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Title: Ecological Catastrophe Author: Pelşîn Tolhildan Date: October 31, 2018 Language: en Topics: ecology, social ecology, nature, green anarchism, Komun Academy Source: Retrieved on 2019-10-10 from https://komun-academy.com/2018/10/31/ecological-catastrophe-nature-talks-back/
Would a human being set fire to their own house? Yes, they would! Would
a human cut the tree banch they sit on? Yes, indeed! Would humanity, as
often repeated in Yasar Kemal’s novel “Ince Memed”, pull a knife on the
table they eat on? Oh yes! Would a human being grow up to call the
mother womb that gave birth to them “savage”? Definitely! Until that
fire comes to surround them, until that branch falls on their head,
until that knife touches their bone, until that nest completely closes
to them so that they are left breathless, human beings would, have done,
and unfortunately still continue to do all of the aforementioned things.
Of course not all of a sudden, but every since they became victims of
human-made mentalities and systems. Now we can call it the “ecology
issue” or we can call it nature teaching us a lesson, in any case we are
paying the price for our betrayal on nature.
Every phenomenon whose value we do not appreciate makes us pay the
price. The bigger the value whose value we do not recognize, the bigger
the price we pay for betraying it. If it is our own nature whose value
we do not appreciate, the nature into which we are born, this price will
turn into global warming and burn us, it will become a forest fire and
roast us, it will become a flood and drown us, it will turn into ice and
freeze us, it will become contamination and poison us. And for every day
that we ignore nature’s calls to solve the problem, death will hits us
even harder. But has it always been the case that we did not recognize
the importance of nature? Is this how we developed? How could we become
the enemies and killers of the oceans, forests, lands, and air that have
given birth to us? And how could the same nature, which is our birth
nest, turn into fire raining down on us, into flood, and into poison
that throws up on us? Life is still in nature’s hands, just like death.
But when and why did nature’s start proving to its own children, who
kill life, its own ability to kill? Does nature have a mind that makes
fun of our mind which considers itself as the supreme one among “God’s
highest creations”? Our soul creates disasters when being hurt and it is
a part that comes from this nature – so perhaps, when we hurt this
nature’s soul, it takes revenge by destroying! But why? And how? These
are now questions that no human who lives on this world can escape from
any longer. Understanding where, when and how this harm and the
resulting process of having to pay the price for it, have begun, must be
the responsibility of every human who wants to live in freedom. So in
order to understand the issue, let’s start at the roots. Let us have a
look at what kind of mentality the mentality was that we have lost and
how it related to nature:
‘‘Natural society’s mentality world relies on an animated understanding
of nature. It believes that every phenomenon in nature has a spirit.
Spirits are understood as features that secure aliveness. In the totemic
religions the concept of an external, ruling deity apart from the self
is not yet developed. Great effort is made to be in harmony with
nature’s spirits. Failure to do so is similar to death. When this is the
fundamental perspective on nature, an extraordinary need for harmony
emerges. According to the most fundamental principle of ecology, we are
face to face with life. Effort is made to avoid societal life from going
against the natural forces. When constructing religions and ethics, the
most fundamental principle is the harmony with the environment and the
natural forces. This principle is so deeply rooted in the mentality that
it is valued as a religious and moral tradition. In fact, this is the
principle of life’s natural flow manifesting itself in the human
society. There is no being that does not consider its environment.
Short-term deviations are overcome in a stream within extrenal and
internal conditions; otherwise, by being completely left out of the
system, they cease their existence. The importance of the principle of
ecology for human society derives from this fundamental feature of
nature.
In natural society, all members of the sociality organically participate
in the entirety of life. Everyone is a genuine, essential part of
society. Belief and perceptions are common. The concepts of lying and
cheating have not yet developed. It is as though they speak the same
childish language with nature. To dominate nature, to abuse it is the
biggest sin, taboo, and evil against their ethics and beliefs, their
newly developed societal rules. What was turned upside down in the
slave-holding statist society is this religious and ethical fundamental
principle”.
