21st Century, Faction

On Saving the Planet: Beyond Signifiers

9 Comments

The problems of pollution, deforestation, climate change, species extinction, and other concerns for the health of our planet drive many a worthwhile initiative. But typically these initiatives are framed by the dominant paradigms of the modern and postmodern, and trapped by their limitations. To go beyond the impasse, we need a new paradigm.

As moderns, we have for the most part accepted the paradigm of Cartesian dualism, with all that it implies for our instrumental, technological approach to the world.

As postmoderns, we have for the most part accepted that in place of reality we have only signifiers; that we are prisoners of discourse. This to accept a mediated version of reality that is authenticated by being public. We have also discovered that any number of realities can be so authenticated, and this has left us, apparently, without reality.

But our true connection with the world is more immediate than that. We are sensitive and alive to it, connecting with it and interacting with it in many more ways than the linguistic or the literary or the “text.” The immediacy of our connection with the other, the basic phenomenon of experience, is what is real.

As the modern begins to consume itself and become the postmodern, this is the way forward: to go beyond the elusive public reality of the text, and to embrace the reality of private experience, not only as an idea, but as a way of being, a way of interacting with the world, meaning everything from people, to animals, to plants, to landscapes, even desert and rock. These mean inexpressible things to us because we share their being.

This is the true solution to the problem of climate change and other difficulties with our relationship to nature: not to ask whether they are real, or what the discourses and truths of science or economics or politics have to say about them, in search of some instrumentalist way of managing the problem; but to tackle the problem at the root, by partaking as beings in the immediacy of all other beings we sense around us. In this way we may hope to prevent the mechanistic neglect, or blindness, or selfishness toward nature and the other that has brought us to our current condition. This is only to say: to be poetic, to appreciate Nature, as Spinoza or Whitehead might suggest; but in way that relates our own being, as Kierkegaard might remind us. (To be fair, all of them would insist on bringing God into it.)

Nature being “red in tooth and claw,” we must also bring a humane—but not uniquely human—moral dimension to the relationship, a dimension of engagement and concern, of love and care. Whatever underwrites that dimension, so clearly part of our daily experience, must be the God we needed to invent.

Related Topics

Public and Private
Self and Other
The Rise of Monocularism
Wittgenstein, Spinoza, and Rovelli: Language and Intelligibility
Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: A Review

9 thoughts on “On Saving the Planet: Beyond Signifiers”

  1. Dear AJOwens,

    Hello! Your post in very well done and has been quoted in my multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary post entitled “SoundEagle in Debating Animal Artistry and Musicality” at http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/soundeagle-in-debating-animal-artistry-and-musicality/

    Being simultaneously witty and serious about a number of outstanding issues, the said post actually ventures far beyond whatever its title may suggest or mean to any reader, especially in the very long “Conclusions” section. Please note the ISEA Model that I have devised to analyse and describe the Instrumental, Spiritual, Pro-Environment and Pro-Animal/Plant perspectives.

    I would like to inform you that you might need to use a desktop or laptop computer with a large screen to view the rich multimedia contents available for heightening your multisensory enjoyment at my blog, which could be too powerful and feature-rich for iPad, iPhone, tablet or other portable devices to handle properly or adequately.

    May you find this late autumn and the rest of the year very much to your liking and highly conducive to your writing, thinking and blogging!

    Like

    Reply

      1. Dear AJOwens,

        You are very welcome to leave any amount of comments on my blog, should you wish to provide feedback, submit critiques or communicate with me on the styles and contents of my posts and pages at their respective comment sections.

        Like

        Reply

    2. I do have some thoughts about the style and content of your posts and pages. The research and the ideas are impressive and engaging. The presentation is extremely rich, as opposed to my own comparatively minimal style. There is no particular post of yours where I can make this sort of general comment (as far as I know), so I’ll talk about it here.

      By presentation, I mean not only the generous graphics, the choice of colours or fonts, the arrangement of blocks, the incorporation of video and music, and other visual and auditory elements, but also the unfolding of ideas, the exhaustive lists of examples or instances, which strive to be comprehensive at every point. I do use a large-screen monitor, and in fact my own blog is better suited to viewing on large displays, but even so, I would be more comfortable reading content of this depth in a simplified and comparatively boring format, such as a book-style PDF. This is probably just a testament to my own preferences and experiences.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. Dear AJOwens,

        What a delightful comment and generous compliment you have conferred on SoundEagle! Thank you very much.

        Since your general comment pertains to my blog, there is indeed one perfect place where it belongs, namely, the “About” page at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/about/

        You can simply copy and paste your comment and perhaps add more if you have something extra to say. Thank you in anticipation. I shall then endeavour to reply to you with a bespoke comment there.

        Please be informed that music will automatically start playing as soon as the “About” page is loaded. The music is one of my own compositions that I orchestrated and recorded some years ago. Please enjoy!

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  2. Thanks for the link to your related discussion. I have to confess I didn’t read everything; there’s a lot to take in. Human nature being what it is, I just focused on your reference to my post. It’s a concise and accurate summary, and it fits well with the context of your own observations.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Dear AJOwens,

      Though some of my posts and pages are very long, the navigational menus provided in each of those posts or pages can help you to jump to the major sections of the post or page instantly so that you can resume reading at any point of the post or page over multiple sessions in your own time. I look forward to reading your feedback and thoughts there.

      In addition, if you think or realize that there are certain spots within certain post(s) or page(s) of mine may benefit from quoting certain passages from any of your posts, please kindly inform me by submitting comments to the particular post(s) or page(s). Thank you.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a comment