path: root/subnature.otx

\chap A Critique of the Domination of Nature 

{\leftskip=0.25in plus1fill\rightskip=0.25in\it\noindent
by Trent Schroyer\par}

\Q{I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil---to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part or parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic onc, for there are enough champions of civilization\ld}
\Qs{Henry David Thoreau}

\rulebreak

\Q{Late Cretaceous to Pleistocene Cocoliths from the
North Atlantic.\par

\booktitle{Initial Report of the Deep Sea Drilling Project} (volume Xl supplement to volumes XXXIX, XL, XLI). A project planned by and carried out with advice of
the \e{Joint Oceanographic Institutions For Deep Earth
Sampling. Prepared for the National Science Foundation by the University of California (Scripps Institution of Oceanography). US.\ Govt.\ Printing Office.}}

\sec\nl

\label[schroyer]\wlabel{Since the} 17\textsuperscript{th} century, modern science has seemed confident that the human species is independent from organic nature.%
\fnote{In \booktitle{The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology} (N.Y., Harper, 1966), Hans Jonas has argued that we moderns live under the perspective of pan-mechanism in which the very existence of life has become the inexplicable phenomenon. The worlds of archaic humanity had the opposite problem. Living within world-views of pananimism (or vitalism), the inexplicable problem---in the sense of existential paradox---was death. In this sense pre-modern societies culturally constituted death as part of human existence. In modern cultures we have viewed organic life under the same cognitive forms that we used to understand inorganic matter-energy relations in space and time.} 
Universal knowledge of inorganic structures provides an ever refined system of techniques that (supposedly) separates us from nature in an irreversible manner. Socio-technical evolution step by step transforms all in-built human capabilities in a cycle of technical learning that creates tools that are reinforced till they become machines and are finally replaced by automatic systems. This behavioral cycle of feedback-guided learning is an artificial world construction process that is unconsciously determined by the human need for security and safety.%
\fnote{Hence human existence is predicated on this fear and terror of nature.
See Arnold Gehlen, \booktitle{Man in the Age of Technology} (N.Y., Columbia
University Press, 1980). Gehlen's interpretation of the history of socio-
technical development has influenced both conservative [See Peter
Berger, et. al., \booktitle{The Homeless Mind} (N.Y., Vintage, 1973) and critical
social theory (see Jurgen Habermas' \essaytitle{Science and Technology as Ideology} in \booktitle{Toward a Rational Society} (Boston, Beacon, 1970)]. In
Habermas' essay, Gehlen's history of technology is used to reject
Herbert Marcuse's claim that the universality of one-dimensionality
requires the development of a \dq{new science and technology.} This claim
is dependent upon an evolutionary perspective that sees cognitive
development as a progressively more universal and invariant instrumental
 relation to natural \dq{objects.} This presupposes that the
mathematization of the human sensual manifold, as in Kant's notion
of natural knowledge, is the only form of possible knowledge of nature
and is adequate to its \dq{object.}}
The irony is that more control over nature does not seem to decrease anxiety about the terror of nature.

While a sense of the inevitability of socio-technical progress pervades modern culture, so too does a sense of a \dq{broken connection} with biological and cultural continuity. The nuclear image of possible human annihilation, and the permanent \dq{crisis} ethos of contemporary societies, meld together to require what Robert Lifton has so aptly called \dq{psychic numb- ing.} Hence, the fear of survival returns and the search for symbolic immortality (began perhaps with the fall from the ignorance of death) renews the quest for a technical transcendence of nature.

But a \dq{dialectic of enlightenment} has plagued this quest
since the beginning in that each renewed level of technical
learning requires greater sacrifice and renunciation in the
development of self-hood at the cost of greater losses of the
capacity for spontaneity, participatory solidarity, and imaginative
participation in nature. The technically determined
separation from nature has ironically undermined the stability
and coherence of the human world; technical progress and
loss of cultural form are simultaneous processes. At stake are
the dreams of the modern enlightenment; reaffirmation of
religious orthodoxy as the only cultural cement is the neo-conservative sedative.

Into this matrix of despair is slowly surfacing a potential
power that recalls the slumbering memory of the behemoth.
Awakening from a sleep induced by the modern epistemological
principle that \dq{nature-in-itself} is constituted only as an
object of technical control, \e{Gaia}, or the organic unity of the
earth, appears to some observers who have an interest in
human technical \e{hubris}. Rather than dead matter in motion
according to universal laws, recent scientific discoveries
(renewing old beliefs) suggest an internal self-organizing formative
activity within natural events. In so far as this is true,
Western rationality, which begins with the total transcendence
of nature, may be encountering its decisive trial. Efforts to
drain all immanent formative activity from nature, to smash
all pantheisms, were justified in the West as essential for
sustaining the ego-autonomy essential for civilization. Today
ecologists everywhere begin to suggest that the \e{good-for-nature}
should inform our ethical mediations of technical
progress. Ethical norms are then emergent from both the
interdicts of culture (\e{nomos}) and from the limits of nature
(\e{physis}). Maintaining a balance of these two sources of normative
integration requires a type of critical insight which the
ideologies of progress today seem to lack.

But the problem may not be \dq{progress} as a socio-cultural
ideal. Indeed there is one learned argument that \dq{progress}
was central to classical antiquity in the West from the very
beginning.\fnote{Ludwig Edelstein, \booktitle{The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity} (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967).} But \dq{progress} here meant growth of an organic
whole that exhibits persistence and change, identity and difference.
The model of nature was cited as exemplary; Seneca
could thus say: \dq{Nothing is completed at its very beginning.}
Harmony seems o require an ongoing insight into the unity of
nature and culture, \e{physis} and \e{nomos}, Hence, recent scientific
theorizing points a way out of modern mechanical materialism
and suggests new possibilities for \dq{man}-nature interaction.