However, humanity increasingly lost touch with this ethical
understanding:
The rise of the slave-holding statist society constitutes a fundamental
break with this vital principle. The development of the environmental,
ecological question along with this particular direction that society
has taken is thus fundamentally linked to the beginning of civilization.
The civilization of classed society is a society at conflict with
nature. The main reason for this phenomenal question has to do with the
counterrrevolutionary slaveholding mentality paradigm of this new
society” [1]
Indeed, the break from natural society and the transition to the slaver
mentality-paradigm have come at a heavy price. Once the world’s ties
were loosened and removed, the bonds between nature and social life
tansformed from a harmonic, mutually nourishing relationship to a
subject-object relation. The image of a mother-woman, who feeds a child
with one breast and an animal cub with the other breast has become
laughable, even imaginary in our eyes today. In the western
enlightenment tradition, we started to say: “There is no difference
between the cries of an animal or the grinding of the machine when
experimenting”. The same mentality reached horrific dimensions in the
hands of the church in the tortures of witches, the wise women. They
too, became objects of limitless science. “The most realistic way of
looking for the roots of the increasingly deepening ecological crisis,
which develops parallel to the crisis of the social system, is to
consider the beginning of civilization. The more alienation within
society happens due to domination within society, the more the
alienation from nature is realized.” [2] The human has become cruel
towards nature by oppressing its own species:
“Especially the scientific method developed by Francis Bacon constituted
an attempt to enforce an order that would have an rationalistic and
scientific effect on nature. Similar to the determination of the
movement of planets, this scientific method required the extraction of
nature from its spirit in order to implement rationalistic
methodological processes. Carolyn Merchant, in her book ‘The Death of
Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution’ claims that it was
in this age when nature was identified with woman and that along with
Machiavelli, scientists like Bacon started expressing their desire to
oppress ‘irrational’ (woman-like) nature. In fact, Bacon used the
analogy of the interrogation of witches to argue for the scientific
methodology of the extraction of ‘truth’ from nature. He wrote: ‘In
order to observe nature’s adventures, there is no other way than to
force it into a corner. That is the only way to rule it. According to
Merchant, ‘nature is seen as a woman who takes orders from man and
operates under his authority’” [3].
The result of this struggle in the name of conquering irrationality
under the banner of reason was complete irrationality in turn. It is out
of discussion that in the name of “obtaining the truth”, truth itself
was betrayed. After our mentality broke away from natural society’s
mentality, the name of the societal system changed but its mentality did
not. It is a mentality that breaks from natural society, betrays itself
and nature, and every day cuts the tree branch it sits on. It does not
matter whether we call this mentality formation dominant, statist,
slaveholding, feudal or capitalist. All of these together constitute a
break from natural society and nature. They make up the opposite pole to
natural society, in other words, they are anti-nature. They are
anti-life, anti-human. Thus they are anti-ecological. If sociality and
nature managed to live together for thousands of years in harmony, it
means that human, in fact the human of natural society, proved this
reality: The human is not the opposite of the same nature it came from,
on the contrary, it is nature’s very own child. And thus, they can live
togther without eradicating each other. Thus, contrary to the long
imposition of western mentality, neither nature is savage, nor does
human need to survive by fighting against and conquer this “savagery”.
