My co-author, Jim Coffman, sent me this on facebook .Ecocide: The Psychology of Environmental Destruction Here's what he said:
"It's good to know that other scholars have independently come to the same conclusion that Don and I came to in our book Global Insanity, which is that the wicked problem faced by humanity is largely psychological (which makes it far more difficult to solve than if it were merely technological--think of how hard it is to change an individual's psychology, then try to imagine how to do the same for billions of individuals)."
The report is by Steve Taylor, Ph.D. who is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of Back to Sanity (link is external). www.stevenmtaylor.com
Recent scientific reports about climate change make grim reading. A paper published in The Economic Journal by the respected UK economist Lord Stern states that the models previously used to calculate the economic effects of climate change have been ‘woefully inadequate.’ They have severely underestimated the scale of the threat, which will "cost the world far more than estimated."
What makes the situation even more serious is that climate change is just one of the environment-related problems we face. Others include the destruction and pollution of ecosystems, the disappearance of other species (both animal and plant), water shortage, over-population, and the rapacious consumption of resources.
Read on below for more.
Jim and I wrote a follow up paper which should be coming out any time now in Telos. Here is the abstract:
In our book Global Insanity we argued that the existential predicament faced by humanity is a predictable consequence of Western Enlightenment thinking and the resulting world model, whose ascendance with the Industrial Revolution entrained development of the global consumer Economy that is destroying the biosphere. This situation extends from a dominant mindset based on the philosophy of reductionism. The problem was recognized and characterized by Robert M. Hutchins. In 1985, Hutchins ideas were discussed by Robert Rosen in Chapter 1 of Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical & Methodological Foundations. Building on Hutchins’ ideas, Rosen laid the foundation for an entire new, non-reductionist paradigm, which he called “complexity theory”. This new paradigm is what we are further developing here. One has to recognize that a paradigm shift is needed to overcome the entrenched mindset and world model that reductionism has created.
Here we explore the myriad interconnected ways—psychological, social, cultural, political, and technological—that the Western world model and consumer economy works as a complex system to thwart, neutralize, or co-opt for its own ends any effort to bring about the kind of radical change that is needed to avert global ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. This resistance to change stems from the need, inherent in the Western model, to continually grow the consumer economy. The media’s continued portrayal of consumptive economic growth as a good thing, the widely held belief that the Economy is paramount, and current political and technological trends all manifest the system’s active resistance to change. From the perspective of the mature economic system, any work that does not serve to grow the Economy is counterproductive, and viewed as unnecessary, a luxury, or subversive. The potential for real change (i.e. toward creation of a better system) is thus inversely related to the viability of the Economy, which will eventually decline as the system develops into senescence. To the extent that the fragile metastability of senescence affords opportunity for radical change, economic decline can be viewed as a hopeful sign. But taking maximum advantage of that opportunity will be extraordinarily difficult, as it will require widespread recognition of the problem, major voluntary sacrifice by the relatively large numbers of people who still benefit from the system (including what remains of the ‘middle class’), and concerted 'grassroots' efforts. It can be expected that the system will resist those efforts until the end, becoming increasingly reliant on media-enabled distraction and divisive politics, as well as violent coercion, to maintain itself. Investment in education and science is widely touted as necessary for improving our situation, but this is misguided as long as the educational system and scientific enterprise continue to work in collusion with the larger system, as they currently do. Until the reductionist mindset and world model that drives the system is effectively challenged, there can be little hope for the kind of change needed to avert the catastrophic collapse of civilization.
Those of you who have been reading my diaries know a good bit about this. This new reference from Jim is just one more of a growing number of authors who have reached essentially the same conclusion about our future without the deeper analysis of why we are in this situation.
The task ahead of us is by no means a simple one. Slogans and shallow models will not suffice. We need a very sweeping paradigm shift.
As a scientist, my training was totally lacking in anything close to Epistemology. I was taught a method and never asked to think about where that method sits in the broader context of human knowledge. I was typical and the consequences of this go very deep.
The relationship between epistemology and human psychology is not all that clear. There is a built in circularity here that takes the discussion outside of anything science can handle. The reductionist philosophy, namely that any complex reality can be understood by reducing it to parts, is a product of science and it has only been challenged by a few who are quickly marginalized. This is absurd because complex realities involve myriad interactions between the parts and these interactions are lost with the system's reduction to parts. We are so ready to accept some sort of machine metaphor for any real world system because a machine is well understood in terms of its parts. Unfortunately machines are constructs that have limited realization in the real world.
Technology and reductionism go well together. Hence we have the myth that all problems can be solved through technology. This is a very destructive myth as we are learning all to fast in these times.
The complexity of the human mind defies machine like reasoning and is totally out of reach of reductionist methods. You will see more and more scholarship that recognizes these basic ideas. The question is whether or not it is already too late to make the paradigm shift. Time will tell.