Against Transhumanism: the Delusion of Technological Transcendence

Fabulous interview here with physicist Richard Jones via Synthetic Zero and Singularity 1on1:

Source: Against Transhumanism: the Delusion of Technological Transcendence

Road Trip: Accelerating to Alzheimer’s

by Jeff Tangel

 

My son Jack is a nice young man. I haven’t been nice since I was a young man. Hopefully he’ll have more stamina. Isn’t that the kind of thing we wish for our children? Or ought to anyway.

 

Last weekend we drove downstate, to Farmington—a place just like it sounds—to see his grandmother who, after many years of sharing her talents with the people thereabouts, now lives in what we Americans call a “nursing home”. She taught 5^th Grade for 31 years and raised six children. Now she has Alzheimer’s and can’t take care of herself, her memory a flickering flame.

 

On the way down Jack and I talked. He said that he had been thinking about the number of ways he could be contacted, nowadays, with all the technology. He counted out for me about fifteen: Facebook post and message, Facetime, cell phone call, cell phone text, email (2 accounts), g-chat, Skype, i-message . . . well, that’s ten, the others I’m forgetting right now. Maybe I’ll remember later.

 

Though I had some idea about this, hearing the list was eye opening. In my class I require students to watch the The Matrix—the well known, 1999, action packed allegory of our modern lives by Chicago’s Wachowski brothers, who, it must be said, are fans of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulations.[i] Me too. I won’t recount the whole idea here, but the upshot of the film is that human beings have become the power source for the ruling AI machines. That is, super-intelligent machines now raise humans in test tube cells, farm-like, to capture the energy that we naturally produce. Every-body is connected by a multitude of wires and tubes—like a terminally ill hospital patient with great insurance—monitoring functions, making corrections and delivering nutrients all to collect the product of the cell, energy, which is food for the machines. We humans, in our tubes, see and experience everything as simulacra—so real-like we can taste it, and so we are placated and unaware, while the AI machines are able to harvest that energy to continue both their own, and our simulacrum existence. Think of it as a form of levitated permaculture.

 

When Jack started describing all of the ways that he could be contacted, I thought of the movie. Isn’t each of these new technologies that “connect” us like tubes and wires running into our bodies? Sure they connect us horizontally. Humans in the movie have all sorts of intercourse. But aren’t we all connected to central servers? And it’s unclear to me who is being served even as technology seems to be satisfying our needs.

 

The heroes of The Matrix, and specifically the reluctant Neo, aim at setting humans free from the chains of their manufactured existence—from manufactured illusion and slavery—to exit the cave and reclaim our humanity.

 

Steven Shaviro explains “accelerationism” as, “the idea that the only way out is the way through.” In a recent online interview he characterized the controversial hypothesis just so: “If we want to get beyond the current social and economic order and reach a post-capitalist future, then we need to push through all the messy complications of capitalism, rather than revert to something supposedly older and purer.” [ii]

 

This seems a pragmatic and sage response to intractable socio-economic forces. But I’m not convinced.

“Accelarationism” may be a new and catchy name for a not terribly new idea. “Back” in 2008, UC Berkeley sociologist Peter Evans published an insightful essay along these lines titled, “Is an Alternative Globalization Possible?” [iii] in which he argues well for employing the tools of capitalist globalization to render the world more hospitable for humans. This means, more than anything, recovering the power of technology and repurposing it towards better than profitable ends. As Shaviro says, “If computational technologies are eliminating millions of jobs, then the best response is not to demand the jobs back, but to spread the wealth—to give back what the 1 Percent has stolen from everybody else—so that people can afford to lead comfortable lives without always worrying about the cost of housing or the size of their credit card bills.” [iv] So we can live contentedly, the fruit of our technology.

And yet I can’t recall ever being so tired as I am now. Maybe I just can’t keep up. So Godspeed to that century-long promise of progress. Or has it been longer?

 

For me, the most interesting thing about capitalism is its creation of a capital as a concept with ontological status. This fictional disembodied spirit now roams the world without restraint and wherever it goes it recreates the world in its own image. What is that? Well, in a phrase: reproductive efficiency. That’s what capital does. Messy is bad, so it finds the most efficient path for its reproduction. And to do this it has to simplify the world into neat productive interconnected silos. That’s what globalization is.

