Ecology Democracy Utopia Notes

Notes taken while participating in the “Ecology, Democracy, Utopia” course given by the institute for Social Ecology in Winter of 2020.

Unit 1: What is Social Ecology

Chodorkoff lecture

Social ecology principles

Theory + practice = praxis

epistemology
politics
ethics

Temporality

Past

History and natural history.
Present

Critical, politically and ethically engaged.
Future

Utopian, visionary.

Principles

No nature/man dichotomy.
Instead, stratification

1st nature
beings adapt to environment

2nd nature
adapting environment to beings

2rd nature
harmonization between beings and environment

Past

1st Nature

Non-hierarchical

hierarchy
Institutionalized relationship of command and control, ultimately resting on violent coercion.
Mutualistic
Tendency towards diversity, consciousness, freedom
- diversity and resilience e
  - diverse ecosystems are the most resilient
Spontaneity
- mutations
- play

2nd Nature

Present

Need to critique root problems. I.e. hierarchical structures, capitalism, etc.

Future

Mainstream academic:: futurism

A branch of systems theory?
Formulaic, mathematical approach, cannot break out of existing framwork.

Social ecology:: utopian

Utopia

Eu topia
good place

Ou topia
no place
Infinite task, horizon of possibility
Has to be informed by our ethics
- principles for creating ethical society (guides direction)
Point of orientation

Questions

TODO Are, e.g., beavers considered to be part of 2nd nature?

They transform and adapt their environments to their being.

TODO Hierarchy and dependence

Chodorkoff suggests that lions are not “kings” (i.e., at the top of some hierarchy), because they are dependent on other creatures. But dependency seems orthogonal to hierarchy. There is nothing about hierarchy that requires higher ranks to be independent of lower ranks.

TODO Why can’t there be hierarchy in 1st nature?

Is this by principle, or just an empirical fact? Why couldn’t we see hierarchy take shape in varying degrees? Is it because, by definition, the institutional can only pertain to 2nd nature?
So what if there is some hierarchy in 1st nature? We are not committing the naturalistic fallacy, right? So mightn’t we see some hierarchical structures but just rationally, consciously, decide that it is not something we want to support/encourage/propagate.

TODO Why should ethical ideals/models be based on natural fact?

Why do we have to derive from what 1st nature is?

TODO How did the hierarchical/explotative system of 2nd nature arise?

How did this arise? It seems some aspect of 1st nature must have the capacity for “pathological” developments. So we can’t simply derive our telo and ethos from the dynamics of 1st nature.

We have to make a determination about which dynamics we think are promising, healthy, harmonious, etc.

Synechepedia