Ecosophy

= "Ecosophy: wisely run household of human affairs mor, even more simply: Wise Society"

Description

1. According to Raimon Panikkar:

"Beyond a simple ecology, ecosophy is a wisdom-spirituality of the earth. “The new equilibrium” is not so much between man and the earth, as between matter and spirit, between spatio-temporality and consciousness. Ecosophy is neither a mere ’science of the earth’ (ecology) nor even ‘wisdom about the earth', but rather a ‘wisdom of the earth herself’ that is made manifest to man when he knows how to listen to her with love."

(https://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-ecosofi.html)

2. Gary Hampson:

"The term ecosophy was coined separately by Norwegian ecophilosopher, Naess and French poststructural therapist, Guattari , in the late 1980s. Although the two uses are quite different, they can both contribute to a deep understanding of ecology.

For Naess, ecosophy refers to particular personal orientations toward deep ecology – he labels his own orientation Ecosophy This use of the term thus points to an intrinsic pluralism. He also indicates that ecosophy is differentiated from ecology partly through the former’s incorporation of values.

Whilst Naess’s ecosophy foregrounds that which is commonly identified as environment (though nonetheless connecting this with multiple non-environmental orientations), Guattari’s usage (less common in Anglophone discourse) explicitly transverses the three domains of environment, social relations and human subjectivity.

Guattari identifies features common to all three domains as including artistry, complexity, creativity, dissensus, ethics, evolution, many-sidedness, mutuality, openness, and transversality. One might also note that the etymology of ecosophy poetically indicates the wisdom (‘‘-sophy’’) of ecology. Perhaps even more than ecosystem, ecosophy has much potential."

(https://www.academia.edu/1947576/Eco_logical_educational_futures)

Discussion

Elisabet Sahtouris:

"This is somewhat different from the meaning of ecosophy as introduced by Arne Naess, father of Deep Ecology, who used it as a contraction for ‘ecological philosophy’ and stressed its connection with respect for Nature and the inherent worth of beings other than human.13

French psychotherapist and philosopher Felix Guattari is also credited with coining the word ‘ecosophy.’ Much influenced by Gregory Bateson (author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind), Guattari’s ecosophical model follows Bateson’s model of nature as a cybernetic system of interconnected feedback loops and nonlinear causality.

The aspect of Guattari’s model I agree with is that it includes three different levels of ecosophy that must be integrated—the human psyche, culture and nature—which clearly reflects the ancient Greek conception of Nature described in the section to follow on The Concept of Cosmos, where I will elaborate on this matter of levels.

The aspect of his model I cannot accept is that each of these levels is cybernetic—in his own words, an ‘abstract machine.’ Cybernetics is an advanced form of mechanism, but it is still mechanism, which I consider a poor metaphor for any living system—a metaphor missing the system’s very essence.14 Guattari argues that cybernetic machinery, which introduced the capacity to collect all manner of feedback to increase control, has indeed, with the advent of the Internet, made elite control more insidious and effective than ever.15

He is right that elites have learned to control society by deliberately working to construct society itself as machinery, and teach people that it is machinery, because machinery can be controlled. That does not mean that psyche, society and nature are machinery!

* Mechanism and Organism

The confusion of mechanism and organism is extremely widespread in today’s world, even among scientists, especially those in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This accounts for such beliefs as that computers and/or robots will eventually come to life, that living cells can be assembled from molecular components, etc. Fritjof Capra has done an excellent job of debunking these notions in his book, The Web of Life.

I believe the same mechanistic reasoning, conscious or not, was behind the founding fathers of science modeling the universe as a clockworks and Descartes believing that even animals were mechanisms devoid of feeling. As inventors of machinery themselves, these founders of science completely understood and controlled it; therefore, a mechanical universe would also be understandable and its forces subject to control at least locally on Earth. No wonder they projected their engineering abilities onto God as ‘Grand Engineer.’ Unfortunately, there were no ‘founding mothers of science’ to temper their hubris and work for a better understanding of life.

So, while I honor and incorporate Naess’ deep ecology and Pannikar’s emphasis on spirit in my version of ecosophy, as well as honoring Guattari for seeing psyche, culture and nature as levels of ecosophy, it is not possible from my perspective to promote an ecosophy in terms of cybernetic mechanics.

Mechanism and organism are created and function by completely different kinds of logic.16 So while I honor Naess and Pannikar as ecosophy pioneers with a deep understanding of and manifested respect for all nature as alive and Naess’, Pannikar’s and Guattari’s respective pleas for a human society fully integrated into the rest of nature, ecosophy for my purposes is very simply, as I said above, what I believe it would have been in ancient Greece given the meanings of the words ecology and economy.

Ecosophy would have been oikosophia, the ‘wise household’—the human household in which economy (including finance) and ecology are not separated because they are understood as aspects of a single living system, or living economy, that is both organized and governed wisely. Thus, in an ecosophy, ecology cannot be made subservient to economics by treating nature simply as resources for human use.

* Ecosophy in Context

In my 2013 presentation to global corporate leaders at the Xynteo Foundation’s annual Performance Theatre event held in Istanbul, I thanked these high-ranking corporate executives and board members for having globalized the economy through competition and creative initiative, as that was a necessary evolutionary step for humanity, inviting them to lead the way now to a sustainable future based on peaceful cooperation. I then apologized for my field of science, for providing economists and business leaders only the Darwinian story that has guided them throughout this expansive industrial and globalizing phase, while giving no guidance for the necessary next phase that must now be created with extreme speed.

As I had only five minutes to speak, I followed this with my elevator pitch on how this mature cooperative phase in Nature comes about and why it is sustainable, as well as repeatable for developing mature living economies. (This and the Washington DC talk described above were the shortest I have ever given, and thus the most challenging!)

In separating economy and ecology, both are failing us now. Economy because it cannot get beyond its youthful competition now in runaway mode; ecology—unfortunately made subservient to economy—because ecosystems are taken to be no more than resources for human use. This misunderstanding is what has brought the current ‘Perfect Storm’ of crises to our world, and we must understand now that it should be the other way around—that our human economy must be fitted harmoniously into nature’s ecology.

We are in desperate need of this wisdom as the governing principle of our human household. We must review, re-conceive and reinvent our human way of life beyond the separations and misconceptions preventing us from creating a wise way of life. Thomas Berry, walking in the footsteps of Teilhard de Chardin, one of the authors of the word ‘ecology,’ said cogently: “We cannot tell the human story without telling the Earth’s story.”17

Berry, like Naess, well understood that we humans are, for better or worse, solidly embedded in and dependent on Earth as one of its myriad species of living creatures, however much our unique brand of consciousness permits us to pretend otherwise—that we are somehow apart from and superior in intelligence to our Earth, that our technologies are superior to her living designs.

John Cairns, Jr. asked: Since the human economy is totally dependent upon the biosphere and humans are dependent on the biospheric life support system, why are [we] tolerant of the type of economic growth that damages the biosphere? He then suggested that Humankind should only engage in activities that nurture the biosphere.18

Such overarching holistic frameworks are needed to develop a coherent ecosophic strategy for living economies,19 which can fruitfully be based on Nature’s lessons for growing sustainable abundance through cooperative creativity without further physical growth. Nature has role-modeled the way and reveals it to us if only we look. If we follow her way, I believe we will find it to be the way to a genuine leap in humanity’s maturation from economy to ecosophy—even a leap in Earth’s evolution by way of her humans as we truly become cooperative, wise Homo sapiens sapiens!" (http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/ecosophy-natures-guide-to-a-better-world/)