 

Interestingly, that’s also what technology does. Long ago we dropped the “ought,” question. “Ought we aim at doing this or that?” Instead, we just do. Why? Because “we” are not the deciders anymore. Nearly all technology now serves its makers, not its users, and its makers serve capital. In fact technology creates its users as University of Pennsylvania Professor Joseph Turow explains in his insightful book, The Daily You[v] as if we were cultured in a lab. All that data collection is not to provide better stuff to human beings, for which they may or may not clamor. Instead it’s a means of creating a clamor. It’s about creating better, more efficient consumers of technology so that capital can continue to reproduce itself in the most efficient manner possible.

 

Production is the master. Consumption the servant.

 

Aren’t nearly all the solutions offered by technology aimed at solving problems created by it-self—created by capitalism? I call this the economics, and metaphysics, of duct tape and bailing wire. Sure some amazing things can be done with those rudimentary tools (think ones and zeroes), but it can’t, and never will be able to offer an “ought” idea.

 

Embracing technology as a means of breaking through to the other side is like someone who’s had too much Guinness trying to sober up with a shot of Jameson. Neat.

 

Steven Fraser tells us in his book, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power, that the reason we’ve had so much trouble battling back, or reforming capitalism is because we have forgotten a time when it didn’t make all our decisions. [vi] We can’t collectively recall our past. And lacking recall, we can’t imagine another way to live. We’re stuck.

 

What use is the past to capital? What use is the past to technology? Doesn’t technology now mean obliterate the past? Back in the 1940’s Schumpeter called it “creative destruction”.   Today Silicon Valley calls it “disruption”. Whatever. New duct tape. We’ve naturalized Alzheimer’s because it’s good for business. That’s all the “ought” we have.

 

I haven’t yet remembered those other five ways my son can be contacted.

 

But I do remember many years ago my elderly neighbor saying, “If you find yourself in a hole, first thing to do is to stop digging.”

 

***

 

Image Credit: ” A Gene for Forgetting” <http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-gene-for-forgetting&gt;

[i] Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations (P. Foss, P. Patton, & P. Beitchman, Trans.). New York: Semiotext (e).

 

[ii]“What is Accelerationism?” <https://environmentalcritique.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/what-is-accelerationism/> partial repost from: http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/is-consuming-like-crazy-the-best-way-to-end-capitalism-050

 

[iii] “Is an Alternative Globalization Possible?” <http://www.learningace.com/doc/57794/dfa1e8c1c7a26773e2bdd42973d1935c/evans-alter-globalization-pol-soc-v36n2-june08>

Peter Evans: <http://sociology.berkeley.edu/professor-emeritus/peter-evans>

 

[iv]“What is Accelerationism?” <https://environmentalcritique.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/what-is-accelerationism/> partial repost from: <http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/is-consuming-like-crazy-the-best-way-to-end-capitalism-050>

 

[v].Turow, J. (2012). The daily you: How the new advertising industry is defining your identity and your worth. Yale University Press.

<https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Daily_You.html?id=rK7JSFudXA8C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false> Book TV Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2KwcsMbks> (8:27)

[vi] Fraser, S. (2011). The Age of Acquiescence. Little Brown.

 

Buen Vivir, Degrowth and Ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to ble development and the Green Economy

by Ashish Kothari, Federico Demaria and Alberto Acosta

Introduction

Concern over the ecological unsustainability of human presence on Earth, and the growing inequality coupled with continuing deprivation of a huge part of humanity, has grown rapidly in the last couple of decades (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Piketty, 2014; Steffen et al., 2015). Inequality, injustice and unsustainability, already part of many state-dominated systems, have clearly been worsened by the recent phase of capitalism’s accelerated expansion (Harvey, 2014).

Along with this, however, the global exploration of pathways towards sustainability, equity and justice has also grown. These are of two broad kinds. First, and currently on the ascendance, are ‘Green Economy’ (GE) and ‘sustainable development’ (SD) approaches. These entail a series of technological, managerial, and behavioural changes, in particular to build in principles and parameters of sustainability and inclusion into production, consumption and trade while maintaining high rates of economic growth as the key driver of development. These attempts have failed (and we argue, will continue to fail) to deliver what they promised: halt the worsening of the planetary health, eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. Somewhat on the fringes, as the second broad trend, are paradigms that call for more fundamental changes, challenging the predominance of growth-oriented development and of the neo-liberal economy and related forms of ‘representative democracy’. This essay attempts to provide a critique of the ‘Green Economy’ model, and describe the alternative notions or worldviews of well-being emerging (or re-emerging) in various regions. By comparing the two, it suggests how the latter can contribute to re-politicize the public debate by identifying and naming different socio-environmental futures: Buen Vivir, Ecological Swaraj or Radical Ecological Democracy (RED), and Degrowth. Finally, it discusses the risk of mainstream co-option of radical alternatives, and concludes on the need to strive for genuine political and socio-ecological transformation.

