensembleof natural history as it enters into our very beings, tosee its place in the graded development of our socialhistory, to recognize that we must develop newsensibilities, technologies, institutions, and forms ofexperiencing that give expression to this wealth ofour inner development and the complexity of ourbiosocial apparatus is to go along with a deeper grainof evolution and dialectic than is afforded to us bythe “epistemological” and “linguistic” turns of recent


philosophy.* On this score, just as I would argue thatllct9nCe is the history of science, not merely its latest‘Wage,” and technology is the history of technology,not merely i,@ latest designs, so reason is the historyof reason, not merely its present analytic andcommunicative dimensions. Social history includesnatural history as a graded dialectic that is unitednot only in a continllllm by a shared logic ofdifferentiation and complementarity; it includesnatural history in the socialization process itself, inthe natural as well as the social history of experience,in the imperatives of a harmonized relationshipbetween humanity and nature that presuppose newecotechnologies and ecocommunities, and in thedesiderata opened by a decentralized society basedon the values of complementarity and community.

The ideer I have advanced so far take their pointof departura from a radically different image of naturethan the prevailing western one, in which

‘Our dlrrrtrourl one-rlded 1111ti rrtlonalked “clvillutlon” barboxed this wealJ of Inner development and complexity awry,nlqatlng it to preindurtrial Iifewayr that be&ally shaped ourl volutIon up to I century or IWO ngo. From a rrnaory vlewpoint,we live atrophied. indeed, starved liver compared to hunter8and food cultlvaton, whose capacity to experience reality, evenIn l largely cultunl Mnse, by far ovenhadom our own. Thetwentieth century alone bears witness to an appalling dulling ofour “rixth wnws” as well as to our folk creattvlty and craftcreativity. We have never experienced so little 80 loudly, SObrrrhly. so trivially. so thinly, so neurotically. For a comparisonof the “world of experience we have lost” (to reword PeterLaslett’r title), read the excellent personal accounts of so-calledBurhmen, or San people, the Ituri Forrnt pygmies, and the workof Paul Shepard on food-gatherers and hunters-not simply asma&s of theit lifeways but of their epirtemologler.

Whrrf Is So&/ Ecdogy? I 7 1

philosophical dualism, economics, sociology,psychology, and even socialism have their roots. Asa social ecologist, I see nature as essentially creative,directive, mutualistic, fecund, and marked bycomplementarity, not “mute,” “blind,” “cruel,”“stingy,” or “necessitarian.” This shift in focus froma marketplace to an ecological image of nature obligesme to challenge the time-honored notion that thedomination of human by human is necessary in orderto “dominate nature.” In emphasizing howmeaningless this rationale for hierarchy anddomination is, I conclude-with considerablehistorical justification, which our own era amplyilluminates with its deployment of technologyprimarily for purposes of social control-that theidea of dominating nature stems from humandomination, initially in hierarchical forms asfeminists so clearly understand, and later in classand statist forms.

Accordingly, my ecological image of nature leadsme to drastically redefine my conception ofeconomics, sociology, psychology, and evensocialism, which, ironically, advance a shareddualistic gospel of a radical separation of society fromnature even as they rest on a militant imperative to“subdue” nature, be it as “scarce resources,*’ therealm of “animality,” “internal nature,” or “externalnature.” Hence, I have tried to re-vision history notonly as an account of power over human beings thatby far outweighs any attempt to gain power overthings, but also as power ramified into centralizedstates and urban environments, a technology,science, and rationality of social control, and a

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c-T., .a;;.r.‘..., . . .


message of “liberation” that conceals the mostawesome features of domination, notably, thetraditional socialist orthodoxies of the last century.

At the juncture where nature is conceived eitheras a ruthless, competitive marketplace or a creative,fecund biotic community, two radically divergentpathways of thought and sensibility emerge,following contrasting directions and conceptions ofthe human future. One ends in a totalitarian andantinaturalletic terminus for society: centralized,statist, technocratic, corporate, and sweepinglyrepressive. The other ends in a libertarian andecological beginning for society: decentralized,stateless, artistic, collective, and sweepinglyemancipatory. These are not tendentious words. It isby no means certain that western humanity, currentlyswept up in a counterrevolution of authoritarianvalues and adaptive impulses, would regard alibertarian vision as less pejorative than a totalitarianone. Whether or not my own words seem tendentious,the full logic of my view should be seen: the viewwe hold of the natural world profoundly shapes theimage we develop of the social worlds, even as weassert the “supremacy” and “autonomy” of cultureover nature.

In what sense does social ecology view nature asa grounding for an ethics of freedom? If the story ofnatural evolution is not understandable in Locke’satomistic account of a particular species’ evolution,if that story is basically an account of ecosystemevolution toward ever more complex and flexibleevolutionary pathways, then natural history itselfcannot be seen simply as “neceasitarian,” “governed”by “inexorable laws” and imperatives. Every

organism is in some sense “willful,” insofar as it seeksto preserve itrelf, to maintain its identity, to resist akind of biological entropy that threatens its integrityand complexity. However dimly, every organismtransforms the essential at tr ibutes of self-maintenance that earn it the status of a distinct formof life into a capacity to choose alternatives that favorits survival and well-being-not merely to react tostimuli as a purely phyeico-chemical ensemble.

This dim, germinal freedom is heightened by thegrowing wealth of ecological complexity thatconfronts evolving life in synchronicity withevolving ecosystems. The elaboration of possibilitiesthat comes with the elaboration of diversity and thegrowing multitude of alternatives confronting speciesdevelopment opens newer and more fecundpathways for organic development. Life is not passivein the face of these possibilities for its evolution. Itdrives toward them actively in a shared process ofmutual stimulation between organisms and theirenvironment (including the living and non-livingenvironment they create) as surely as it also activelycreates and colonizes the niches that cradle a vastdiversity of life-forms in our richly elaboratedbiosphere. This image of active, indeed striving, liferequires no Hegelian “Spirit” or Heraklitean Logosto explain it. Activity and striving are presupposedin our very definition of metabolism. In fact,metabolic activity is coextensive with the notion ofactivity as such and imparts an identity, indeed, arudimentary “self,” to every organism. Diversity andcomplexity, indeed, the notion of evolution as adiversifying history, superadd the dimension ofvariegated alternatives and pathways to the simple


fact of choice-and, with choice, the rudimentaryfact of freedom. For freedom, in its most germinalform, is also a function of diversity and complexity,of a “realm of necessity” that is diminished by agrowing and expanding multitude of alternatives, ofa widening horizon of evolutionary possibilities,which life in its ever-richer forms both creates andin its own way “pursues,” until consciousness, thegift of nature es well as society to humanity, rendersthlr pursuit willful, self-reflexive, and consciouslycrestive.

