[p2p-research] Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology; Bookchin vs. Catton

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Some more history on the Catton/Malthusian vs. optimistic perspectives, by 
Murray Bookchin:
   "Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology"
   http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/socecovdeepeco.html

Essentially, it paints Catton in with the crowd of "Deep Ecology"/"Deep 
Malthusians" who advocate regressive social policies and ignore the social 
dimensions that "Social Ecology" tries to grapple with to make the world a 
better place.

One critical section is:
"""
In failing to emphasize the uniqueness, characteristics, and functions of 
human societies, or placing them in natural evolution as part of the 
development of life, or giving full, indeed unique due to human 
consciousness as a medium for the self-reflective role of human thought as 
nature rendered self-conscious, deep ecologists essentially evade the social 
roots of the ecological crisis. They stand in marked distinction to writers 
like Kropotkin who outspokenly challenged the gross inequities in society 
that underpin the disequilibrium between society and nature. Deep ecology 
contains no history of the emergence of society out of nature, a crucial 
development that brings social theory into organic contact with ecological 
theory. It presents no explanation of---indeed, it reveals no interest 
in---the emergence of hierarchy out of society, of classes out of hierarchy, 
of the State out of classes--in short, the highly graded social as well as 
ideological development that gets to the roots of the ecological problem in 
the social domination of women by men and of men by other men, ultimately 
giving rise to the notion of dominating nature in the first place.
...
All of which brings us as social ecologists to an issue that seems to be 
totally alien to the crude concerns of deep ecology: natural evolution has 
conferred on human beings the capacity to form a second (or cultural) nature 
out of first (or primeval) nature. Natural evolution has not only provided 
humans with ability but also with the necessity to be purposive interveners 
into first nature, to consciously change first nature by means of a highly 
institutionalized form of community. It is not alien to natural evolution 
that over billions of years the human species has emerged, capable of 
thinking in a sophisticated way. Nor is it alien for that species to develop 
a highly sophisticated form of symbolic communication or that a new kind of 
community---institutionalized, guided by thought rather than by instinct 
alone, and ever changing---has emerged called society. Taken together, all 
of these human traits---intellectual, communicative, and social---have not 
only emerged from natural evolution and are inherently human; they can also 
be placed at the service of natural evolution to consciously increase biotic 
diversity, diminish suffering, foster the further evolution of new an 
ecologically valuable life-forms, and reduce the impact of disastrous 
accidents or the harsh effects of mere change.
"""

Ultimately, that is perhaps the essential difference between Catton's world 
view and my world view. :-) That is why I see that there may be solutions 
(as socially difficult as they may be to encourage) while Catton has already 
written humanity and technology off as a bad idea.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/