Continue Reading here.

Published in Development (2014) 57(3–4), 362–375. doi:10.1057/dev.2015.24

 

The Sustainability Delusion?

 

Here is the position “paper” I delivered earlier this month at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) conference, After Biopolitics.  The paper tile is “Vegans Mock Humans Who Don’t Eat Gods.” Thank you so much to Tim Morton, Randy Honold, all the organizers, and all the participants for a great conference.  (See below the call for next year).

The human species is a set that defines itself through multiple and diverse acts of self-reflection. Among these acts is regarding ourselves in other species, though we also see through, or don’t see through, our misconceptions of ourselves and others. One technology we tend to elide, of late, is the comparison of humans and gods. We’re embarrassed by the association. If self-definition is multiple and diverse, however, why would we dismiss a category of non-human beings by which many human beings define themselves?

And maybe we protest too much. I wonder if we don’t secretly carry a torch for gods. Whether or not humans are particularly creative or destructive, many of us still feel inspired, at times, and at other times, possessed. Gods, archetypes, ghosts, emotions, and unconscious drives—I don’t meant to collapse these species into one another, but I do see common threads—alien invasion, alien intimacy, alien birth. (Thank you Dirk Felleman at synthetic zero for suggesting gods as emotions.) Few of us would deny that we have unconscious drives, but if so, then, could it be that we are still attached to gods?

Is belief in the reversibility of global warming and an infinitely sustainable society like belief in a coherent god? (This is Stoekl in Pettman’s Human Error). I think it is. Some of us are credulous in this sense. But sustainability, like balance, need not be universal. We don’t have to be Modern, monotheistic, or dogmatic in our attachments. Self-defining “right action,” including cultivating good habits and “gracious relationships” (thank you Bill Jordan at Environmental Prospect), may have some intrinsic value and broader influence.

CS

P.S. I really like the trope of gods as tools or machines. I find it genuinely persuasive and productive. Gods, demi-gods, and idols are surely products of metallurgy and alchemy.  I do believe we fashion gods. But this doesn’t preclude the possibility that we are tool-making tools, also fashioned, by industrious monkey gods (for example).

Call for Papers: Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.  Atalanta, November 3 – 6, 2016.  Creativity.

 

 

Exploring the Nature of Diversity in Chicago

by Eoin O’Neill

Author details: Dr. Eoin O’Neill is a tenured Lecturer in Environmental Policy at University College Dublin and is visiting at DePaul University for the Autumn Quarter, hosted by the Department of Environmental Science and Studies.

Whilst visiting at DePaul and as an urban dweller in Chicago, I’m somewhat unusual; I don’t have a car and can be seen with my wife walking the streets at all hours pushing a large red buggy, which we have been told is a rather ‘awesome stroller’ and ‘like a red Cadillac’. While it takes us longer to get everywhere, walking allows for an intimate acquaintance with hidden nooks of Chicago that I may otherwise never have seen. It also allows for time to reflect and appreciate the diversity to be found within and between its neighbourhoods.

As I walk (or sometimes travel elevated on the ‘L’), I often wonder whether the difference in the types of ‘nature’, crudely assessed in terms of observable trees/vegetation, experienced by people in various neighbourhoods is in anyway attributable to some form of interplay between environment and cultural factors. On one of our walks, for example, one moves across an invisible boundary and the intensely green and manicured grass verges, the street trees, shrubs and flowers in a highly maintained urban setting give way to a relatively un-manicured urban environment, and a different cultural influence clearly apparent along the streetscape.  Whilst the type of ‘nature’ on the street is visibly different, seemingly limited to occasional window boxes and less well maintained street planting (with different biodiversity potential), I wonder whether the influence of culture is a significant factor influencing how communities express environmental preferences or appreciate nature; or whether the manner in which nature is revealed locally is predominantly resource driven? Or maybe they are inextricably linked with both having an influence in combination.