Here, in this ecological concept of naturalevolution, lim a hidden message of freedom basedon the “inwardness of life,” to use Hans Jonas’sexcellent expression, and the ever greaterdiversification produced by natural evolution.Ecology is united with society in new terms thatreveal moral tension in natural history, just as Marx’ssimplistic image of the “savage” who “wrestles withnature” reveals a moral tension in social history.

We must beware of being prejudiced by our ownfear of prejudice. Organismic philosophies can surelyyield totalitarian, hierarchical, and eco-fascisticresults. We have good reason to be concerned overso-called nature philosophies that give us the notionof Blut und Boden and “dialectical materialism,”which provide the ideological justification for thehorrors of Nazism and Stalinism. We have goodreason to be concerned over a mysticism that yieldssocial quietism at best and the aggressive activism ofreborn Christianity and certain Asian gurus at worst.We have even better reason to be concerned over theeco-fascism of Garrett Hardin’s “lifeboat ethic” with

what Is socki Ecohqy? I 75

its emphasis on scarce resources and the so-calledtragedy of the commons, an ethic which servicesgenocidal theories of imperialism and a globaldisregard for human. misery. So, too, sociobiology,which roots all the savage features of “civilization”in our genetic constitution. Social ecology offers thecoordinates for an entirely different pathway inexploring our relationship to the natural world-onethat accepts neither genetic and scientistic theoriesof “natural necessity” at one extreme, nor a romanticand mystical zealotry that reduces the rich variety ofreality and evolution to a cosmic “oneness” andenergetics at the other extreme. For in both cases, itis not only our vision of the world and the unity ofnature and society that suffers, but the “naturalhistory” of freedom and the basis for an objectiveethics of liberation as well.

We cannot avoid the use of conventionel reason,present-day modes of science, and moderntechnology. They, too, have their place in the futureof humanity and humanity’s metabolism with thenatural world. But we can establish new contexts inwhich these modes of rationality, science, andtechnology have their proper place-an ecologicalcontext that does not deny other, more qualitativemodes of knowing and producing which areparticipatory and emancipatory. We can also fostera new sensibility toward otherness that, in anonhierarchical society, is based oncomplementarity rather than rivalry, and newcommunities that, scaled to human dimensions, aretailored to the ecosystem in which they are locatedand open a new, decentralized, self-managed public

I

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SOCIETYANDECOLOGY

The probkms which many people face today in “defming” thunselves,in knowing “who they are”- probkms that feed a vast psychotherapyindustry - are by no means personal ones. These problems exist notonly for private individuals; they exist for modem society as a whole.Socially, we live in desperate uncertainty about how peopk relate toeach other. We suffer not only as individuals from alienation andconfusion over our identities and goals, our entire society. conceivedas a single entity, seems unclear about its own nature and sense ofdirection. If earlier societies tried to foster a belief in the vhtues ofcooperation and care, thereby giving an ethical meaning to social life,modem society fosters a belief in the virtues of competition andegotism, thereby divesting human association of all meaning -except,perhaps, as an instrument for gain and mindless consumption.

We tend to believe that men and women of earlier times were guidedby firm beliefs and hopes- values that defmcd them as human beingsand gave purpose to theii social lives. We qzak of the Middle Ages asan “Age of Faith” or the Enlightenment as an “Age of Reason.” Eventhe pm--World War II era and the years that followed it seem like analluring time of innocence and hope, despite the Great Depression andthe tcrribk conflicts that stained it. As an elderly character in a recent,

i ’i IIi1

20 I REMAKING SOUETY

mthex sophisticated, espionage movie put it: what be mked rboul hi8younger years during World War II were their “clarity” - a aenae ofpurpose and idealism that guided his bchaviour.

‘Ihat “clarity,” today, Is gone. It has been @teed by ambiguity.Ihe certainty that tcchnobgy and scicncc would Itnprovo the humancondition is mocked by the proliferation of nuckar weapon& by mas-sive hunger in the llkd World, and by poverty in the Foot Wcrki. Thefervent belief that liberty would triumph over tyranny Is beIIed by thegrowing centralization of states everywhere and by the disunpowcr-mcnt of pcopk by bureaucracks, police forces, and aophkdcatcdsurvcillancc tcchniqucs - in our “dcmocracics” no Icsa than in visiblyauthoritarian countries. The hope that we would form “one warfd.” avast community of disparate ethnic groups that would share theirresources to improve life evcrywhcrc. has been &at&red by a risingtide of nationalism, racism, and an unfeeling parochialism that fostersindiffcnnce to the plight of millions.

We believe that our values are worse than tboae held by pcopk ofonly two or tluce generations ago. The prcscnt gcncration aceme moresclf-ccnbcd. privatixcd, and mean-spirited by comparison with carlicrones. It lacks the support systems provided by the oxtendcd family.community, and a commitment to mutual aid. llte cncounkr of theindividual-with society stems to occur through cdd -tic agat-ci

This lack of social identity and meaning is all the more stark in thef c of the mounting ptobkms that confront us. War is a &tonic

:

rather lhan warm, caring people.

nditionofourtimc;cconomkunccrtainty,anall-pcrvasiveprescnce;uman solidarity, a vaporous myth. Not least of tho probkms wocounter arc nightmarcs ofan ecological apocalypse-acatastrophic

kdown of the systems that maintain the stability of the planet WoI& under the constant threat that the world of life will be irrevocablyundcrmincd by a society gone mad in its need to pw -replacing theorganic by the inorganic, roil by concrctc, forest by banwt earth, andthe di+ty of life-forms by simplified ecosystem& In short, a turningback of o evolutionary clock to an earlier, mom inorganic, mincml-

%lizcd worl at was incapable of supporting compkx life-forms of anyt kind, includinb the human specks.

Society and Ecology / 21

Ambiguity about our fate, meaning, and purpose thus mists a ratherstartling question: is sockty itself a curse, a blight on life generally?Are we any better for this new phenomenon calkd “civilization” thataccms to bc on the point of destroying the natural world produced overmillions of years of organic ovolution?

