On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Neil Rest wrote:
> > There is a paper in my head to write about ecologist utopias in science
> >fiction and their cultural, ideological, or who knows, political-economic
> >implications. I consider criticizing the "gaiaist" position in ecology
> >which holds that the human species is a point -rather a big one- in the
> >organic continuum of Nature, being no different than, say, an old oak tree
> >or a pretty badger.
>
> Since there is no evidence that oak trees have a culture, the argument is
> false. A guy doesn't get up in the morning and say, "What a beautiful day!
> I think I'll go clear cut some old growth forests, and if it's still nice
> this afternoon, I'll dump some mine tailings in the stream!" He gets up
> and says, "What a beautiful day! And I have to go to that lousy job!"
Good Lord! Why did you twist my argument like that? Now:
1) I meant to acknowledge my disagreement with extremists giving too much
emphasis to Nature, conceptualizing _homo sapiens sapiens_ as the most
dangerous enemy to it, and meanwhile usually ignoring the exploitative
relations of production, consumption and distribution in the capitalist
society.
2) I did not mean to give evidence of an oak tree having culture.
3) Your imaginary guy is a typical example of an alienated, middle-class,
passive citizen. And I agree that not even multinat leaders do not get up
in the morning and say "Let's exploit the Nature!" Of course. Yes. And my
problem is here: Those extremist ecologists (belonging to some specific
schools of ecology) who believe that, wanting the humanity to be in total
harmony with a mystified concept of Nature.
4) And meanwhile, your (not so) imaginary guy will not even care.
> In response to the comment that 90% of science fiction is crap:
> "Ninety percent of *everything* is crap."
I think I have corrected it in one of my recent posts. Anyway, I just
wanted to *emphasize* the condition of contemporary SF industry.
> >The majority of SF books, stories, films,
> >computer games, journals, zines, etc. have successfully been integrated
> >into the capitalist market for culture.
>
> Which connects to my implication above that much of the damage humanity
> does is mediated by culture.
Yes. I totally agree. And I did not mean to say that the damage we do is
only ecological. In addition, culture is not the only level of making
Earth a worse place: Economics, politics, ideological struggles which are of
course in close interaction with culture, should also be considered.
> >Or take the wonderful _The Dispossessed_, Le Guin's masterpiece (by the
> >way, is she still an anarchist, or an utopian socialist?):
>
> At the 1975 WorldCon (where _The Dispossessed_ later win its Hugo), I asked
> her if she called herself an anarchist, and she gave me an evasive answer
> to the effect of "Can a housewife and homemaker be an anarchist?"
Heh. Just as I suspected. Thanks for the information.
Best wishes,
EMRAH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:38 PDT