To my untrained eye, culture does not seem to be a hugely significant factor; however, the impact of the distribution of financial resources is visibly a significant influencing factor on the type of nature evident in parts of Chicago.  Some neighbourhoods look like they are entering into a period of significant transition (or transformation).  Extreme examples include extensive areas of abandoned or derelict homes and lots etc. with a less structured nature re-emerging apparent in some neighborhoods (see http://57thandnormal.com/ – although this is a drastic case).  I imagine that neighhorhoods losing their sense of urbanity might generate negative feelings and a sense of uncertainty for residents in an otherwise regulated urban setting.  Such feelings may come from recollections of experiences attached to the place as it was; and perhaps from efforts to exclude, and avoid, risky aspects of ‘authentic’ nature from the regulated environment.  Moreover, the emergence of multi-generations of urban dwellers (a global phenomenon) has probably increased the level of disconnect between people and nature.

These ‘abandoned’ parts of the Chicago urban landscapes (see also, for example, http://abandonedchicago.tumblr.com/) are in a state of flux – sufficiently managed to avoid emergence of much of a sense of wilderness; but at the opposite end of a spectrum that might be signified by Grove at al. ‘ecology of prestige’.  However, it seems that some new ideas are emerging within the policy community about using this change to bring about prospects for a more purposeful yet beneficial experience of such nature for affected residents.  Whilst thinking about Green Infrastructure solutions (such as rain gardens, urban agriculture, parks etc.) is not unusual, with some examples apparent as I walk around, perhaps the systemic thinking being applied by participants in the Calumet Stormwater Collaborative, to (amongst other efforts) strategically coordinate repurposing of parcels of vacant land to better manage stormwater is innovative.  (I recently attended a meeting of this group, in an observer capacity.  The collaborative model in this case comprising c. 30 stakeholder agencies and non-profits looks like it may be worthy of replication beyond Chicago.)

 

An improved ‘vacant’ lot in Pilsen generating ecosystem services.

From a policy perspective such circumstances present opportunities for such innovations; however, the period during which an individual’s neighborhood becomes re-defined is at least socially disruptive and a ‘messy’ experience for residents who have to live through the transition.  But perhaps other places can learn from these experiences.

Sticking to the water-related theme, the newly developed (and developing) riverside walk along the Chicago River provides a pleasant break from the immediate hazard walking alongside city traffic and the stop-start of pedestrian crossings, generating feelings of relaxation as noise levels are abated at the lower level of the water.  Similarly the walk alongside the lakeshore gives an even greater access to an unbroken, authentic, and sometimes wild vista.  Alternatively, the recently opened Bloomingdale Trail, developed on a former rail line, provides an enjoyable elevated perspective within the urban environment.  However its appearance differs from my expectations with the trail being a concrete pavement rather than a beaten path.

A section of the Bloomingdale Trail passing Bucktown

More generally, and apparent to me no matter where I walk, is the extensive amount of street-trees, bringing with them various environmental benefits in addition to well-established wellbeing and stress-reduction benefits, which must surely be welcomed by most city residents.  On the other hand, and as a consequence, the lack of any green planting on most back-alleys and laneways off main streets provides a harsh setting, especially against the backdrop of tall buildings with limited direct sunlight.

I must admit that my reflections are influenced by my background, where there is a much more homogenous society (predominantly white and of Irish and European origin), and limited evidence of any significant contemporary non-European cultural influences imprinting itself on the Irish landscape so far, of which I am aware.  The pie chart below portrays the ethnic or cultural background of all people (Irish and non-Irish) resident in Ireland at the time of the most recent census (2011).

Source: Central Statistics Office 2011. Available from www.cso.ie  Accessed 10/29/2015.

Maybe the scale of the City of Chicago, being just under three times larger (by population) than Dublin, and with a far more extensive and vastly more culturally diverse and populous metropolitan region, means the landscape in all its guises is reflective of the environmental preferences of its various constituent communities.  Somewhat contrary to my elementary musings here, some recent findings from New York (Grove et al. 2014), suggest that socio-economic factors alone are not sufficient to explain which neighborhoods have the most exposure to nature (assessed by vegetative cover measured by tree canopy and lawns).  Perhaps this type of analysis may be an important consideration when advocating for green infrastructure and ecological restoration initiatives more widely across Chicago in the future.  Indeed the Great Rivers Chicago initiative (GreatRiversChicago.com) seems to be a good example of engaging with communities to establish their preferences for a better relationship with, and improved access to, an aspect of nature.

