Kopytin, A.; & Gare, A (2023).: Ecopoiesis: A manifesto for ecological civilisation, Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice ,4(1) [Open Access internet journal]
This short paper – ‘…the basis for a scenario for the development of culture and various public institutions, recognising the potential of people to control their own destiny, to take effective steps to preserve life on earth.’ – is not short of contention.
The opening sections introduce ecological civilisation in its ontological and geopolitical context, in opposition to industrial civilisation. This is instructive, building on writings from the late soviet period in Russia but also drawing in a much wider cast – notably in accord with what Tim Flannery had set out in “Here on Earth” concerning the division between the Gaians and the Medeans, the followers of Lovelock and Huntington, but with echoes from the much longer disputes among European philosophers on the place of humans in nature and the nature of knowledge. Roszak had typified this titanic tussle through the influence of Descartes and Francis Bacon in the 17th on the rise of ‘scientism’, its challenge by the naturists of the late 18th and its triumph in the 19th and 20th centuries. Kopytin and Gare largely reprise Roszak’s analysis 50 years on, and link this with events since.
The trailing part of the paper lays out a statement of conviction, core axioms and values, and steps and avenues (to create an ecological civilisation). This can best be summarised by a subheading: “Reorganising science and putting ecology and human ecology in the centre of knowledge”. It is of lesser interest from a scholarly point of view, apart from picking up Roszak’s attention to aesthetics and his focus on a particular triad of aesthetes – Wordsworth, Goethe and Blake – defying the Newtonianism that had powered the 18th-century enlightenment. Blake’s vision of a New Jerusalem certainly stands beside the manifesto’s championship of eco-humanism.
While Blake was recoiling from industrialisation, Kopytin and Gare recoil from globalised unipolar liberal democracy with attendant consumerism (‘global corporatocracy..catastrophe of war of all against all…’). On the positive side they can draw on sound environmental policies surviving the soviet experiment, notably championed by Lenin and Gorbachev; and ecological civilisation’s incorporation in the PRC’s constitution as a core belief in 2007, reinforced twice since (latest in 2017).
So there are plenty of pointers to this being beyond the pale of public policy debate in the West – the manifesto published in Russia in a journal dedicated to this brand of eco-socialism, denouncing the new world order, free trade(!) and global corporate capitalism.
For all that Gare as a professor of philosophy at Swinburne has been making serious contributions to cultural studies for some years, is conversant with various lineages of Western thought and writes usefully on developments outside the suffocating analytical tradition.
In particular, he has assimilated and advanced debates in theoretical biology and the implications for theories of culture and philosophy of science. These revolutions in the scientific imagination translate to human biology, human ecology and political theory.
The manifesto wraps these ideas in an ethical framework, no more surprising than that of the humanists in pre-revolutionary France – Rousseau and Paine; or of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or their predecessors.
Ecopoiesis is an awkward term. It is difficult to assimilate into public discourse on the environment, now openly regarded as ‘under threat’. Yet we do not have a way of thinking about the challenge this presents us, beyond asking our governments to face up to what we are not prepared to acknowledge ourselves, and our scientists to continue to measure environmental deterioration we can now experience without the need for sophisticated measuring devices.
A manifesto presents one level on which we can accept actions demanded of us as individuals and of our institutions and systems of government. Its utility is in making sense of disparate phenomena until now wrapped in ideas such as conservation, air quality, indigenous rights, health self-awareness, and well-being (Kopytin is after all a professor of psychology). It demands of us that we shift our faith from outworn beacons of progress: development, industrial advancement, material wealth, security: all of which are dangerously counter-effective in the variety of global crises and disruptions experienced and the dysfunction of institutions and systems of government built around them. Is this statement indeed controversial? see for instance Ahmed (2022).
The arguments for rethinking progress in terms of an ecological civilisation are straightforward, even if the ‘steps and avenues’ offered strike me as unrealistic. The revolution heralded is in how we, humans, see ourselves in the environments we have largely created for ourselves, and the environment beyond – the biosphere; other peoples; the future; and systems that make life possible, enjoyable and to be celebrated. The first step may be to abandon the folly of material progress, embrace humanity in the least of our fellows and in ourselves, and the infinite beauty of creation beyond us and our control.
References
Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends – politics and transcendence in post industrial society (1972) Faber and Faber, London
Tim Flannery, Here on Earth, an argument for hope (2010) Text, Melbourne
Nafeez Ahmed, Defence Agencies ‘Accelerating’ Risk of ‘Hothouse Earth’, US Military Study Warns, Byline Times, 23 June 2022 – reviewing reports by Dr Elizabeth G Boulton (Australian Army) appearing in the US Marine Corps University Press’ digital journal and in the Spring 2022 edition of Journal of Advanced Military Studies, based on her PhD Thesis.
srthorn 