An entire litcmture has emerged which has gained the attention ofmillions of rcadcrs: a literature that fosters a new pessimism towardcivilization as such. This litcmture pits technology against a prcsumab-ly ‘*virginal” organic natun; cities against countryside; countrysideagainst “wildcrncss”; science against a “rcvercncc” for life; reasonagainst the”innoccnce” of intuition; and, indeed, humanity against thecntirc biosphere.

We show signs of losing faith in all our uniquely human abilities -our ability to live in peace with each other. our ability to care for ourfellow beings and other life-forms. This pessimism is fed daily bysociobiologists who locate our failings in our genes, by antihumanistswho deplore our “antinatural” sensibilities, and by “bioccntrists” whodowngrade our mtional qualitics with notions that WC are no diffcrcntin our “intrinsic worth” than ants. In short, we arc witnessing awidcsptcad assault against the ability of reason, science. and tcchnol- Jogy to improve the world for oursclvcs and life gcncrally. I

‘I’M historic thcmt that civilization must inevitably bc pitted againstnature, indeed, that it is corruptive of human nature. has resurfaced inour midst from the days that teach back to R-u - this, preciselyat a time when our need for a truly human and ecological civilizationhas never been greater if we are to rescue our planet and ourselves.Civilization, with its hallmarks of mason and technics, is viewedincreasingly as a new blight. Even more basically, society as aphenomenon in its own tight is being qucstioncd so much so that itsrok as integral to the formation of humanity is Seen as somethingharmfully “unnatural” and inherently destructive.

Humanity, in cffcct. is being dcfamcd by human beings themselves,ironically, as an accursed form of life that all but destroys the world oflife and thrcatcns its integrity. To the confusion that we have about ourown muddled time and our personal identities, WC now have the addedconfusion that the human condition is seen as a form of chaos produced

22 I REMWING SOCIEn

by our proclivity for wanton desuu&m and our ability to exercka thisproclivity all the more effectively because we possess fcasoq aeknm,and technology.

Admittedly, few antihumnists, “biocenuists,” and misanthropar,who theorize about the human condition, are prepatud to folbw theloeicofdreirpnmisestosuchanabsutdpoinLWhrrtisvi~yimportPntabout this medley of moods and unfinished ideas is that the vatiousforms, institutions. and relationships that make up what um should call“rociery”arelrrOelyignorrd.Inaard,~aoweu#vrOuemrdrlilte“humanity” or zoological terms like homo sapiens that amecal vastdifferences, often bitter antagonisms, that exist between privikgedwhites and peopk of colour, men and women, rich and poor, opper#lr

I

and oppresse& so do we, by the same token, uaa vague words like“society” or “civilization” that conceal vast differences between free,nonhierarchical, class, and statekss societies on the one hand, andothers that are. in varying degrees, hkrarchical, class-ridden, statist,and authoritarian. Zoology, in effect, replaces so&By aiented eeol-ogy. Sweeping “natural laws” based on population rwings among

j animals replace conflicting economic and social in&es& amongpeople.

Simply to pit “society” against “nature,” “humanity” against the“biosphere,” and “reason,” “technology,” and “scienec” against lessdeveloped, often primitive forms of human interaction with the natural

rid. prevents us from examining the. highly complexdifferencesandd visions within society so necessary to define our problems and theii

lutions.Ancient Egypt, for example, had a significantly diffant attitude

L

to ard nature than ancient Babylonia. Egypt assumed a tevaentialatt ude toward a host of essentially animistic natum deities, many ofwhi were physically part human and part animal, while Babylonians

a pantheon of very human political deities. But Egypt was noless hi hical than Babylonia in its treatment of peopb and wasequally. not more, oppressive ln its view of human individuality.Ctin h ting peoples may have been as deeuuetive of wildlife,despite the’

%

trong animistk beliefs, as urban culturea which stakedout an ovcr- ing claim to reason. When these many differences aresimply swallowed up together with a vast variety of social forms by a

Sociery und Ecology I23

word called “society,” we do sevw vioknce to thought and evensimple intelligence. Society per se becomes something “unnatural.”“Reason.” “technology,” and “science” become things that are“desbuctive” without any regard to the social factors that conditiontheir use. Human attempts to alter the environment are seen as threats-as though our *‘species” can do little or nothing to improve the planetfor life generally.

Of course, we are not any less animals than other mammals, but weare mote than herds that browse at the African plains. The way in whichwcmmore- namely, the U&r of societies that we form and howwe are divided against each aer into hierarchies and classes -profmdly affects our behaviour and our effects on the natural world.

Finally, by so radically separating humanity and sockty from natureor naYvely reducing them to mere zoological entities, we can no longersee how human nature is &rived from nonhuman natum and social ’evolution from natural evolution. Humanity becomes estranged oralienated not only from itself in our “age of &nation,” but horn thenatural world in which it has always been rooted as a complex andthinking life-form.

Accordingly, we are fed a steady dkt of reproaches by liberal andmisanthropic environmentalists alike about how “we” as a species amnsponsible for the breakdown of the environment. One does not haveto go to enclaves of mystics and gurus in San Francisco to find thisspeeiescentmd, asocial view of ecological problems and their souses.New York City will do just as well. I shall not easily forget an“environmental” presentation staged by the New York Museum ofNatural History in the seven&s in which the public was exposed to along series of exhibits, each depicting examples of pollution andecological disruption. Theexhibit which closed the presentation carrieda startling sign, “The Most Dangerous Animal on Earth,” and it con-sisted simply of a huge mirror which reflected back the human viewerwho stood befort it. I clearly recall a black child standing before theminw while a white school teacher tried to explain the message whichthis armgant exhibit tried to convey. There wecc no exhibits of car-poqte boards or directors planning to deforest a mountainside orgovernment officials acting in collusion with them. The exhibitprimarily conveyed one, basically misanthropic, message: people 45

24 I REWWNG SOCIETY

#CA. no( 8 Rpd0W #Ocicty mb it8 wodlhy bancficir&, m Fcrgar-dhb la ennvlnmmsnrl dldoadttm --poorltobadwfbopmaully~~y.psopkdadatraobssthanprivibg,,drvbhar,[email protected]~nokssthanthoopprarm.Amythical huma %pecies” hrd rapkad classas; individwlr h&raWad hicnrchier; parsonal uucl (many of which m rhrpsa by lEmory me&r) hd nplacad racial nlationships; cpd Uto dirsaEPomFbd who live maagre, isobtad liar had rcih~dd ght corpar-rknr, 8df-8min# bumucmcier, Mb Ute violent pamphmrlir of thestua