Attendees and facilitators at the Great Rivers Chicago public open-house meeting at the Ping Tom Memorial Park Fieldhouse in Chinatown (10/28/2015).

 

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to enjoy my walks around the city and its neighborhoods.

After Biopolitics: Society for Literature Science and the Arts, Houston 2015

November 12-15, 2015

Paper/Panel Proposal Due Date: extended to April 15, 2015

Please see below conference description and call for papers.  This is a very intelligent, thought-provoking, and congenial event frequented by friends of INC and EC.

(SLSA is particularly interested in recruiting more scientists, artists, and philosophers at this time.  However, contributions from all disciplines are welcome.)

AFTER BIOPOLITICS
“Over the past thirty years, no paradigm has become more central to understanding our own moment than the paradigm of biopolitics—a fact that has left hardly any discipline untouched, resulting in new formations such as bioart, bioethics, biotechnology, biomedia, biocapital, bioinformatics, biovalue, and biocomputing, among many others. The reasons for this are not far to seek: the engineering, canalization, domestication, and commodification of “life” in the era of “synthetic biology,” at a level scarcely thinkable fifty years ago; rapid depletion of the earth’s resources in the context of global warming in what used to be called the “first world”; seemingly endless debates over the political and economic complexities of healthcare, social security, lengthening retirement ages and dwindling personal savings rates in the developed West; confrontations over abortion and immigration in the United States, in which the concepts of “life” and “race” are never far from view; the unequal global distribution of access to medical care and medical technologies at the very moment when pharmaceutical industries have never been more deeply woven into daily life in the developed West (or more profitable); and the post-9/11 context of the “war on terror” and ongoing anxieties about security and borders resulting in the normalization of spaces and practices of juridical “exception” such as Guantanamo Bay, drone warfare, and electronic surveillance at a level heretofore unknown, all revolving around a logic whose biological underpinnings reach back to the very origins of the biopolitical in the concept of the “body politic.” Add to these an increasing awareness (in no small part under the pressure of global warming and the emergent paradigm of the “Anthropocene”) of the plight of non-human life (whether in discussions of animal rights, factory farming, and the bioengineering of non-human creatures, or in the increasingly undeniable fact of the sixth major extinction event in the history of the planet) and how deeply imbricated t is with the plight of the human and its technology, and you have ample grounds to understand why “life” (in the broadest sense) has become the central object of politics over the past few decades.

In the face of such developments, the conference theme, “After Biopolitics,” seeks to reexamine the theoretical, cultural, social, and political underpinnings of the biopolitical paradigm, and to explore conceptual resources (both within and outside of the biopolitical paradigm) for the possibility of thinking what has been called an “affirmative” biopolitics that views the intersection of “Life” and the political as a potential space of affinity, community, and creativity, rather than the “thanatopolitics” that has dominated the biopolitical paradigm thus far.”

CALL FOR PAPERS
POTENTIAL TOPICS

• The concept of “Life”
• Immunitary and autoimmunitary paradigms of biopolitics
• Race, species, and biopolitics
• States of exception: theoretical and historical dimensions
• Bioengineering life
• Biomedia and bioart
• Biopolitics and the Anthropocene
• The politics of medicalization and the Medical Humanities
• The biopolitics of foodways
• “Letting die”: the biopolitics of extinction
• Biopolitics and the ecological paradigm
• Biopolitics and genocide
• “Making live”: biopolitics, health, and hygiene
• Neoliberalism and biopolitics
• The concept of sovereignty in biopolitical thought
• Biopolitical histories of race, gender, and sexuality
• Genetics, epigenetics, and biopolitics
• “Flesh”: concepts of the body and embodiment in biopoltics
• Imagining affirmative biopolitical futures
• These and other topics related to the theme will be welcome. As always, the conference of the Society for Literature, Society, and the Arts is open to wide range of related topics drawn from a broad array of scholarly and creative disciplines and practices that are relevant to the mission of the organization.

SUBMISSIONS

For individual paper contributions, submit a 250-word abstract with title. Pre-organized panel submissions, which might include three or four papers per panel, should include an additional paragraph describing the rubric and proposed title of the panel. Roundtables, alternative format panels, and the like are encouraged.

