Social Ecology

I'm repeating Collectivist's earlier post on social ecology, a field which I believe to be critical if we are to survive the 21st century, as a stand-alone article. Preceding it is a link to The Institute for Social Ecology

O.k. Let's start with this excerpt:

What Is Social Ecology? Murray Bookchin

". . . believes that no truly 'green' entrepreneur could survive because ecologically sound practices would place them at fatal disadvantage compared with rivals who can produce at lower costs. (See Social Ecology Critique)

Bookchin is well known for his dismissal of Deep Ecology as mystical 'eco-la-la', and it's easy to assume social ecology is suspicious of spirituality. But social ecology was "among the earliest of contemporary ecologies to call for a sweeping change in existing spiritual values." (Bookin. Ibid.)

Social ecology aims to replace our mentality of domination with an ethics of complementarity. Such an ethics reflects our true role which is to create a fuller, richer world for all beings.

This ethics of complementarity has a spiritual dimension that is sometimes described by social ecologists as the "respiritization of the natural world" but is clearly not a call for a deistic theology.

"The spirituality advanced by social ecology is definitively naturalistic rather than supernaturalistic or pantheistic."
What Is Social Ecology? Bookchin
Humans and Nature and Society

Bookchin emphasizes that human beings are basically just highly intelligent primates. We ! are a par t of nature and suggestions that we are a 'special case' are superficial and potentially misanthropic.

In a comment aimed at some deep ecologists, Bookchin says that to depict human beings "as 'aliens' that have no place or pedigree in natural evolution, or to see them essentially as an infestation that parasitizes a highly anthropomorphic version of the planet (Gaia) the way fleas parasitize dogs and cats, is bad thinking, not only bad ecology." (Bookin. Ibid.)

Far from being unnatural, humans are an expression of a deep natural process. Bookchin believ! es that h uman consciousness is a result of nature striving for increasing complexity and awareness. Humans are nature that has become self-aware. We are part of biological evolution, which Bookchin calls 'first Nature', but also have a unique social awareness which he calls 'second nature'.

Our second nature, the development of technology, science, social institutions, towns and cities, all depended on human abilities that evolved from first nature.

But although humans are part of the evolutionary process, that does not mean we can ignore humanity's unique place ! by puttin g the 'intrinsic worth' human beings on equal terms with every other species.

Bookchin rejects the 'either/or' thinking behind the commonly held opposites anthropocentricity and biocentricity. Anthropocentrism places humans at the top of a species hierarchy with the premise that the world was made for us. The opposing principle, biocentricity, claims that all beings have equal intrinsic value and is bound up with the notion of a 'biocentric democracy' which Bookchin describes as "almost meaningless". See the Deep Ecology Critique section on biocentric equality

So cial ecology integrates first (biotic nature) with second (human nature). Human society and non-human nature are connected in one evolutionary flow.

Humans building cities and towns to create a comfortable place to live, just like any other species. The problem is that the environmental changes we produce are far greater that those of other species. Our 'second nature' has become a problem for ourselves and non-human life. How and why this happens is the key to solving our ecological crisis.

The Origins of Social Domination
Social domination origina! ted with human males dominating females. The infirmities of age, increasing population, natural disasters, technological changes, the growth of civil society, and the spread of warfare were contributory factors.

Bookchin claims that the notion of a natural world separate from human culture appeared with the rise of hierarchy:

"the idea of dominating nature has its primary source in the domination of human by human and the structuring of the natural world into a hierarchical Chain of Being"
'What Is Social Ecology?'. Murray Bookchin
We can only overcome ! the ideol ogy of dominating nature by creating of a society without hierarchical structures or economic classes.

Bookchin claims that industrial growth isn't the result of a change in a cultural outlook alone, nor is it due to the impact of scientific rationality. Rather it stems from the principle of the market itself, the demand to grow or die.

The Ecological Society

In place of the existing hierarchical and class system social ecology proposes an egalitarian society based on mutual aid, caring and communitarian values. People in this new society would appreciate that the interests of the collective are inseparable from those of each individual.

Property would be shared and, ideally, belong to the community as a whole. In this "commune of communes" property would not belong to private producers or to a nation-state. . ."

https://www.thegreenfuse.or...