THfi REUTJONSHIP OF SOCIETY TO NATURE

Lewing aside 8uch outragamu “envifonmcntai” exhibItion Ibrmimw privikgcd and undcrprivib~ pcoplc in the m Irma, itraans qpropriata II this point to r&a I highly rcicvant naadz tha naadto bring society back into tha acological picture. More than avar, suongcqhasar mucl ba placed on tha fact that naarly ull ccologfcalprobknu

\ (UC sociul problems, na simply a primarily the result of rcligiou~spiritual, a poiitkxl idcologier. ‘Ihrt these idcoiogica mry forter imti-ccologicai outlook in peopb ofrll sbata hardly rcquiru at@&.

ut rather than simply tic idaobgier at thair fncc value, it L CNCMlo ask from whatce thcs8 itbologks develop.

needs may compel pcopb 80 act againststrongly fall natural values. Lumbarja& who

ampbyad to clear-cut a magnif~t forest nonnrlly httw notrad” of traas. They have liula or no choice hut to cut tmu just u

workcn hwa liula or no choke but LO slaugittu tbmauicor occupalion has its fair ohrm of dutruc-

to ba SUIU, including misanthropic an-who would like to )tb humunity cxtamthtatad. BUnqjority of pcopk, this kind of work, including such

s as mining, ut not freely chosen occupatia~. Ihay rtamfinm naad bd, above ail. they ud tha pcoducl of social amngcmUrUover which &dinary pcopk have no control.

To undarstand prasantday probkms - ecological IS wall uoconornic and poiitic8l - wa must axrmina their social c8usa8 8ndramcdy them through social mathods. “Deep.” “spiritual,” anti-

SWly and Eaology I 25

human&, utd mioMlhroplc acobgkr grawly m&bad w whan theymfoctmoWrttan1ionon nocc Ifour obligation is to look at changa8 in 8ocirl ralatlonxhipx in odor tounderrtrnd our most rignifkanl acological changas. these acologkxsteer w8way from 8ociaty to%piritual.““culcral,” or vaguely dafinad“tr@dilional” sourcas. Tha Bible did nol craata Europaan rnti-natwrllm; il sarvad to justify an antinuttmlism that rlraady axistad ontha co&ant from pagan limas, daspita tha animistic tr8Au of pro-Chrixtiut raiigionu Christianity’r antjnat~4Astk influoncs bacamaupacially marked with tha amargance of capitalism. Sociay must notonly ho btought into the ecobgical picture to undurtand why paopktand to choose comp&g #nsibilitba - roma, suxmgly naturalistic;orhcn, rmgly antinatuniistic --but wa mwt p&m mom deeply intosockty itself. WC must search out tha re&adonsMp o/sockry to nwre,the remw why it can da~boy tha natural world, and. ritamativeiy, Ihcraasons why it has and still can en&nce.farrer, and richly conrributelo nalunl evolution.

I

Insofar as WC can spaak of “sockty” in any rbstmct and general

7

rensa - and ICI us ramambar that ovary sockty is highly unique anddiffarcnr from othara in tha long paqactiva of history - WC UC.obligad to axamina what we can bast call l ‘sociaiixation,” not maraly J“so&y.” Socicly is a given rmngmcnl of relationships which WC

oftan take for grantad and view in a vary fixad way. To many paopktoday, it would scam that a markcl sociaty basad on trade and compati-tion has axistad “fonva,” although WC may ba vaguely mindful thatthere ware prc-market sociciics based on gifts and cooperation. JSocirliulion, on the olhcr hand, is a ms&st u individual livingis a process. Historically, the process of socializing people can bavkwcd u a son of social infancy that invoivu a painful rearing of Ihumanity to social maturity.

Whan we begin to considar 8ocialiution from an in-da@ vbw-point, what strikes us is that sockty itsoIl in iu most primal form stunsvary muchporn nature. &ay soci~voiution. in fact. is virtwllyaxtansion of cm. Ax thaRoman omtor and philosophy, Cicaro. dachued some two thousandyean ago: ”. ..by tha usa of our hands, WC bring into being within tharaaim of Nature. a second nature for oursalves.” Cicero’s observation,

26 I REMAKING SOCIEn

to be sure, is very incompktez the primeval, presumably untonched“realm of Nature” or “fust nature,” as it has been called, is rewo&edinwhok~partinto”secondnrrture”nolonlybyIhe”ueeolouhsndr”Thought, language, and compkx, very important biologlatl changesatso play a crucial and, at times, a decisive role in developing a “secondnature” within “first nature.”

I use the term “reworking” advisedly to focus on the bet that“second nature” ir na simply a phenomenon that develops outside of“first nature” - hence the special value that should be attached toCicero’s use of the expression “within the realm of Natura..” Toemphasize that "second nature” or, mom precisely, society (to use thisword in its broadest possible sense) emerges from wirhir, primeval “firrrt

I

nature” is to reestablish the fact that social life always has a naturalisticdimension, however much society is pitted against naturn in our think-ing.Sociofecologyckarlyex~thefact thatsocietyisnotrsuddat%ruption” in the world. Social life does not necessarily face nattw asa combatant in an unmlendng war. The emergence of society b a__

1 &w ‘, nufurd fat t that has its origins in the biology of human ~ialixation.Ihe human socialization process from which society emerges -be

it in the form of families, bands, tribes, or more complex trpco of humanintercourse - has its source in parental relationship particularlymother and chiki bonding. ‘Ibo biological mother, to ba rum, can bereplaced in this pmcess by many surrogates, including fathers, reh-t&s, or, for that matter, all members of a community. It L whcnmddparents and social siblings - that is, the human community thatsurrounds the young - begin to piutkipate in a system of care, that isordinarily undertaken by biological parents, that society begins to trulycome into its own.

Society thereupon advances beyond a mere rqroductive grouptoward institutionalixed human relationships, and from I relativelyformless animal community into a clearly structured social or&r. Butat the very inception of society, it seems more than likely that human

[beings were socialized into “second nature” by means of deeply in-grained blood ties, specifically maternal ties. We shall see that in timethe structures or institutions that mark the advance of humanity f&m amere animal community into an authentic society began to undergofar-reaching changes and these changes become issues of paramount

Socicr>, and Ecology I27

impoftanu in social ecology. For better or wor3t, societies developaround status groups, hierarchies, classes. and state formations. Butreproduction and family csm remain the abiding biological bases for -every form of social life as well as the originating factor in thekocialixation of the young and the formation of a society. As RobertBriffault observed in the early half of this century, the “one knownfactor which establishes a profound distinction between the constitu-tion of the most rudimentary human group and all other animal groups[is the] association of mothers and offspring which is the sole form oftrue social solidarity among animals. Throughout the class of mam-mals, there is a continuous increase in the duration of that association,which is the consequence of the prolongation of the period of infantiledependence.“4 a prolongation which Briffault correlates with increasesin the period of fetal gestation and advances in intelligence.