The word \dq{nature} (\e{physis}) in its Greek origin comes from
\e{phyein} meaning to grow out of, to appear by itself. Nature is
that which is somehow identical with the process through
which it appears and comes into being. Nature's movement is
self-moving flow. A new discovery of this appearance is
suggested by David Bohm who claims that we need to look on
the world as an undivided whole. The new form of insight
into nature's being can best be called undivided wholeness in
flowing movement. The view implies that \dq{flow} is in some
sense prior to that of the things that can be seen to form and
dissolve in the flow. According to Bohm's interpretation, a
new order of nature is coming into focus. Bohm argues that
the evolution of physics has moved beyond the order of Galileo
and Newton (the separability of the world into distinct but
interacting parts) to a new scheme of the continuity of fields
(in relativity) and the inseparability of the observing instrument
from what is observed (in quantum mechanics). The
new order implied is that of a \e{hologramic enfolding of the
information about the whole into each part.}\fnote{David Bohn, \booktitle{Wholeness and the Implicate Order} (Boston, Routledge \& Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 11.} Instead of the
classical Cartesian-Newtonian explicate order (where each
part has its own place outside of others), the new implicate
order has enfolded information about the whole in each part
The difference is that between an image of nature as a composite 
unity and a \e{hologramic order.}

While it would be possible to recall that archaic worldviews
also held to a hologramic presence of the whole in each
part,\fnote{See deSantillana and von Deschend \booktitle{Hamlet's Mill: An Essay o1 Myth and the Frame of Time} (Boston, Gambit, 1969) for an account of how the flow of time and time of music formed the archaic world's experience of nature as ordered by the order of time.} the more relevant point here is that awareness of
co-present elements returns as a center of physical inquiry and
supplements the present analytic abstraction of a composite
or explicate order. A new scientific theory implies a new
practice interaction with nature. The \e{search for patterns that
connect us} with natural ecosystems constitutes a re-orientation
of scientific-technical learning. As Gregory Bateson has argued,
a communicational science is concerned with the meta-relationships
of events in contexts, while a strict causalistic
science focuses upon the reality of \dq{objects} while excluding
contexts.%
\fnote{See Gregory Bateson, \booktitle{Steps to an Ecology of Mind} (N.Y., Ballantine, 1972), p. 252.}
This defines an epistemology change from Galilean
\dq{resolutive compositive method} to an organismic approach.%
\fnote{Critiques of modern science's fallacy of \dq{simple location,} or the instrumentalist spatialization of events, has been central to A.N, Whitehead's philosophy of organicism. Whitehead argues that the basic physical unities are \dq{concrescent actualities} and resemble a living organism in that they depend not on its components but on the \e{pattern} through which they are composed. See \booktitle{Science and Modern World} (N.Y., Free Press, 1925).}
It also forces us to re-evaluate the modern belief that we are
separate from nature.

Something like a forgetfulness of our immanent participation in nature has accompanied the celebration of technical transcendence since the 17\textsuperscript{th} century. Belatedly I see that Hannah Arendt's distinction of work and labor has an implicit philosophy of nature that is compatible with this changing image of nature.\fnote{Hannah Arendt, \booktitle{The Human Condition} (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1958). Hannah Arendt's claim that all European languages discriminate between \dq{labor} and \dq{work} indicates a dimension of the bio-social world that is totally ignored in social theory. While all modern social theories of progress project \dq{work} as the form-giving fire and nature as the object and resource for human production, the endless recurrent necessities of sustaining biological life is lost in the modern image of \dq{process} (of nature and economic production).  We labor with our bodies and work with our hands; this fundamental difference is documented by the universal existence of songs of labor that accompany the rhythmically ordered co-ordination of the body.  (Songs of work are social and sung after work.) In the midst of labor, tools lose their instrumentality and function as means to an end; the certainty of the motion predominates. Labor constitutes the mediating interface of human world and nature and reflections on meaning of this linkage for sustainable form of human survival is essential.  } The notion of \e{labor} reminds us that the life process imposed on us by our bodies, also ties us into the recurrent cycle of all biological life. In the human metabolism with nature labor mediates by an endless incorporation of matter and energy into the body (consumption) and the endless housekeeping which redirects the processes of growth and decay and maintains the human world against the intrusions of nature (e.g., pollution, excessive growth, etc.).

In this sense the constitutive idea of modern ideologies
(capitalist and socialist) that freedom begins beyond the limits
of necessity abstracts from our immanence in organic nature.
Both Marxist socialism and economic liberalism share the
utopian presupposition that freedom is possible only as a
function of emancipation from necessity. While the ideology
of free enterprise rests its case upon an ongoing revolution of
progress (i.e., economic growth stimulated by ever new levels
of technical control over nature), Marxist socialism views
class struggle as a dialectical self-positing that releases the
suppressed technical powers of production. Both are variations
within a common perspective. That perspective is the
belief that all future human possibilities depend upon an
extension of the domination of nature.

Whereas progress as permanent revolution runs up against
the finitude of resources and socio-cultural deterioration in a
society where stability can be achieved only through expansion,
socialism runs into the authoritarian contradiction of
separating the administration of things from the democratization 
of need interpretations. Both ideologies are latent theologies 
of technical transcendence of nature and both promise a
delusory form of human emancipation. Remembering the
residual moment of the human condition in which we remain
embedded in nature also forces us to question the tenability of
those elements of progress ideologies that promise emancipation 
from labor---namely, consumerism and the superiority
of \dq{socialized} production. The question of what is more
rationally produced by individual households, communities,
and regions is evaded by techno-economic elites responsible
for centralized decision-making. But more basically the
hyperstimulated expectation that new controls over nature
provide new freedoms from nature is the cultural mechanism
that transfigures needs, and reinforces dependency upon centralized
authority. How to create and select those forms of
technical innovation which are compatible with organic nature
and with non-dependency is the project of defining an ecologically 
rational form of social development. In the present
context of centralized production systems, the question not
systematically confronted is how to increase individual and
local participation in production in order to achieve greater
flexibility in our harmonization with the limits of organic
nature. Only a democratization of technical learning that
diversity within natural ecosystems (reversing the
disastrous current trends toward simplification) can promote
a concretely universalizable increase in the flexibility of the
societal-natural interface. Until we can begin to develop new
problem-oriented scientific inquiries into the carrying capacities
of eco-systems, optimal design integrations of \dq{man}-natural
habitats and a systematic return to a \dq{communicative} 
orientation to nature (cybernetically the substitution of
information for hardware), we will not have the democratization
of technical learning essential for sustainable forms of
human survival.

\sec\nl

Hannah Arendt has noted the sense in which modern science
began by viewing nature from a perspective outside the
earth. At the beginning of modern science:

\Q{\ld the old dichotomy between earth and sky was abolished
and a unification of the universe effected, so that from then on
nothing occurring in earthly nature was viewed as a mere
earthly happening. All events were considered to be subject to
a universally valid law\ld\ (which) was valid beyond the reach
of human sense experience\ld, valid beyond the reach of human
memory and the appearance of mankind on earth, valid even
beyond the coming into existence of organic life and the earth
itself.\fnote{Hannah Arendt, \booktitle{The Human Condition}, \e{op. cit.}, p. 238ff.}}

With modern science a cultural conviction emerged that the
human species had established itself as \dq{universal} beings
who could reason beyond the limitations of terrestrial existence 
and use cosmic laws for the guidance of terrestrial actions.
Arendt calls this belief in technical transcendence of the earth,
which is so fundamental to modern science, \dq{earth alienation}
and sees it as the most fundamental revolution of modernity.
With the transition to universal science, terrestrial and
celestial phenomena were unified mathematically as physics
and astronomy. Newton's synthesis was made possible by the
algebraic treatment of geometric relations without regard to
the age-old distinction of earth and sky. With this mathematical
formalization, the last vestige of terrestrial qualitative
difference was abstracted away.