Submit all proposals to http://litsciarts.org/slsa15/slsaproposal.php

Paper/Panel Proposal Due Date: extended to April 15, 2015

Notification of Acceptance: June 1, 2015

Click here to download the full CFP

http://litsciarts.org/slsa15/call-for-papers/

Ethics, Aesthetics, Ecologies: Part I

In November of last year the DePaul Department of Philosophy Department hosted Ted Toadvine, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, who spoke about the politics of biodiversity (“Biodiversity and the Diacritics of Life”). Toadvine argued that the concept of biodiversity is poorly understood by experts as well as the general public; nevertheless, it is consistently wielded as an argument against commercial development, for example. Some of us in the audience were wary of the neoliberal implications of this argument. If biodiversity, like climate change, is considered a hard concept to grasp, does this give the public license to ignore the environmental impacts of unbridled development?

I was personally more interested in Toadvine’s argument that maximum biodiversity is neither ecological desirable or aesthetically pleasing. Invasive species for example contribute to diversity, but are not ecologically desirable. Aesthetically we appreciate diversity, but in a context of harmony and balance. Toadvine offered a clever and memorable example of a table setting; we wouldn’t want every single piece of china and silverware to be different. He also pointed out that biodiversity is linked to our concepts of “nature,” and often stands in for a vague idea of an aesthetically pleasing landscape.

Toadvine also discussed biodiversity in relationship to identity politics. He reminded us that the concept of biodiversity arose with a focus on diversity in socio-cultural contexts, and argued that the value of social diversity undergirds arguments for biodiversity. While I agree that “diversity” as a social concept is doing rhetorical work in this context, I’m more interested in the broader genealogy of diversity as a value. Toadvine mentioned Darwin, for example, but I’m also reminded of Linnaeus and Enlightenment fascination with biological variation.

Toward the end of the talk, Toadvine adopted a sublime mode, making references to the relationship of human beings to much larger scale phenomena, up to and including the cosmos. I noted, then, that I was emotionally swept along, and subsequently reflected on the relationship between affect and aesthetics in this context. In the Q & A, I commented that the aesthetic may warrant greater attention, in environmental philosophy, because of its relationship to affect, and the arguments from neuroscience that affect underlies judgment. In other words, if our ethical decisions are influenced by our (emotional) attitudes, and our emotions are closely tied to our aesthetic responses, then ethics and aesthetics may be lost cousins—contiguous rather than opposing concepts. I assume that they are opposing concepts in some quarters for two reasons: the tendency in our culture to oppose surface qualities (the aesthetic) to deep truths (ethical), and the academy’s devotion to ethics at the seeming expense of aesthetics.

In the mid eighteenth century Edmund Burke articulated a popular set of assumptions that connected aesthetic response with feeling. The sublime was connected with pain, and the beautiful with pleasure. Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful built on the psychological theories of his time and particularly the association theories of John Locke. Burke’s work reminds us that aesthetics has occupied philosophers for millennia, and his major arguments “consummate” the relationship between psychology and aesthetics. Though Burke’s argument was not overtly ethical, his interlocutor, Mary Wollstonecraft made the connection between ethics and aesthetics clear. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, for example, Wollstonecraft performatively modulated the masculine sublime to her own feminine rights discourse. In the same work Wollstonecraft denounced superficial, feminine beauty and championed intellectual beauty in women. Indeed she redefined beauty in this context.[1]

Circling back to the idea of biodiversity as a proxy for picturesque landscapes, I wonder about the nature of our attachment to the picturesque in nature? Does love follow beauty, or does a judgment of beauty follow attachment to place? Can radically inclusive, neighborly love makes us see landscapes differently and appreciate biodiversity beyond our current, iterated aesthetic conventions? And if our experience of love/beauty became radically inclusive, how would this modulate given aesthetic principles? More in the next installment.

Image Sources:

MarineBio http://marinebio.org/oceans/conservation/biodiversity/

BBC Radio 4 In Our Time

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pg5dr

[1] Skolnik, Christine M. “Wollstonecraft’s Dislocation of the Masculine Sublime: A Vindication.” Rhetorica 21.4 (2003): 205-223. Print.

Forum on Ethics & Nature: A Cascade of Loss, An Ethics of Recovery

 

DePaul Professor Liam Heneghan will be a featured speaker.