The biological dimension that Briffault adds to what we call societyand socialization cannot be stressed too strongly. It is a decisivepresence, not only in the origins of society over ages of animal evolu-tion, but in the daily recreation of society in our everyday lives. Theappeamnce of a newly born infant and the highly extended care itreceives for many yesrs reminds us that it is not only a human beingthat is being repmduced, but society itself. By comparison with theyoung of other species, children develop slowly and over a long periodof time. Living in close association with parents, siblings, kin groups,and an ever-widening community of people, they retain a plasticity ofmind that makes for creative individuals and ova-formative socialgroups. Although nonhuman animals may approximate human formsof association in many ways, they do not create a “second natum” that ’embodies a cultural tradition, nor do they possess a complex language,Wl.elaborate conceptual powers, or an impressivo capacity to restructure 1their environment purposefully according to their own needs.

A chimpanzee, for example. remains an infant for only three yearsand a juvenile for seven. By the age of ten, it is a full-grown adult.Children, by contrast, are regarded as infants for approximately sixyears and juveniles for fourteen. A chimpanzee, in short, grows men-tally and physically in about half the time required by a human being,and its capacity to learn or, at least to think, is already tixed bycomparison with a human being, whose mental abilities may expand

jI 28 I REMKING SOCIETYiI for dccub. By the same token, chimpanzee urocktiona mw ofbn

idiosyncratk md fairly limited. Human associdoru,at tbe~tund,arc basically st8bk, highly institudonalizcd. and they arc mplrad by adcgtee of solidarity, indeed, by (I dcgrce of creativity, that hrr 1~) apalin nonhuman specks a~ far u wo know.

This polnngcd degree of human mcnA plasticity, dqncbncy, 8ndsocial creativity yields tworcsultsthat arc of dccisivoimporturcs Fiearly human association must have fostcrcd a strong prcdispaitiat fa

/ interdependence among members of a group - not the %rggcd in-dividualism”m~ils6wi~independcncc.Theovawhelmingmou

‘F’I

of Mthropobgicrl evidaxa suggests that particip&n, mutual rid,solidarity, utd empathy were the social virtues early hwnut groupsunphasiredwilhincheircommunities.Thcidcsrhrlpboplouadcpcnd-cnt uponcachcachothcrforthegoodlifc.indecd.forsurvival,foIfowedfrom the prolonged dcpcndcnco of the young upm dultr. Indo-pendcnce. not to mcntian competition, would have accmcd utterlyalien. if not bizarre. to a creature rcamd over marty ywrc in I largelydependent condition. Care for others would have been r#n u theperfectly natunl outcorno of a highly occultuntcd being that was, inturn, clearly in need of extended cart. Our modern version of in-dividualism, more precisely, of egotism, would lava cut across thegrain of early solidarity and mutual aid - traita, I may add, withoutwhich such a physically fragileanimal like a humM being could hardlyhave survived 8s M adult, much kss as a child.

Second, human intcrdepcndence must have assumed a highly stntc-turcd form. There is no evidence that human being normally nlate toeach other through the fairly loose systems of bonding we find 8mmgour closet primate cousins. ‘lltat human social bondscan be dissolvedor dcinstitutiotu&cd in periods of radical chrngo tx cuhuml break-down is too obvious to argue here. But during mlativsly at&k condi-tions, human aocitty was nuvw the “horde” that anthropobgkta of rhalast century prcsupposcd as a basis for rudimentary 804 lib. On theconuary.~evidencewthrverthandpoinuLochafrct~rllhumw,perhaps oval our distant hominid ancestors, lived in aorne kind ofaructurcd family groups, and, later, in bun&, tribes. villages, 8nd other

So&y and Ecology I 29

form. In short, they bonded togother (as they rtill do), not onlyernotlonally and morally, but rlao ~ructtually in contrived, clearlydcfinabk, and fairly permanent institutions.

Nonhuman animal8 may form looso communities and even takecolkctIvc protcctfvo postures to defend tholr young fmm pr&tora. Butsuch communidcs can hardly bo calkd atructurcd, except in a broad,often ephemeral. sense. Humans, by mvw. create highly formalcommunities that tend to become increasingly structured over thecourse of time. In effect, they form not only communitks, but a newphatomcnon called sockries.

If wo fail to distinguish animal communities from human societies,we risk the danger of Ignoring the unipuo fcaturcs that distinguishhuman social life from animal communities - notably, the ability ofrock~tochangeforbclcuorwoncurdIhcfacton~tpoductLhcseChmgCS. By reducing 8 Wmpkx So&y to 8 met’0 community, we CMcully ignore how mcktks differed from each other over tho course ofhisuxy. We can also fail o un&aMd how they elaborated simpledifferences in status into firmly established hiuarchks, or hicrarchksinto economic classes. Indeed, wo risk the possibility of totallymisunderstanding the very merning of terms Iiko”hkrsrchy” as highlyorganized systems of command Md obcdicnco - thcac, as distin-gulshcd from personal, individual, and often short-lived dif@nccs instatus that may, in 811 too many c8scs, involve no acts of compulsion.Wo tend, in effect, to confuse tho strictly institutional creations ofhuman will, purpose, conflicting interests, 8nd traditions, with com-munity life in its most fixed forms, as though we wen dealing withinhcmnt, seemingly unaltcnbk, features of society rather than fabri-cated structures that can bo modified, improved, worsened -or simplyabaudoned. The trick of every ruling elite from the beginnings ofhistory to modern times has been to identify its own socially createdhierarchical systems of dominatim with community lifo OS such. withthe result being that human-made institutions acquire divine or biologi-cal sanction.