Yet the \dq{universalism} of Cartesian-Newtonian mechanics
may be an abstractive fallacy for bio-social forms of organization
to the extent that a contextless infinite framework is
presupposed. Bio-social events have context specific causalities
that differ fundamentally from the linear irreversible causalities
of classical mechanics which holds that action and
reaction are equal and opposite or that like causes create like
effects. Classical mechanics provides predictive knowledge
where a system can be considered closed and energy transformations
viewed as irreversibly tending toward dynamic
disorder (e.g., heat processes under the entropy principle) but
such analysis abstracts from any contextual constraints (organizational
information that reacts back or amplifies causal
impacts).

Although the emergence and evolution of cybernetics since
the Second World War has developed a critique of mechanical
causation, a more generalized theory has recently added an
alternative to classical mechanics and equilibrium thermodynamics.
Contemporary non-equilibrium thermodynamics (e.g.
Ilya Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures)\fnote{Ilya Prigogine, \essaytitle{Unity of Physical Laws and Levels of Description} in M. Grene (editor) \journaltitle{Interpretations of Life and Mind} (N.Y., Humanities Press, 1971) and Ilya Prigogine and others \essaytitle{Thermodynamics of Evolution} in \journaltitle{Physics Today} Vol. 25 \#1, 1972.} adds another
dimension to our understanding of emergent evolution in that
biological processes exhibit deviation counteracting causalities
that maintain non-equilibrium structures that are highly
improbable. Biological organisms can maintain fluctuating
structures within \e{limits} of contextual information patterns
(e.g., homeostatic regulations). Such structures subsist against
entropic decay, actually increase their complexity, and generate
new self-organizing heterogeneity.\fnote{See John and Nancy Jack Todd, \booktitle{Tomorrow Is Our Permanent Address} (N.Y., Harper \& Row, 1980), p. 48.} This new perspective
shows that instead of random disorganizations, the outcome
of bio-social events depends upon the stability of dissipative
structures within the limits of contextual organizational
information. Similar conditions do not necessarily produce
similar results. Systems that are open to their environment for
matter-energy exchanges may tend toward an equilibrium---but
they may also, due to more comprehensive integrations,
jump to a higher energy flow-through. For example, successional
change in eco-systems demonstrates how interacting life forms
can create more integration of the system and more (non-hierarchical)
differentiation of the food chains. The mature
eco-system has greater diversity with greater capacities to
accumulate and re-use resources. This movement, from fragile 
simplicity to complex and more stable diversity, exhibits a
successional transformation from quantity as growth principle
to quality as principle of structural stability.\fnote{See Magoran Maruyama, \essaytitle{The Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes} in \journaltitle{American Scientist} \#51, 1963, and G.  Nicolis and I. Prigogine., \booktitle{Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems} (N.Y., Wiley Interscience, 1977).} Such
successional transformation brings into the organization of
the eco-system more organized inter-connectedness---that is,
more contextually operative patterns of reciprocal causation
that enable energy-matter transformations to realize optimal
spatial organization. In this sense the eco-system. due to its
own \e{informational structure} creates its own morphic genesis
within that context. The patterns of this morphogenetic structure
are presented within terrestrial \e{appearances}---representation
of this order within universal physio-chemical formalized 
language is possible but the \e{genesis} would be lost.\fnote{Lancelot L. Whyte, \essaytitle{Towards a Science of Form} in \journaltitle{Hudson Review} Vol 23 \#4, Winter 1970--71, reminds us of the sense in which the natural world is a perceptually present world of spatial units from molecules, crystals, organisms to solar systems and spiral nebul\ae.  How thesee spatial forms are generated---how these units and hierarchies of units arise in nature---is the project of a morphic science.} A
complementarity of natural science approaches to, at least,
terrestrial organic systems is suggested.\fnote{H.H. Pattee, \essaytitle{Complementarity vs. Reduction as Explanation of Biological Complexity} in \journaltitle{American Journal of Physiology} Vol. 236 \#5, May 1979 where he argues:
\Q{As a consequence of this property of information none of the rules
or constraints of information-processing systems can be reduced to
rate-dependent equations (to the structural laws of nature T.S.), and
therefore their descriptions cannot be integrated in time, as are rate
equations, to give the trajectory or behavior of the system. Such
informational constraints that have rate-independent alternative
structures are called nonintegrable\ld\ constraints. I would define
biological function as activity that is controlled or measured by
nonintegrable constraints.}
\Qs{(p. R244)}
Both the explanatory laws of physics and the cybernetics of nonintegrable
constraints are essential for an account of biological organization.}

A complementarity of analysis is, of course, what Gregory
Bateson suggested by his distinction between entropic ecology
(bio-energetics) and \dq{communicational,} or negentropic
ecology.\fnote{Bateson, \e{op. cit.}, p. 460.} Awareness of relations, patterns, interactive forms,
symmetries, etc. is essential for recognition of how natural
processes are transformed in \e{time.} Understanding the \e{genesis}
of context-specific organizational forms is necessary if the
static world of mechanics, or the random decay of structures,
is not the sole basis for a universal physics. Indeed if we take
these physics of a static world seriously, time is only a 
parameter of the four-dimensional geometry called physical dynamics.
Although the second law of thermodynamics (the entropy
law) can be taken as defining a general trend in collections of
atoms, molecules, etc., there are some implications that point
beyond such an order of nature. For example, it differs from
the \dq{composite unity} notion of natural order (the microscopic
building block image) by referring its cognitive claims
to the patterns of collectivities of objects. But more interesting
in a world of spatial events, it refers to a temporal \e{irreversibility}
of processes—especially on the macroscopic scale, and
especially in the sphere of \dq{biological-space} where highly
improbable (in dynamic terms) non-equilibrium structures
are situated in wider contexts. Hence, the theory of dissipative
structures suggests that the physics of dynamic spatial events
is not complete and requires the complementarity of an analysis
of irreversible structures too.\fnote{Ilya Prigogine, \booktitle{From Being to Becomuing: Time and Complexity in the Phystcal Sciences} (San Francisco, WH. Freeman \& Co., 1980).}