The following text is quoted directly from the Center for Human and Nature Website:

REGISTER now for the upcoming Forum on Ethics and Nature on Friday, May 2, 2014, a symposium co-hosted by the Center for Humans and Nature and the Chicago Botanic Garden.

The year 2014 is the centennial anniversary of the death of “Martha,” the last passenger pigeon. The 2014 Forum on Ethics and Nature will mark this occasion by exploring the topic of extinction in non-obvious ways, balancing information and personal stories with ethical reflection about the possibilities of social and ecological recovery.

What are the new ecological realities in front of us and how do we respond to them with care? Topics include

◦                needed ethical deliberation about recovering species through various means (e.g., the current de-extinction “debate”),

◦                the relationship between species extinction and the destabilization and loss of culture, and

◦                establishing new relationships in order to work toward the recovery of cultural and biological diversity.

Click here to be taken to the registration page.  

Friday, May 2, 2014
9am-4:15pm
Chicago Botanic Garden
Regenstein Center, Alsdorf Auditorium

Rhetoric and Magic in the Anthropocene: A Variation

Below is a comment on Tim Morton’s Realist Magic available on Open Humanities Press, and recently published in paperback.  For a review see a previous Environmental Critique post by Rick Elmore, “Adventures in Realist Magic” (6.20.13).  (WordPress link functions not cooperating in this endeavor.)  I highly recommend the paperback to scholars who want to grasp the material more firmly and really work with it.

*

Timothy Morton’s critique of modern causality in Realist Magic is in some sense a fulfillment of an unspoken promise in the earlier works.  It reveals the fragile “man” behind the curtain of  the normal science that underwrites consumer capitalism, and it synthesizes Morton’s aesthetic and ecological investments in a manner that avid readers will find particularly satisfying.  While it is commonplace to critique the scientific establishment in the name of ecology, much current criticism fails to grasp the elusiveness of the empirical method as a hyperobject that confounds conventional analyses.  Morton’s thesis that causality is aesthetic braves the complexities.  It also comes to the rescue of sleeping Beauty and the dwarfed Humanities (to confound and confuse narratives even further).

In this comment I focus on Morton’s stunningly simple inversion of the rhetorical canons.  The five canons, often used to describe the writing process, are invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.  In Realist Magic Morton privileges delivery, arguing that the other canons, as aesthetic moments, follow (in reverse order) from delivery.  Indeed, the work performs this thesis, beginning with the opening of Realist Magic and Morton’s sound track of PM Dawn’s Set Adrift on Memory Bliss.  The melancholy 90’s mix sets the tone for the work at hand, attunes us to Morton’s melancholy, and foregrounds relationships between affect and cognition within the context of causality.

Linking the rhetorical canons and causality is not so radical given the dominance of the canons as tools of thought in the pre-modern era, and the likelihood that the empirical method was derived from these rhetorical habits.  However the reversal of order and focus on delivery, as opposed to invention, are very—Morton.  As I suggest above, the inversion also dovetails with affect theory, if delivery follows sense of audience and sense of audience follows affect (attachment), as outlined, for example, in Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself.  I particularly appreciate Morton’s references to sound throughout the text.  Sound is an important element of rhetoric (which I think is categorically affective), not only because tone is always constructive of meaning, self, and relationships, but because internalized qualities of rhythm and harmony pervade all rhetorical performances including Morton’s text.  This emphasis on sound is performed by the cadences of Morton’s well-known authorial voices, articulated through his prose, and in the echoes of his public and new-media selves.  Morton’s recursive style is also punctuated by sharp images, including (my favorite) clown faces crowding the picture frame.

Circling inelegantly back to rhetoric, aesthetic and affective qualities of causality are evident not only in the rhetorical canons, but also in the Classical Stases, which are the stages of an argument or deliberation.  The conventional order (stages) of Stases arguments (“stasis” is the singular) are fact, definition, cause and effect, evaluation, and policy/procedure, or what I might here modulate into “practice.”  (This is one of many versions of the Stases, btw.)  Arguments about causality are crucial to conventional processes of deliberation because they are the presumed basis of value judgments and practical procedures, but they are relevant to the discussion at hand because, as arguments, they have an affective quality.  A good deal of contemporary critical and rhetorical theory  (not to mention neuroscience) has proposed that cause and effect follow value judgments, which follow practice as habit.  To the extent that all of these arguments are aesthetic/affective, not only sound and sight, but various other senses (external and internalized), determine our perceptions of causality.  Following Morton, rhetoricians might further explore an inversion of the Stases.  We might ask what aesthetically and affectively warrants practice and work back through value, cause and effect (or effect and cause), and definition, to fact. 