A given society and its institutions thus tend to become reified intopermanent and unchangcablo cntidca that acquire a mywious life oftheir own apart fmm nature - namely, the pmducts of a seeminglyfured “human natum” that is the result of gcnctic programming at tk

30 I REMAKING SOCIETY

very inception of social life. Alternatively, a given sockty 8nd it8MUions m8y be dissolved into nature as merely 8noths fism ofanimal community with its”alpha males,” “guardii,““l~” and“horde”-like forms of existence. When annoying issuea like MT andsocial conflict are raised, they are ascribed to the activity of”genes”that presumably give rise to war and even “greed.”

in either case, be it the notion of an abstract society that exists apartfrom nature or an equally abstract natural community UuU ia it&tin-guishabk from nature, a dualism appears that sharply separates societyfrom nature. or a crude reductionism appears that dissolvu so&y MOnature. These apparently contrasting, but closely nbted,notioru amallthe more seductive because they are so simplistic. Although they amoften presented by their mom sophisticated suppatem in a fairlynuanced form, such notions are easily reduced to bumper-atick~slogans that are frozen into hard, popular dogmas.

SOCIAL ECOLOGY

The approach to society and nature advanced by social ecology mayseem more intellectually demanding, but it avoids the simplicities ofdualism and thecrudities of reductionism. Social ecology hiea to show

I how nature slowlypharcs into society without ignoring the differencesbetween society and nature on the one hand, as well as the extent towhich they merge with each other on the other. Theevuyday socialixa-tion of the young by the family is no less rooted in biology than theeveryday care of the old by the medical establishment is rooted in thehard factsof society. By tbesametoken, weneverceasetobemammalawho still have primal natural urges, but we institutional& tbeae urgeaand their satisfaction in a wide variety of social forms. Hence, the socialand the natural continually permeate each other in the most ordinaryactivities of daily life without losing their identity in a shared prcmxssof interaction, indeed, of interactivity.

Obvious as this may seem at first in such day-today problems ascaretaking, social ecology raises questions that have far-reacbiig im-portance for the different ways society and nature have interacted ovutime and the problems these interactions have produced. How did adivisive, indeed, seemingly combative, rclationshipbetween humanityand nature emerge? What were the institutional forms and ideologies

So&y atrd Ecology / 31

that rcndeed this conflict possibk? Given the growth of human needsand technology, was such a conflict nslly unavoidabk? And can it be0vQcomc in a future, ecologically oriented society?

Howdoesarational,ecologicallyoriented society fitintotheproces-8es of natural evolution? Even mom broadly, is there any reason tobelieve that the human mind-itself a product of natural evolution aswell as culture - represents a decisive highpoint in natural develop-ment, notably, in the long development of subjectivity from the sen-sitivity and self-maintenance of the simplest life-forms to theremarkable intellectuality and self-consciousnessof the most complex?

In asking these highly provocative questions, I am not trying tojustify a strutting arrogance toward nonhuman lifa-forms. Clearly, wemustbring humanity’suniquenessasaspecies,marked byrichconcep-tual, social, imaginative, and constructive attributes, into synchronicitywith nature’s fecundity, diversity, and creativity. I have argued that this\synchronicity will not be achieved by opposing nature to society.\nonhuman to human lifeforms, natural fecundity to technology, or 8 ’natural subjectivity to tbe human mind. Indeed, an important result thatemerges from a discussion of the interrelationship of nature to societyis the fact that human intelkctuality, although distinct, also has afar-reaching natural basis. Our brains and nervous systems did notsuddenly spring into existence without a long antecedent natural his-tory. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity - ourextraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels -can betraced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, thegangliaof a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, andthe cerebral cortex of a primate.

Hem, too, in the most intimate of our human atuibutes, we are noless products of natural evolution than we am of social evolution. Ashuman beings we incorporate within ourselves aeons of organic dif-ferentiation and elaboration. Like all complex life-forms, we are notonly part of natural evolution; we are also its heirs and the products ofnatural fecundity.

In trying to show how society slowly grows out of nature, however,social ecology is also obliged to show how society, too, undergoesdifferentiation and elaboration. In doing so, social ecology must ex-amine those junctures in social evolution where splits occurred which

.____-- -___. ,- __

32 1 REMAKING SOUm

warid. ntbsr than dmplyloolhef&astbuitaonrtrowulddl&

ThisautAaivkwcutsrrouthegr8inofncariyallaurc4uooubgi-ai thinking nd oven rociai theorizing. One of the most fixal mtiua8thst present-dry wiogicrl thinking shnms with libet&& Mux&m,urd consevrslrm ir the hircatc bolkf that the “dominrd<m d MQ&requires the do&&n of human by human. Thii is most obvkms bsocial theory. Nearly ail of our contemporary socki w iumpbced Ihc notion of human domination at the ccntreof their Iho&ing.Iirwnainsonoof themost widoiy acccted no~ions,framci8ssi&dmesto OKI present, that human fieedam fawn ihc “domi~dor~ of man bynrtun”tnlaiis~dominrclarofhwrMby humanuthoauiicstmouuof production urd the uso of human baings as instrumaats far hmms-ingIhenawnlmnid.Henca,inordct(oharncsrLh6nrtunl~h

1hrcbdenywdforager.ittnaarrurytoh;unsrrhumurbdnOIuwell. in the form of sisvu, rarlr, Md workers.

‘Ihrr this instrumenti nutbn pervades the idsolgy d nwrly alINlingeliles~huprovidedbolhilbasaland cOrwMLIv8~with a justifialioo for their rcoammodsdon to the st8tus quo, IcquiiWiiule,ifany.ok~tion.n#mythda”sLingy”~truJ~~bearused to justify the “stingincu” of exploiters in that bush bpyRlclu dthe cxdoilcd - and it has urovidcd Ihc c~cuso for the poiitkai

opportuniaoflibari.uw0iiu awuorvrttvo.causea.To“wu&withinltW system” has always impiiod WI WcCpUn@ of domination as 8 wayOf 3qpnizing” 80cW lifo and, in the best of cues. I way of freeingbw from their prarumed domination by nature.

-IYe much that now pus08 for urtihumanlstk, mystlcai ocoi-OgY hWOh%# Cxacliy rho ssmo kind of thinidng - but in an invenadfm. Like their instrumurtai opponcntr, these ecologists, too, assume&at humanity is dominrrtcd by nature, be it in the form O~%~IMI IPW”or an inclirbk “‘earth wisdom” that must guide human bchaviour. Butwhiio their instrumentsi oppmnu argue the need to achieve natun’~“sufrcndcr” IO a “conquering” a&o-aggressive humsnity, mti-humanist and mystical ecologists rrguo tho case for rchiovinghumanity’s wsivc-rcccptivo *uurwrdu” to sn “sii-c4mquuing” na-turo, Howover much the two viows may differ in tholr varbkgo andpkliar, ~uN&I&~ remains #KI underiying notion of both: I ~tundworldconceivtd~lurtrskmrstcr--eithutabeconlroikdorobcyad.