The implications of this effort to extend theoretical physics
bas resulted in the Nobel Prize (1977) for Ilya Prigogine and its
technical import is to define a new scientific revolution that
the future will explore. But an implication that is relevant here
is that it has broken the epistemological frames of modern
science and suggests that Whitehead's insights were basically
on the right track. The study of nature itself has led to an
insight into the \dq{evolutionary} horizons of natural processes
in themselves; the pre-theoretical sense of future and past
turns out to be a more adequate model of \dq{time's arrow} than
the cognitive representations of the physics of classical mechanics.
\dq{Time} is not just a subjective illusion of an anthropomorphic
observer but a property of dissipative structures. The
scientific myth of the \dq{infinite} universe of matter in (determined)
motion is broken---suddenly a new nature appears
where self-organizing innovations are always possible. The
game of natural \dq{process} is not completely representable in
the abstractions of physical dynamics---bifurcations and
instabilities within macroscopic nature forces an end to the
imposition of geometrical spatialization of events, and concentrates
our attention upon the \e{genesis} of organized, functionally
integrated, organic forms. Recognition of pattern
formation cannot be constructed from instrumental measurements
alone but requires also a time dimension---a \e{morpho-genetic} reconstruction.

The human encounter with nature is no longer representable
by an instrumental interest in nature. A more complex dialogue
with \dq{nature} is essential in that both pattern formation
and limits of dissipative structures fluctuations must be
known to understand development.

Theoretical physics now suggests that the organic cannot
be reduced to the fundamental \dq{primary} laws of the inorganic;
\dq{secondary} laws (i.e., non-equilibrium thermodynamics)
seem equally basic. It is no longer possible to postulate
that the rate-processes of trajectories (for macroscopic) and
wave functions (for microscopic) are sufficient in themselves
and they must be studied in conjunction with the developing
world of dissipative and morpho-genetic structures. Such a
complementarity will go into the very foundation of theoretical
physics itself---as well as be duplicated at every \dq{level of
organization} within a self-organizing universe.\fnote{G. Nicolis and I. Prigogine, \booktitle{Self-Organization inn Nonequilibrium Systems: From Dissipative Structures to Order Through Fluctuations} (N.Y., John Wiley \& Sons, 1977).}

For example, the genesis of morphic patterns (or the generation
of spatial forms) is accessible to description by the
methods of holistic biology or ethology and yet these descriptions
may use data created by formalized measurements of
energy-flow, etc. Thus, descriptive reconstruction of contextual
patterns of homeostasis or other more complex forms of
self-organizing orders, \dq{morpho-genesis,} is possible. But such
contextual patterns can be viewed as created by the interaction
of forms of life striving to maintain themselves in context.
Such morphic forms of organization display a patterned order
that has been called \dq{authentic phenomena} (Portmann) within
the perceptible surfaces of the things that surround us.\fnote{See Marjorie Grene's \booktitle{Approaches to a Philosophical Biology} (N.Y., Basic Books, 1965) for a discussion of Portmann's thinking in contrast to other biological theorists who reject the Galileian primary qualities as fundamental for organic life. For a brief introduction to Portmann in English, see \essaytitle{Beyond Darwinism}in \journaltitle{Commentary} XL (1965), pp.  31--41.} The
origins of these perceptually discoverable forms are unintelligible
in the formalizations of a Galilean science and yet are
significant for the interaction of life forms. Life shows itself in
surface patterns that display an active posturing of life's identity,
form, and innerness. Life forms have a centricity, an
inwardness that cannot be reductively explained or anthropomorphically
interpreted. Insofar as we are ourselves participating
within the natural energies that impinge upon us, we
are related to a morpho-genesis of nature that is not universal.

Hence, a morphogenetic epistemology is an alternative to
the earth-alienation of a constructivistic mathematization of
the sensual manifold. Its place in the contemporary system of
knowledge is more important than the current division of
knowledge would imply---for two reasons. First, as a Gaia
hypothesis below claims, we may be living in the midst of an
organic unit whose living operations must be recognized to
avoid ecological destruction. Secondly, the current division of
knowledge has created a \dq{blind spot} in our knowledge which
requires the rethinking of how modern science relates to
socio-economic development on a global scale.\fnote{This argument is developed below in Section IV.} The second
becomes even more crucial in the context of the presence of \e{Gaia.}

\sec\nl

The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by a space scientist
trying to define how to identify the presence of life on Mars or
Venus. By modeling the earth's atmosphere along the principles
of an analytical chemistry equilibrium, James Lovelock
discovered significant differences in the atmospheric composition
of the earth in comparison to Venus and Mars.\fnote{J E. Lovelock, \booktitle{Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth} (N.Y., Oxford University Press, 1980)} 
Computer simulations indicated that the final equilibrium, or
steady state, atmosphere for earth would resemble that of
Mars and Venus with approximately 98\% carbon dioxide,
about 2\% nitrogen, and traces of oxygen. The actual earth's
atmosphere composition is, however, maintained at a highly
improbable composition of 0.03\% carbon dioxide, 79\% nitrogen,
and 21\% oxygen. Furthermore, this unlikely atmospheric
composition seems to have been maintained for more than
three billion years despite the fact that the sun's early intensity
was 30\% lower. From these and other improbable conditions
(e.g., the constancy of the salinity of the oceans despite continuous
salt input into the seas) that make life possible, Lovelock
and others have proposed that the only possible
explanation for these statistically impossible coincidences is
to see the atmosphere as an organic construction: that is, as an
adaptation by the biosphere-and oceans that secures the conditions
necessary for life. Although all of the adaptive mechanisms
that create the optimal global parameters necessary for
life maintenance are not yet understood, many have been
described. These are the reciprocally causal compensatory
processes that return life parameters to acceptable levels.

For example, atmospheric oxygen levels, which are constantly
increased by the products of photosynthesis, are kept
in the 21\% range by a self-regulating methane production cycle
which absorbs oxygen within the atmosphere and releases it
in the stratosphere. In the absence of methane production by
bacterial fermentation of the anaerobic muds and sediments
of the sea beds, marshes, and estuaries, the oxygen concentration
of the atmosphere would rise as much as 1\% every 12,000
years. (The probability of forest fires starting increases 70\%
for every 1\% rise in oxygen concentration; at 25\%, all vegetation
on earth will burn.) Increases in atmospheric oxygen lead
to overgrowth of aerobic micro-organisms which in death
decay and increase the methane production potentials of the
anaerobic microflora at the bottoms of seas, marshes, wet-
lands, etc. This organic self-regulating control of the amount
of oxygen in the atmosphere is also tied into other complex
signaling mechanisms that involve complementarities of nitrous
oxide and methyl chloride (both of organic origin) with methane
in the atmosphere, and constitute an organic cycle that
extends throughout the global processes of biosphere and
oceans. Reconstructing these patterns, the contemporary science
of aeronomy increasingly documents the fact that without 
life's interference. oxygen \e{and} carbon dioxide levels could
not be regulated. Thus, self-organizing global patterns reveal
the self-reproducing goal-adaptations by \e{Gaia}---an identity
that becomes more and more inescapable.