This is a philosophical lie which tries to break the truth into
subject-object dichotomies, incites conflict, and aims to perpetuate the
hegemonic system as eternal. It is a story of a conscious struggle by
hegemonic systems to alienate humans and nature from each other. This
story of alienation has attained an irreversible structure under
capitalism. Everybody was turned into a subject of this massacre on
nature in the name of bravery, in the name of achieving victory in the
war against the “wild”. Now it is the turn of this story’s “object” to
speak. Now, it is talking. And every day, it gives us the message that
we need to take it seriously. Whether we see it or not, now the word
belongs to nature. This word cries that it no longer wants to be the
object of this story:
If we take a look at internet searches related to thousands of recent
news items on “environment” or “ecology”, while keeping in mind that
such searches can only scratch the surface of the real extent of our
earth’s ecological disaster, it is easy to hear this outcry. Dams and
other infrastructres that swallow natural beauties, nuclear plants,
fossil fuel energy sources, forest fires due to wars or climate change,
petrol contamination of water and soil, chemical waste dumpings,
deforestation, intoxication of soil, water and air due to gold
cyanidation, the global food crisis and the development of GMOs, the
dangerous disposal of medication, lack of access to clean drinking
water, greenhouse gases related to industrial agriculture, extinction of
species, mined territories, eartquakes, activated volcanoes, tsunamis,
the emergence of illnesses, the disappearance of natural environments in
favor of cities and factories, acid rain… and perhaps many other
phenomena we may not even be aware of and which have caused ecological
disasters by human hand. Extending this list not only depresses us, but
the multiple dimensions of the problem is also illustrative of nature’s
mysterious self-defense power.
Nature has an evolutionary character that has been in action for
millions of years. This is not about the fittest exterminating the less
fit. Perhaps it is true that the less fit decrease in numbers. However,
the smallest organisms to the great ecosystems in nature arrange, adapt
and change themselves according to changing conditions. In other words,
nature resists. It creates its own mechanims to defend itself. Or the
human-caused issues upset nature’s balance and result in catastophes
that bring about great changes. While humans tried to conquer and
dominate nature and to engage in a competition to show nature who is the
master, they forgot a fairly simple phenomenon. Nature was their home,
their birth nest, it was the life atmosphere to which humans owe their
bread, water, their very existence and happiness. “The fundamental
reason for ecological problems is the ruling power rendering an
anti-natural life possible through its tyranny and lies. By denying
nature’s role in life and by replacing it with fake deities and
creators, it is possible to call nature ‘blind force’”. [4] But the eyes
and hearts that were so focused on profit ambitions remained oblivious
to this naked reality. While the belief was held that nature has been
made mute after all these attacks, the one who was forced on their knees
was the human in the end. In a way, nature managed to express itself in
many ways, while it was the humans to swallow their tongue. In order to
see the ways in which we pay the price for destroying the right to live
of the same nature we owe our life to, let us have a brief look at some
natural disaster news at the time when this article was first written
(2009–2010):
Experts claim that the flood in Pakistan and the extreme heat in Russia
are linked to the extraordinary impacts of global warming. Due to flood
and landslides, more than 700 people in China, more than 1.600 people in
Pakistan, more than 130 people in India have been killed. Thousands of
people disappeared. Millions of people lost their homes. In the smog and
dust that covers Moscow and which resulted in drought, toxic material
has been discovered. In the fires that have started in more than 600
different areas, 50 people in Russia have been killed. The fires started
to affect the military areas so that the explosive materials in these
regions were carried to other areas by the authorities. In Chile, 1.5
million homes were destroyed, the number of disappeared people rose to
300. Chile’s president Bachelet claimed that he could not find the words
to describe the 8.8 level earthquake and the catastrophe it caused. In a
country with a population of 16 milion, at least 2 million were affected
by the earthquake. Rescue attempts continue in Italy’s north, where an
earthquake took the lives of 250 people. In the earthquake, 15 thousand
buildings were rendered inoperable. It has been reported that the bush
fires that have been continuing in the south of Australia for days have
been caused by arson. Fires continue still in 20 different places. The
number of deaths might increase to 230. Global warming is melting the
glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is considered world heritage. The
forest fires in Greece cannot be brought under control. The fire that
started near Athens is approaching the city center. Due to the
increasing fire, strengthened by the wind, a state of emergency has been
declared.