Such a reverse practice, a rhetrico-hermeneutic moonwalk if you will, could be applied to virtually any socio-cultural situation or text.  Ecological restoration, for example, a major concern of the Institute for Nature & Culture which sponsors Environmental Critique, could be encountered as an aesthetic problem, which derives its ethical means and meanings from beauty, writ large.

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On the simplest level Realist Magic reminds us that causes are infinitely complex and our instrumental understanding of them is always an interpretation.  The book is full of rhetorical magic performed, as Morton advises, right before our eyes.  While the old alchemists strived to turn dross into gold, Morton merely vanishes matter, and thus the usual “substance” of both capital and science.  He does not dissolve the real into the ideal however.  Rather he separates the real from the material, redirecting our attention to affect, the limitations that science places on our affective experience, and the capacity of art to reveal and realign our priorities.

Image titles, artists, and sources in the order they appear:

Installation 1 by Gregory Euclide:

http://gregoryeuclide.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Installation1.jpg

http://gregoryeuclide.com/gallery/

Field of Flowers by David Friedman:

http://www.kosmic-kabbalah.com/field-flowers

Self-portrait with Masks by James Ensor:

http://echostains.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/happy-birthday-james-ensor/

The Big Bang by David Friedman:

http://www.kosmic-kabbalah.com/big-bang

Working Notes: Neuroplasticity, “Human Nature,” and the Ecological Imperative

Traditional empirical inquiries into the human psyche have generally assumed that if a critical mass of human beings have the same psychological characteristics then these features represent essential qualities of human beings—human nature. This assumption has abided through the emergence of neuroscience, and the study of typical neurological functions and responses.

However neuroscience has also discovered the fact of neuroplasticity. While scientist once assumed that the adult brain was set, they now know that it is subject to change and responsive to environmental influences. If the human mind is responsive to environmental influences, and if those influences are ubiquitous but different for different cultures, then we may have the conditions for a monumental error. What may seem to be essentially true for all human beings at all times, may only be a reflection of a dominant culture and/or its cultural perspective. Thus there may be very little “human nature” that is not shaped by culture. The selfishness and thoughtlessness characteristic of consumer-capitalism, for example, may be largely or even strictly cultural. Comparative studies of different cultures over time and space could show this to be true—they may already have.

If this is the case, is it possible to shape the human mind and brain—“human nature”—en masse through cultural means? This has certainly been accomplished in pernicious ways by 20th century dictatorships, is this also the case in consumerist-media dominated democracies? How can a democracy change its course under such circumstances?

My recent research into imagining the future in the context of urban planning and ecological restoration suggests that Westerners are indeed self-absorbed and short-sighted with regard to the environment. The research was supported by hard psychological and neuroscientific data. Thus, I have argued that environmentalists should appeal to these given values instead of trying to remake the general public in their own image.

Last night, however, after working for days on an unrelated neuroscience article, I realized that neuroplasticity calls the idea of “human nature” into question. “Human nature” may be only what it is at this point in time, and with the current speed of cultural change, it may be subject to swift and radical alteration. If environmental consciousness is not in our “nature,” perhaps we should change our “nature.”

P.S. EC Co-Editor, Liam Heneghan proposed that plasticity (the ability to change) may be more or less “essential.” I agree that change may be a constant, with the caveat that rate of change changes (per a recent discussion with Reuven Feuerstein).

P.P.S. Last night I had a dream about the following idea of exponential error. I dreamt that I was reading a neurological formula in one of William James’s standard psychology texts. (I have read them, though they are so comprehensive I don’t recall this particular detail.) The formula was for exponential errors in the psyche. It showed how a small error related to a popular topic could replicate in the human mind, through the non-linear mechanics of association, and, through cultural means, in a human population. (I might also have seen the idea in Korzybski, a highly eccentric polymath, trending toward monomania, who developed an elaborate thesis of “general semantics.”) Perhaps in our current political and cultural climate, we can hold onto hope that what is true for errors, if this indeed be true, is also be true for new scientific knowledge and humanistic insights related to our all to obvious and all too often ignored ecological imperatives.

Image by Kathryn Finter: http://illuminations.ca/letter-H.html