These invisible global patterns that make visible the constants
essential for life are themselves modifications of the
environment by the totality of life forms themselves. Only this
hypothesis can account for the highly improbable homeostasis
of the earth for over three billion years. While the Gaia
hypothesis itself has not yet been scientifically established, its
current plausibility provides several highly significant implications.
First, if Gaia exists, then our actions in relation to the
natural environment must become more informed about these
self-regulating regulations (for example, modern increases in
fossil fuel produced carbon dioxide and its \dq{impact} on the
Gaian regulation mechanisms). Secondly, the extent to which
we currently do understand Gaian reproduction cycles, helps
us suddenly to see that the vital \dq{organs} of Gaia are the
continental shelves and wetlands where planetary controls
are centered in the ecology of aerobic micro-organisms and
an\ae robic microflora that are so important for atmospheric
regulations. These ecosystems are of crucial importance for
Gaia and their protection from human destruction therefore
become a primary end for human survival.

The Gaia hypothesis challenges contemporary fears that
pollution is the major problem of environmental destruction
and that the dynamic of technology is its cause. Instead, what
has to be understood are the morphogenetic symbiotisms
within the global patterns of Gaia. \e{Where} we bring about
socio-technical innovations may be more important than \e{what} 
we do. Given the global dynamic of an international economic
system (see below), the ecological hazards of the modernization
of global agriculture seem more dangerous than
industrial pollutions (at this tme). As world populations
increase, the crisis potentials of agricultural modernization
will also increase. Increasing human control over the earth's
biomass will force higher energy interventions in just those
areas where global diversity and symbiotism are essential for
optimizing conditions for terrestrial life. Specific agricultural
projects---such as deforestation of the tropics and sea \dq{farming}---may 
have global consequences unrecognized ar present.
Much more understanding of the \dq{wisdom of Gaia} is needed
for the human species to avoid altering some of the time cycles
and in-built deviation-counteracting regulations of a global
organism whose homeostasis is only now being recognized.

The Gaia hypothesis remains fruitful as long as the global
patterns of goal-maintenance cannot be explained in terms of
the laws of their components. No doubt the charge of \dq{teleology}
will appear.\fnote{As indeed it has: See W. Ford Doolittle's review of Lovelock's book in \journaltitle{Co-Evolution Quarterly} \#29, Spring 1981, pp. 58ff. where the charge that the feedback loops of Gaia are either created by natural selection or, more likely to Doolittle, occur by chance. In response, we can return to Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures:
\Q{We here propose an alternative description of prebiotic evolution.  The main idea is the possibility that a prebiological system may evolve through a whole succession of transitions leading to a hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states\ld\ As a result, if the system is to be able to evolve through successive instabilities, a mechanism must be developed whereby each new transition favors further evolution by increasing the nonlinearity and the distance from equilibrium. One obvious mechanism is that each transition enables the system to increase the entropy production\ld}
\Qs{in \essaytitle{Thermodynamics of Evolution.} op. cit.}
However other reviewers of the book find the hypothesis tenable: See K. Mellanby, \journaltitle{New Scientist}, Oct 4, 1979; René Dubos, \journaltitle{Nature}, Nov. 8, 1979; P Morrison, \journaltitle{Scientific American}, March 1980.} But if we understand that \dq{teleology}
refers to something that stands outside of a process and yet
directs it too, then homeostasis and morphogenetic processes
are not teleological. The patterns of reciprocal causality are
\dq{teleonomic,}\fnote{Erns Mayr, \essaytitle{Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis} in \journaltitle{Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science} 14 (1974), pp. 91--117.} in the sense of goal-directedness according to
the operations of informational structures inherent in the
forms of organization. Hence, no claim is made that a final
end stands outside of the mechanisms of change and directs it
by \dq{causing} it to change---rather, emergence of stable non-equilibrium
integrations are constitutive of organic organization 
(e.g., homeostasis of body temperature), ecosystem
succession through differentiation and non-equilibrium
integrations.

How a \dq{program} for goal-directedness is acquired is separate
from the teleonomic manifestations of its operations, The
fundamental question that emerges whether if the \dq{program}---the
informational structure---is an unplanned result of
teleonomic operations of self-maintenance or an indication of
a \dq{program of purpose} in nature? The assumption of Gaian
theorists, if I understand them, is that the homeostasis of Gaia
can be understood only in the reconstruction of history of its
formation on the one hand, and in increased global monitoring
of the atmosphere, oceans, and natural environmental regulations 
(made possible by contemporary satellites and information
technologies) on the other. The \dq{program of purpose}
inherent in Gaia is teleonomic operations and the program of
homeostasis is an unplanned result defined only by the \e{limits}
of the structure itself. In this sense, Gaian \dq{purpose} is
teleonomic in that the self-maintaining forms do not necessarily
have a program of \e{self}-maintenance---stability and instability
are both possible as perturbations of dissipative structures.
Of course we do not know enough about the Gaia \dq{program}---%
but the possibility that there is a morphogenetic logic to
nature's development cannot be avoided. More complex patterns
of heterogeneity, differentiation, and symbiotization may
evolve and the human species may become more and more
central to Gaian development.

1f the Gaia hypothesis is correct, the earth is not a \dq{space
ship} to be maintained by human planetary engineers. This
technological metaphor continues the unconscious forms of
technical control that must be transcended in order to participate
co-operatively in Gaian ecology. \dq{Nature} is not, as the
modern myth of progress suggests, amenable to endless interventions
that secure socio-economic development.