I

Social ecology springs this trap dmmatkaliy by re-oxamining theentim concept of domination, be it in nature snd sockty oc in tbo formof “natural law” and %ciai iaw.” What we normally call dominationin nature is a human projection of hlghiy organ&cd systems of pocbfcommud and obcdicnce onto highly idiosyncmtic, individual, andasymmolrkai forms of ofton miidiy caerclvo bcJ~iour in snimsicommunities. Put simply, rnimsis do not”dominate” each other in thesame way that a human elite dominstcs. snd often exploits, an op-pressed so&i group. Nor do they ‘tub” through institutions1 forms ofsystemuk violence ss social oiites do. Among spes, for cxampk, thenIS littio cx no co&on, but only err& fonnr of dominant behrviour.Gibbons and orangutans src not&b for d&r pcaceabio bchaviotutoward members of their own kind. Gorillas M often equally pdfic,although one cnn single out “high status,” mature, and physically mgmabs among “lower 8~8,’ younger snd physically weaker ones. The

m


“alphrmrles”cekbnledamongchimpanzeesdonot~~varyfued“stat& positions within what are fairly fluid groups. Any “status” thatthey do achieve may be due to very diverse causes.

One can merrily skip fran one animal species to another, to be sure,falling back on very different, asymmetrical RJISUU for searching out“high” versus “low status” individuals. The procedure becomes ratharsilly, however, when words like “status” are used ao fletibly that they

Iare allowed to include mere differcnccs in group behaviour and func-tions, rather than coercive actions.

The same is true for the word “hierarchy.” BotJt in ita origins and itastrict maming, this term is highly social, not xook@caL A Or& tam,initially used to denote different levels of deities and, lata, of clergy(characteristically, Hierapolis was an ancient Pbrygian city in AsiaMinor that was a centre for mother goddess worship), the word hasbeenmindlessly expanded to encompass everything from beehivo t&ticnt-ships to the erosivo offtcts of running watcz in which a stream is seento wear down and “dominate” its bedrock. Caring female elephants arecalkd”matriarchs” and attentive male apes who exhibit a great deal ofcourage in defense of Lheir community, whik acquiring very fow“privileges,” arc often designated as “patriarchs.” The absence of an

I

organized system of rule - so common in hierarchical human can-munities and subject to radical institutional changes, including popularrevolutions - is largely ignored.

Again, the different functions that the presu&d animal hierarchiiare said to puform, that is, the asymmetrical causes that place oneindividual in an “alpha status” and others in a lessc~ one, is undersrntcdwhen it is noted at all. One might, with much the samo aplomb, placeall tall sequoias in a *‘superior” status 0vcI smaller ones, or, momannoyingly, regard them as an”elite” in a mixod forcst”hicrarchy”ovcr“submissive” oaks, which, to complicate mattaa, am mare advancedon the evolutionary scak. Tho tendency to mechanically pro& socialcategories onto the natural world is as pnposcaws asanruempttoproject biological concepts onto geology. Mine&s do not “reproduce”the way life-forms do. Stalagmiles and stalactitea in cavea certainly doincrease in size over time. But in no sense do they grow in a mannerthat even remotely corresponds to growth in living beings. To take

Society d Ecology I35

superficial resemblances, often achieved in alien ways. and group themIntoshared identities, is like speaking of the”metabolism” of rocks andthe “morality” of genes.

This raises the issue of repeated attempts to read ethical, as well associal, traits into a natural world that is only poreniialfy ethical insofaras it forms a basis for an objective social ethics. Yes, coercion doesexist in nature; so does pain and suffering. Howevu. cruelty does not.Animal intention and will are too limited to produce an ethics of goodand ovil or kindness and cruelty. Evidence of inferential and conceptualthought is very limited among animals, except for primates, cetaceans,elephants, and possibly a few othu mammals. Even among the mostintelligent animals, the limits to thought are immense in comparisonwith tho extraordinary capacities of socialized human beings. Admit-tedly, we are substantially less than human today in view of our stillunknown potential to be creative, caring, and rational. Our prevailingsociety serves to inhibit, rather than realize. our human potential. 1

JWe

still lack the imagination to ktiow how much our finest human traitscould expand with an ethical, ecological, and rational dispensation ofhuman affairs.

By contrast, the known nonhuman world sezms to have reachedvisibly fixed limits in its capacity to survive environmental changes. Ifmere odaprtrrion to environmental changes is seen as the criterion forevolutionary success (as many biologists believe), then insects wouldbavo to be placed on a higha plane of development than any mam-malian life-form. Howova, they would be no more capable of makingso lofty an intellectual evaluation of themselves than a “queen bee”would be oven remotely aware of her “nzgal” status - a status, I mayadd, that only humans (who have suffered the social domination ofstupid. inept, and cruel kings and queens) would be able to impute to alargely mindless insect.

None of these remarks are meant to metaphysically oppose natureto society or society to nature. On the contrary, they are meant to arguethat what unites society with nature in a graded evolutionary continuumis the remarkable extent to which human beings, living in a rational,ecologically oriented society, could embody the creurivity of nature -this, as distinguished from a purely udaprive criterion of evolutionarysuccess. The gteat achiovoments of human thought, art, science, and

i


technology serve not only to monumentalix8 cult- lkym &u comonumenralitr nalural rwiulion itself. They povidc hcroIc cvI&nccthat tbc human species is a watm-blooded, excitingly versatile. andkeenly intelligent life-form - not a cold-blooded, gcnedcallyprogrammed, and mindkss insect - that expresses MILVC’S gmatestpowers of creativity.

Life-forms that create and consciously alter their cnvitunment,hopefully in ways that make it more rational nd ceologieaI, rcpmscnt

-+a vast and indefinite extension of nature into asemaung, perhapsunbounded, lines of evolution which no branch of insects could ever

J achieve -notably, thccvolutionof a fully sccf-consc&u.rnaturc. If thisbc humanism - motu prcciscly, ecological humanism - the cumntcrop of anlihumanists and misanthropes are wclcomc to make the mostof it.

