Ecopoiesis

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= “The notion of ecopoiesis .. focuses attention on all the conditions for living the best possible life, not only of individuals but of communities at all scales, including broader biotic communities”. [1]


Description

Arran Gare:

1.

“According to Aristotle, politics is about organizing society to enable people to live the best possible lives. This is the first principle or Arche of politics. The best possible life is a fulfilling and fulfilled life achieved through the pursuit of excellence. It is achieved by participating in public life concerned to uphold the conditions for living the best life and participating in efforts to advance knowledge. The complexity of the modern world has led to cynicism about or complete ignorance of this claimed first principle of politics. The notion of ecopoiesis facilitates its updating. It focuses attention on all the conditions for living the best possible life, not only of individuals but of communities at all scales, including broader biotic communities. Humanity should be conceived of as communities of communities, participating in these broader biotic communities, and the whole of humanity should aim to augment the conditions of its multi-level component communities to realize their potential to augment the life of all these communities. These conditions of life are their “homes,” extending this notion to include the “home” of humanity – the current regime of the global ecosystem, the “homes” of national communities, local regions, cities and towns and non-human organisms and biotic communities, as well as the homes of individuals and families. A good “home” for people is not only a matter of architecture and town planning; it is one in which they have security, can realize their potential to augment life, can assert themselves without fear of retribution, and can govern themselves. Homes are the condition for genuine communities and for living a fulling life by augmenting the life of these communities. A successful precursor to such politics was the policy of ‘folkhemmet’ of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1932 to 1976 – conceiving society as the ‘people’s home’ with no unwanted stepchildren.”

(https://www.academia.edu/43252621/Toward_an_Ecological_Civilization_-_An_Interview_with_Arran_Gare?}


2.

"As I have argued elsewhere (Gare, 2010), ecology provides the basis for rethinking ethics and politics as ‘ecopoiesis’, that is, as ‘home making’ at multiple levels. Thinking in terms of communities, where even individuals are regarded as communities within broader communities while consisting of communities of individuated living structures and processes, all communities must be concerned with maintaining themselves against destructive trends in their environments and constituents, while also augmenting the conditions for the communities that augment the conditions for their existence. These can be overlapping communities, communities within communities, or communities in more complex relations. Ultimately, this involves functioning in a way that augments the life of all broader communities, including humanity as a whole and the global ecosystem, of which each community or complex of communities is part. The ethics and politics of ecopoiesis generalizes the injunction of Rabbi Bar Hillel 2000 years ago from individuals to all communities, including national communities: ‘If I am not for myself, Who for me. If I am not for others, What am I? If not now, When?’ That is, in opposition to chauvinistic nationalism it promotes the liberation and development of each nation as the condition for the development of all nations.

The notion of ecopoiesis provides support for the Idealist tradition of political philosophy according to which society should be designed to remove all obstacles to the development of people’s potentialities to contribute to the common good (Tyler, 2012; Higgins & Dow, 2013), and to this end, sought to institutionalize rights to pursue and uphold truth and justice without fear of retribution. However, these ideas should now be understood and defended on naturalistic foundations and thereby extended (Gare, 2017b: 183-193). The notion of ecological civilization supports institutionalist ecological economics which examines what kind of institutions are required to control markets to ensure they serve the common good of communities and to ensure that economic activity advances the real wealth of society and individuals, including improving the health of the ecosystems of which we are part and the psychological well-being of each individual (Vatn, 2005; Spash, 2015). At the same time, institutional economics upholds a different idea of what it is to be human in opposition to homo economicus, implying the potential through the development of humanity to create superior forms of society than those based on possessive individualism. Institutionalist ecological economics can incorporate the quest to be free of macro-parasites, the oligarchs and other rentiers who have perfected the financial institutions to put people and countries into debt to enslave people to extract rents, and, as Michael Hudson (2022) has shown, have been subverting democracy and crippling economies in the West. Human ecology can then function as a transdiscipline, integrating the most important ideas from post-reductionist, post-Cartesian economics, politics, psychology, sociology and geography to provide a coherent framework for understanding all the complexities of communities, societies and civilizations and the relationships between people in the broader context of nature, including power relations in all their complexity, in so doing, providing the perspective required to formulate public policy (Adams, 1975; Gare, 2002)."

(https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1061/1691)


Discussion

From an interview by A.I. Kopytin:

  • “AK: What are the ethics and politics of ecopoiesis? Is it possible to create a global civilization that empowers people to augment their ecological communities?

Arran Gare: The ethics and politics of ecopoiesis involve the claim that a good,fulfilling life is achieved by living to augment life. Once this is understood, the opposition between self-interest and morality can be overcome. Our ‘homes’ should be providing the conditions to develop our full potential to augment the life of our human and broader biotic communities, and the struggle for life should be seen as the struggle to augment these homes and thereby our power to augment life. This is what liberty is all about, not freedom from constraints to exploit others and consume endlessly. The goal of politics should be to uphold and advance such liberty. The first condition for achieving liberty is having a clear idea of what we should be aiming at, and then working out how to achieve these ultimate ends. Ecological thinking, granting a central place to ecopoiesis, allows us not only to define our ends but to rethink how to go about achieving these ends through augmenting the conditions for the life and liberty of others, providing them with the niches where they themselves can work towards these ends, rather than reducing others to predictable instruments.


  • AK: Do you believe that conceptions of what humans are is at the core of cultures and that redefining humanity from the ecopoiesis perspective could help to resolve the major cultural, social and political conflicts within civilization?

AG: This I do believe. That conceptions of humans are the core of cultures became evident through comparative studies of cultures via history and anthropology. The current dominant conception of humans tacitly accepting a form of Cartesian dualism leads people to see nature as simply there to be controlled, or occasionally, to function as pleasant spectacles. An ecopoietic perspective situates us within nature,appreciating ourselves as components of the homes of others, both human and non-human, including huge numbers of micro-organisms which make up a significant part of our biomass and without which our bodies could not function. It forces us to appreciate our dependence on the life of ecosystems and to appreciate that we ourselves are part of the homes of others, and that living virtuously augments the homes of other members of our communities and augments the life of these communities.”


Source

  • Kopytin, A.I. (2020). Toward an ecological civilization - an interview with Arran Gare. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 1 (1). [2]