\sec\nl

The logics of commodification and technical control force a
shorter and shorter time frame upon socio-economic decisions.
\dq{Time is money}: the scarce resource of investment
cycles determine a global dynamic of environmental simplification
which amplifies the technical interventions and domination
of nature on a world scale. International differences in
\dq{income} (read hierarchical power advantages) force a global
dynamic of rapid economic development for all.\fnote{See EM. Lappe and J. Collins, \booktitle{Food First: The Myth of Scarcity} (Ballantine Press, 1978). Also see \booktitle{The New International Division of Labor} by F. Frobel, J. Heinrichs, D. Kreye (Cambridge University Press, 1980).} Low income
countries are forced by rising food prices, especially in areas
already subject to declining food production, to pursue desperation
techniques that further degrade the land and create
competition for scarce capital between the competing goals of
agriculture, industry, and energy. The response now viewed as
necessary is, for example, greater technical interventions into
agricultural production where the present commodity values
determine decision-making to the exclusion of ecological consequences.
Hence, monocultural crop simplifications, loss of
soil nutrients, and increases in pressures upon water resources,
all compound to further force the less developed nations of
the world to push for immediate increases in their incomes in
order to continue the use of these high-energy technical interventions.
These lead to deforestation, over-grazing, destructive
cropping practice, desertification, and salination (water
depletion through increased irrigation), and loss of genetic
plant and animal resources as wild habitats are destroyed.
The ultimate consequence of such \dq{neutral} applications of
science to ever more powerful interventions in agricultural
production is an intensification of the income gap between the
less and more developed countries and an even greater desperation
that leads to worse ecological interventions to meet
immediate needs.\fnote{See Gerald O. Barney, \booktitle{The Global 2000 Report to the President of the U.S.: Vol. I The Summary Report} (NY., Pergamon Press, 1980).}

The logic of management and development imposed by an
international economic system forces the immediate evaluation
of all resources as present commodities. Economic rationality
presumes that the commodification of the environment---as
the costs of producing a resource and bringing it to markets---also
 makes ecological sense. This logic of commodification is
also extended to pollution, where the polluter-pays principle
supposedly will restrict levels of pollution.\fnote{See Klaus Myer-Abich, \e{op. cit.}} But, the ecologically
 necessary components---such as genetic variety supplied
by wild habitats---do not have any commodity value in pres-
ent market evaluation. They are \dq{external} to the costs of
private production.

Despite growing awareness of environmental dangers, the
dynamic of the international economic system has become
ever more disruptive since the middle of the 1960's when the
post-World War II economic boom ended. Since then, declining
output, overcapacities, stagnating rates of investment in
the developed core of an international economy, have led to a
new entrepreneurial strategy based upon investments in the
rationalization of the production process, both within core
economies as well as in planned plant relocations in less
developed countries. This new strategy for maintaining capital
accumulation on a world scale simply utilizes the greater
technical power that new forms of transportation and
communications provide, while also sub-dividing the production
process so that cheap labor can be used with little or no
cost of either training or being responsible for the work force.
New operational breakdowns of manufacturing processes
permit the use of unskilled or semi-skilled workers over which
the plants have more control and less costly responsibility.

The human costs of this new international division of labor
is greater insecurity for labor forces throughout the international
economy. Workers in core industrial-market societies
experience more unemployment, plant closings and, in some
cases, loss of their acquired professions too. The dynamic in
less developed nations is tied into the uneven development
pattern where the modernization of agriculture increases production
at the cost of destroying traditional rural communities
and subsistence forms of survival. Forced into migration
to urban-slum plant relocation centers, these newly \dq{liberated}
workers provide an inexhaustible source of the cheapest
and most exploitable labor.

However, the plant relocations are part of the forces of
under-development in that this industrialization is oriented
only to production for export. Local purchasing power is too
low to tie into this modernized sector and thus a dual economy
is maintained. Dependency begins however when such countries
attempt to provide the infrastructure needed for plant
relocations (i.e., water, energy, roads, airports, etc.) because
they hope they can realize benefits from it. But use of capital
surplus generated from the modernized agricultural sector to
try to finance industrial development puts additional strains
upon rapid agricultural growth (with all the associated environmental
 problems mentioned above) while actually depleting
  and stagnating the rural social community and economy.

What Western economists are only now beginning to recognize
 is that development of natural resources is mainly an
ecological problem that requires the recognition of bio-economic
 limits. This, of course, does not include the recent
brands of economics that have emerged to renew late capitalist
 expansion (e.g., monetarists, \dq{supply-side} economics).
The problem with these new instruments of economic guidance
 is that they have no awareness of the bio-economic
contexts of economic processes and seem to assume that the
price mechanism can create matter and energy, prevent ecological
 crises, and stop social conflicts that derive from the
inequal distribution of natural resources and the knowledge
and tools needed to develop them.\fnote{See Nicholas Georgesev-Roegen, \essaytitle{Inequality, Limits and Growth from a Bio-Economic Viewpoint} in \journaltitle{Review of Social Economy} V. 35, Dec. 1977.}
Not least of all in these cycles of economic and technical
pressures upon the earth is the growing desperation of newly
proletarianized workers everywhere. Increasing intensification
of social conflict and wars has led to increased militarization
and police violence. The \e{dis-}economies of this global 
economic rationalization expand with every new phase of
\dq{modernization} of the knowledge and tools used by \dq{under-developed} peoples.

This global dynamic of enforced domination of nature and
international divisions of labor is a story that can be told from
the point of view of the expanding system's \dq{stability}---or
from the point of view of coercions upon the subsistence
forms of human survival which it uproots (de-territorializes).\fnote{See Serge Moscovici, \essaytitle{The Re-Enchantment of the World} in Norman Birnbaum, \booktitle{Beyond the Crisis} (N.Y., Oxford University Press, 1977) for an analysis to which this paper is indebted.}
This global dynamic is created by the interests of the metropoles
over the interests of villagers, peasants, rural communities,
dependent unskilled workers, etc. on an international scale.
Rather than assume that the developed world's techniques are
essential for \dq{human survival} (which means more than minimal
 biological needs, since it involves cultural beliefs about
the good life), the encounters of developed-nondeveloped
worlds can be narrated from the point of view of those who
are nor yer dislocated from subsistence forms. The relevance
of this perspective is not to advocate a \dq{no-growth} and
\dq{de-modernization} ideology but to begin from a situation
where human survival demands an active participation in
nature and thus where a new form of \dq{development} can be
experimentally innovated. These contexts have the sense of
place (which mobile wage-laborers have usually lost) and
collective identity that is essential for active resistance to new
phases of modernization in the interest of outside structures.
Advocacy research that can demonstrate where the hidden
social costs of \dq{socializing} production imply increasing the
chances of de-territorialization (i.e., greater dependency) and
irreversible environmental destruction, and de-colonialization
movements can be indentified and supported. In these areas
experimental models of eco-development can and are being
created that discover multiple-use of local resources, identify
sustainable yields that meet the needs of local peoples, while
encouraging self-reliance and symbiosis between people and
nature.\fnote{Raymond Dasmann, \essaytitle{Eco-Development} in the \journaltitle{Planet Drum Review} Vol. 1 \#2, Winter 1981.} This means participation in the natural forces that
make life possible in ways which are compatible with their
permanent sustainability (e.g., renewal energy sources) both
locally and globally. Participation in nature does not mean
delusions of \dq{self-sufficiency,} or ascetic \dq{voluntary simplicity,}
or reactionary ideologies of \dq{survivalism,} but active
appropriation of technical knowledge of renewable energy,
food production, health care, full use of indigenous co-operative
forms as well as political networking with other groups.
Collectively these efforts form an alternative of eco-development
and \dq{reinhabitation.}\fnote{The term \dq{re-inhabitation} is taken from one of many local journals which are now advocating the watershed as the natural eco-development unit. The strategy is the use of a combination of oral history and local ecological research as a place identification approach. See Paul Ryan's \booktitle{Talking Wood: Living in the Passaic Watershed}, 1980 (Talking Wood, PO.Box 364, Pompton Lakes, N.J. 07442). (But the original use of the term was by Peter Berg in an article on \essaytitle{Re-Inhabitation of California} in \journaltitle{The Ecologist} in the early 1970's.)}