Nature, in turn, is not a scenic view we rdmhc through a picturewindow -a view thal is frozen into a landseapc or a static panorama.Such’Yandseapc” imagcsofnaturcmaybe spltitually ckvatIng buttheyare ecologically deceptive. Fixed in time and plaec, this imagery makesil easy for us lo forget that nature is not a static vision of the natural

1 world but the long, indeed cumulative, history of natural development.This history involves the evolution of the inorganic, as well as theorganic, realms of phenomena. Whercvcr we stand in an open licld,foresl, or on a mountain top, our feel rest on ages of development, bethey geological strata, fossils of long-cxtincl lifcfoims, the decayingremains of the newly dead, or the quiet stirring of newly emerging life.Nature is not a”person,” a”earing Mother,” or, in thccrudcmaterialistlanguage of the last century, “matter and motion.” Nor is it a mclrc“process” that involves rcpctitivc cycles like seasonal changes and thebuilding-up and brcakingdown process of metabolic activity-some

I

“process philosophies” to the contrary notwithstanding. Rather, naturalhistory is a curnulqbeu&&~ loward ever mom varied. diffcrcn-tiated. and complex forms and relationships.

This evolutionary development of increasingly varicgatcd entities,most notably, of life-forms, is also an evolutionary development whichcontains exciting, latent possibilities. With variety, diffcrcntiation, andcomplexity. nature, in the course of its own unfolding, opens newdirections for still further dcvclopmenl along altunativolincsof natural

Society and Ecology / 37

avoludon. To the degree that anlmalr becomecomplex, calf-aware, andIncreasingly intelligent, they begin to make those clctncntaty choicesthat influence their own evolution. They arc less and less tbc passiveobjects of "natural selection” and mote and more the active subjects oftheir own development.

A brown hart that mutates intoa whitconc and sees a snow- coveredterrain in which to camouflage itself is acting on behalf of its ownsurvival, not simply “adapting” in order to survive. It is not merelybeing “scleclcd” by its environment; it is selecting its own cnvironmcntand making a choice that cxprcsscs a small measure of subjectivity andjudgcmcnt.

‘Ihc greater the variety of habitats that emerge in the evolutionaryprocess, the more a given life-form, particularly a neurologically com-plex one, is likely to play an active and judgemental role in preservingitsclf.Tothecxtcnl thatnaturalcvolutionfollowsthispathofncurologi-cal development, it gives rise to life-forms that excrcisc an ever-widerlatitude of choke and a nascent form of freedom in developing them-selves.

Given this conception of nature as the cumulative history of moredifferentiated levels of material organization (especially of life-forms)and of increasing subjectivity, social ecology establishes a basis for ameaningful understanding of humanity and society’s place in naturalevolution. Natural history is not a “catch-as-catch-can” phenomenon.It is markul by tendency, by direction, and, ns far as human beings arcconcerned. by conscious purpose. Human beings and the social worldsthey create can open a rcmarkabl y expansive horixon for developmentof the natural world -a horizon marked by consciousness, reflection,

I/

and an unprecedented freedom of choice and capacity for consciouscreativity. The factors that reduce many life-forms to largely adaptiveroles in changing environments am nplaced by a capacity for con-sciously adapting environments to existing and new life-forms.

Adaptation, in effect. increasingly gives way to creativily and theseemingly Nthbs action of “nalural law” lo greater freedom. Whatearlier generations called “blind nature** IO dcnoic nature’s lack of anymoral direclion, turns into “free nature,” a nature t&Awl@& av&e and the means to relicvc the needless tribulations of life for allspecies in a highly conscious humanity and M ecological society. The

38 /REMAKING SOCWlY

“Noah Principle” of psuving every existing life-form simply fa itsownssk~-a~iplcadnnccdbyIhcantihuman~IkvidEhrarfeld- has little meaning without tbc presupposition, at the vay Icrst, ofthe existence of a “Noah” - that is, a conscious life-form called

Ihumanity that mighl well rescue life- forms that natutu itself wouldextinguish in ice ages, land desiccation, or cosmic coWons with

’ asteroids.’ Oriuly bears, wdvcs, pumas, and tho like, am not dafrom extinction bcuurse they are exclusively in the %uing” hands ofa putative “Mother Nature.” If there is any truth to the theory that thegreat Mesozoic reptiles were extinguished by climatic changes thatpresumably followed the collision of an asteroid with the earth, thesurvival of existing mammals might well be just as w in ~IKIface of an qually meaningless natural catastrophe unkss them is a

(Iamcious. ecologically oriented life-form that has tha technobgical

’ mutnstorcscucthun.The issue, then, is not whethcz social evolution stands oppod to

natural evolution. The issue is how social evolution c8n be situated in/I

natural evolution and why it has been thrown - needlessly, as I willargue - against natural evolution to the detriment of life as a whole.The capacity to be rational and free does not assum us that this capacitywill be rcalixed. If social evolution is seen as tJt0 potentiality forexpanding the horizon of natural evolution along unpfece&ntcd coca-tivc lines, and human beings arc seen as the potentiality for nature tobccorne se+lf-conscious and fmc, the issue we face is wliy tbese potcn-tialidcs have betn warped and how they can be realized.

It is part of social ecology’s commitment to natural avolution thatthese potentialities arc indeed real and that they can be fulfilled. Thiscommiuncnt stands flatly at odds with a “scenic” image of nature as 8static view to awe mountain men or a romantic v&w for conjuring upmystical images of a pcrsonificd deity that is so much in vogue Cody.Ihe splits betwocn natutal and social evolution, nonhuman and bumanlife, an intractaMc%tingy” nature and a grasping. dcvottting humanity,have all been specious and misleading when they M socn M in-&abilities. No kss specious and misleading have been reductionistattempts to absorb social into natural evolution, to collapse culture into

Society and Ecology I39

nature in an orgy of inationalism, theism, and mysticism. to quatc thehuman with mere animality, or to impose a contrived “natural law” onan obedient human society.

Whatever has turned human beings into “aliens” in nature arc socialchanges that have made many human bcings”alitns” in their own socialworld: the domination of the young by the old, of women by men, and Iof men by men. Today, as for many centuries in the past, there arc stillopmvo human beings who literally own society and others who arcowned by it. Until society can be reclaimed by an undivided humanitythat will use its collective wisdom, cultural achievements, tcchnologi-cal innovations, scientific knowledge, and innate creativity for its ownbenefit and for that of the natural world, all ecological problems willhave their roots in social problems.

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