Thus, a sphere of emancipation not generally recognized is
latent in the \dq{ecology movement's} rejection of the existing
hierarchies of international and internal colonization of subsistence
forms of production and socialization. A democratization
 of technical learning would unify at the level of everyday
practice a problem-solving approach that is compatible with
household and local survival and the eco-system's carrying
capacity. This approach is already implied by efforts to create
counter-movements in science (such as the \dq{appropriate}
technology movement) and can be recognized in the American
 population shifts of the 1970' which signaled a significant
return to rural living. What is less visible is the growth of
subsistence exchange networks (the \dq{underground barter economy})
which increases the flexibility and availability of
resources to the many categories of subsistence life-styles.

To realize, as Ivan Illich's insights document, that the unrecognized
 pre-condition for the possibility of wage-labor is
\dq{shadow-work}---or the enforced forms of labor that complement
 wage-labor such as \dq{house-work,} the forced consumption
  of schooling, accreditation, or other activities required
for \dq{job-holding.} These forms of unpaid servitude emerged
simultaneously with the enclosures of commercial capitalism
which had created a major conflict of domestic and \dq{public}
spheres of existence. The result was a new economic interest
in the sex-coupling of female shadow-workers and male wage-workers
 that replaced more equitable forms of subsistence
work for both sexes.\fnote{See Ivan Illich, \booktitle{Shadow Work} (Boston, Marion Boyers, 1981).}

Illich's thesis is that the bifurcation of work in the modern
era into wage-labor and shadow-work, which has been
unnoticed by Marxists and Liberals, constitutes an intensification
of modern society's \dq{war against subsistence.} Marx's
notion of international capitalism forming an irreversible
context of world-history receives a significant contextualization
by Illich's naming of the form of domination that falls through
the Marxist categories. Marx effectively accepts Ricardo's
theory of the comparative advantage of an international specialization
of production, and in doing so, affirms the civilizing
impact of capital despite the exploitation of poor nations
by the national economics of the \dq{developed} world. That
unequal economic exchange creates dependencies internationally
(and within national economies) indicates that the
actual advantages of the higher productivity of capitalist
production and wage-labor must now be balanced by systematic
analysis of the real increase in use-values given the hidden
costs of shadow-work and ecological destruction. The costs
of shadow-work can be recognized as a major burden placed
upon the majorities within the \dq{developed world} too---in
the form of endless schooling for job-holding and long periods
of private accumulation for a capital-intensive household.
In so far as this can be documented, it will show that the real
dominations of modernity are the destructions of subsistence
activity and the enforced dependencies of wage-labor and
consumer lifestyles.

Subsistence activity begins with a self-reliance and self-determination
in the meeting of human needs that is also
aware of the co-evolutionary need for nature's patterns to
\dq{subsist} t0o. Adoption of subsistence strategies of adaptation
to the environment maximize social flexibility and ecological
 diversity, while also eluding the endless desire for new
commodities that seems to be the motivational glue of modern
 commodity-intensive worlds. What has been called the
\dq{counter-cultures} by both apologists and critics fails to grasp
their unique basis in subsistence production of use-values.
While sociological essayists condemn these practices as communal
ideologies that seek \dq{pseudo-\e{gemeinschaft}} or are
\dq{parasites} on the prevailing social systems, they fail to reflect
upon the split between wage-labor and shadow-work that their
own academic careers presuppose.

Eco-development and re-inhabitation movements are the
theory and practice that could make a difference for parts of
the \dq{third world} and for enclaves of the fourth world. Within
modern political states, the very same movements are often
viewed as \dq{de-centralization strategies.} But the more effective
 language is no longer socio-political but ecological concepts
  of bioregions, watersheds, and ecosystems. These units
represent real \dq{unmovable capital} which can be defended
against the forces that would commodify them as \dq{natural
resources} and abandon them to centralized management
decision-making processes. The point of indigenous, or
re-inhabitation settlement, is to claim the rights of inhabited
place against corporate natural resource planning as justifiable
resistance to colonially occupied territories. Here is where
\dq{mediating structures} are really needed that would provide
state resources for local employment to define multiple use
and sustained yield potentials of a bioregion as well as to
provide access to legal due process. Because \dq{property rights}
are basically the norms of use agreed upon by law, the strategy
of eco-development will require systematic transformation of
the norms of property use as part of the rights to liberty of
citizens. An ecologically rational society cannot emerge without
a politically concrete understanding of the need for extending
the normative regulations that protect the democratization
of social practice. Here is another area where a
counter-movement in the (social) sciences is a necessary precondition
for a realizable alternative future.

Critical social scientists beginning from the existing practice
of, say, the feminist or ecology movements, may make it
more possible to radicalize and guide experimental practice
by constructing models of democratization that anticipate
more universal and reflexive forms of learning. The existing
strategies for \dq{self-management} of productive organizations
could be recast in terms of the \dq{communicative rationalization}\fnote{For the notion of communicative rationalization, see Jurgen Habermas' \essaytitle{Science and Technology as Ideology} in \booktitle{Toward a Rational Society} (Boston, Beacon, 1970). However, this paper represents a critique of Habermas' instrumental concept of natural science as well as his orientation toward core nation-states of the West. For an account of his notion of critical theory, see my \booktitle{The Critique of Domination} (Boston, Beacon, 1974).}
of decision-making processes, and how these may be
more discursively open to participation. Societally the notion
of communicative democratization is also helpful for the
modeling of more open policy formation processes in which a
discursively formed debate could challenge the technocratic
suppression of publics, Immanent critiques of societal processes
of compromise and consensus formation could radicalize
existing political struggles for democratization in America
such as:
\begitems\style a
*   the forming of parallel structures that can provide advocacy services for depoliticized policy spheres;
* the forming of resource networks that can act collectively on local or wider issues;
*   the use of advocacy and network forms to support the creation of voluntary associations of all kinds that can empower people to solve their own problems.
\enditems
In these cases, analysis of the blocks to democratization can be measured against the openness of consensus achieved without force. A social ecological limit to the democratic forming of the goals of society rests upon the legitimacy of the \e{non-coerced} processes by which they are formed.

An overall consequence of this communicative notion of
democratization is to resolve the 19\textsuperscript{th} century antinomy of
socialist and anarchist principles of the political versus the
social revolutions. It makes possible a reconciliation of a
de-centralizing practice that increases local and\slash or regional
autonomy---while also providing a notion of rational consensus
formation which can be extended by the operations of
both scientific communities and socio-political processes. The
rationalization of communicative learning, like anarcho-communist
libertarianism, sees the dissolution of social force
that prevents the conscious resolution of conflicts as the \dq{mechanism}
for the creation of more appropriate forms of freedom.
 What has been missing in anarchist libertarianism is the
capacity to move beyond the heroism of the deed and anticipate more universalizable
forms of democratization. Conversely
what has been missing in orthodox Marxist \dq{productivism}
is a criterion for emancipation that goes beyond the 
self-validating ideology of \dq{socialist authority.} While anarchists
effectively view all past forms of \dq{justice} as corrupted and
destroyed and only the present authenticity of affinity-groups
as consistent with libertarian futures, they fail in their conception
of how these \dq{islands of liberation} relate to wider social
and political processes.\fnote{Yet there is a sense in which the anarchist position's notion that theory and practice is ultimately unified art the level of action which changes reality cannot be faulted. Especially in the American context, there is an affinity of anarcho-libertarianism and the historical symbols of independence, self-determination, and self-reliance which are, at least in origin, not reducible to possessive individualist idealizations of self-interested production for gain. These American practices were socially and ethically mediated by the ever-present American quest for \dq{community.} An anarchist practice still permeates the American movements for decentralization, ecology and appropriate technology, feminism, etc. There is also a unique amalgam of Old World utopian surplus and contemporary anarchist, neo-primitivist, and nativist symbols that simply mystifies Marxists---especially theoreticians who expect social relations to dance according to their notion of reason.}

\sec\nl

The dynamic of global development and the counter-potential
of eco-development and re-inhabitation defines a conflict potential
central to the current international economic development
as well as internal to core nation-states. For example in
the United States the energy crisis era has resulted in regions
that have been designated \dq{zones of national sacrifice} (by the
National Academy of Science). In these areas, such as
Appalachia and the American Indian reservations, from Mexico
to South Dakota, designation of such zones justifies energy
corporation colonization as a national necessity. The extensive
domination exercised by corporations over the life chances
of mountaineers and Indians has been hidden behind the
claims that these areas are the major coal and uranium resources
of the country. In both cases, the images of dq{backward cultures}
and the need to integrate the regions into the national
economy are used to justify a colonial practice thar basically
leaves the area's people more dependent and their land
irreversibly damaged. In both areas, resistance to ecological
destruction and re-affirmation of ethnic identity create movements
for protection of rural and\slash or tribal culture. These
areas (and others such as parts of the northwest) are the
internal third worlds of the United States and represent critical
bioregions where central economic policy directly contradicts
the needs of human survival. Here, as in other colonized
parts of the world, the possibility of \e{human} survival (and
ecosystem sustainability) does not depend upon administrative
and economic rationalizations, but upon the democratization
of knowledge and tools on the one hand and the
activation of rehabitation and decolonization movements on
the other.

The scope of a truly universalizable emancipatory practice
requires a systematic recognition of the ecologically sustainable
forms of production and appropriation of traditions. Both
economic liberalism and Marxist socialism remain hopelessly
rooted in 19\textsuperscript{th} century assumptions of nature as an infinite
reservoir of resources and infinitely manipulable as the progress
 of technical knowledge provides more and more power
over nature. These ideologies are equally blind to ecology,
subsistence forms, and the possibilities of the critical
re-appropriation of tradition. In the United States there are
potentialities for activating indigenous traditions that have a
libertarian cultural surplus for justifying the empowering of
people, the identification with place, and local and ethnic
identity.

This raises the issue of \dq{cultural nationalism} which the
left sees as identifications with particularistic identities that
are potentially \dq{reactionary.} In this light, the recent statement
by the Sioux Indian spokesman Russell Means at the
1980 Black Hills Survival Gathering voices a response to this
logic:

\Q{Revolutionary Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation
and perfection of the very industrial process which destroys
us all. It offers only to \dq{redistribute} the results---the money,
maybe\ld

So, in order for us to really join forces with Marxism, we American
Indians would have to accept the national sacrifice of our
homeland; we would have to commit cultural suicide\ld

\ld I hear revolutionary Marxists saying that the destruction of
the environment, pollution, and radiation will all be controlled\ld
Do they know how these things will be controlled? No, they
simply have faith science will find a way\ld\ Science has become
the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists; they
are truly inseparable\ld

All European tradition\ld\ has conspired to defy the natural order
of things. Mother Earth has been abused, \ld and this cannot go
on forever\ld\ Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment
will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full
circle\ld\ \e{That's} revolution, And that's a prophecy ot my people, of
the Hopi people\ld\ American Indians have been trying to explain
this to Europeans for centuries.\fnote{Russell Means, \essaytitle{For the World to Live, \sq{Europe} Must Die} in \journaltitle{Mother Jones}, Dec. 1980.}}

Other voices from internally colonized sectors of this
country speak the same vision, albeit in different traditional
symbols:

\Q{A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value,
work, conviviality, reverence, aspiration, It reveals the human
necessities and the human limits, It clarifies our inescapable
bonds to the earth and to each other\ld\ A culture cannot survive
long at the expense of either its agricultural or its natural sources. .
The word \dq{agriculture,} after all; does not mean \dq{agriscience,}
much less \dq{agribusiness.} It means \dq{cultivation of land.} And
\dq{cultivation} is at the root of the sense both of \dq{culture} and
\dq{cult.} The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture,
And these words come from an Indo-European root meaning
both \dq{to revolve} and \dq{to dwell.} To live, to survive on the earth,
to care for the soil and to worship, are all bound at the root to the
idea of a cycle\ld\ If we corrupt agriculture we corrupt culture, for
in nature and within certain invariable social necessities, we are
one body...\fnote{Wendell Berry, \booktitle{The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture} (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1977).}}

It is my contention that the Sioux spokesman and the poet
from Kentucky both speak for the same American future and
presuppose the same notion of time's order in nature. In tha
way they are both involved in the cultivation of an ecologically
 rational society, which a little reflection on time's order
in nature implies.