Things have only worsened ever since. More recently, a scientific report
by the WWF revealed that 60% of animal populations have been wiped out
by humanity since 1970 with disastrous effects on nature and its human
children. It seems that ecological catastrophe has advanced to such a
degree that it would take up to 7 million years for nature to recover
even if destruction would be halted now. Entire species are predicted to
die out, countless hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires and glacier
meltings are anticipated. Experts speak of a “climate genocide”. The
most affected humans of these developments are in the Global South, in
particular indigeneous and rural communities, whose relationship to
nature is symbiotic and organic. The ecological crisis is also caused by
global arms trade and likewise wars are often triggered by changes in
the climate, due to unsustainable capitalist interests in natural
resources. Yet, states and companies, the main culprits of ecological
catastrophe consciously withdraw from legal and international
responsibilities and resort to means of denying the obvious,
disastrously approaching death of life. As if to summon the end of the
world, they announce further destruction of natural habitats and the
exploitation of life. And there are more news items about bigger and
smaller ecological disasters and catastrophes that are not include here.
Is it possible that humans call human-made catastrophes “natural
disaster”, in order to cover up their own guilt? Or perhaps, by calling
these disasters “God’s plan”, they try to find a divine partner in
crime? In reality, no disaster is able to grow this much and claim so
many lives, without the impact of humans. Indeed, human-made industry,
technology, wars, weapons (chemical, biological or any other kind of
weaponry), overpopulation and many other developments or inventions burn
nature, and nature burns back. The more it gets destroyed through human
hand, it destroys back. The more it gets massacred by humans, it brings
death to humanity.
These are neither expressions of a pessimistic point of view, nor do
they reflect the propaganda of a science fiction hero that is looking
for a piece of land to start a new social life with the seeds in their
hands after all the lands have been eradicated. Maybe these catastrophes
may not have impacted all of us individually yet. Perhaps we have not
yet seen hundreds of people die at once in front of our eyes. But
everybody who lives on this planet needs to know that the human-made
catastrophes are as close to us as are our breath, water and bread, even
as the blood running in our verins. As always, we are under nature’s
siege. But this nature is no longer the natural nature of thousands of
years ago. This nature is a nature whose nature has been manipulated.
That is why its siege is unlike its mother nest. We are in the siege of
a nature that has been hurt, divided, defiled, poisoned, harmed and made
to bleed. Of course, in cases when nature seemed defenseless against
humans, there have been times where it brought disasters in turn. But
what was the difference? The nature of that nature had not yet been
played with. Through certain observations, humans were able to more or
less identify and estimate the location, time, extent of such disasters
and act accordingly. But nowadays we are not even aware of how we
exactly harm nature as humans. Who knows how many nuclear tests there
are? How much have our seas, our lands been contaminated by petrol or
toxic material? We don’t know exactly the amount of greenhouse gases and
carbon contamination. Who would know the biodiversity and ecosystems
that were eliminated by the soldier hands that also burned down the
forests of Kurdistan? In short, there is an uncontrolable attack on
nature by humans. That is why perhaps nature will strike back with a
horrible surprise through a series of uncontrollable disasters that we
cannot anticipate. Our aim is neither to demonize humans, nor to
advocate for a protection of nature that is seperate from the human and
society. We merely discuss a factual reality that was designed by human
hand, mind, and action, perhaps by lacking the knowledge over the
importance of time.
At the beginning of this writing, we mentioned the development of the
ecological issue with the rise of the slave-holding system. But those
concerned with ecological problems are aware that the system that has
deepened and further led these issues to insustainability is capitalism.
“Europe’s individualism has come to embody the massacre of the society
and its ecology. The capitalist system’s establishment of its dominance,
its move from individuality to individualism, not only reversed social
gains, but also caused the biggest ecological deviation in history” [5].
Ecological issues and their sources have been discussed through a
variety of philosophical, societal, eco-feminist and many other
perspectives and have thus become visible as a serious problem for years
now. Perhaps the real problem then is how much this problem is being
felt. This concerns the real powers of the society. Because when the
real forces that make up society start to sense this problem, a large
part of the solution will have been achieved. Because “The actual
ecological phenomenon is to prevent the relationship between nature and
society to become a gap. If this gap is not closed as soon as possible,
the society will turn into dinosaurs”[6]. When we look at the issue from
this perspective, we can make a global effort to sense the problem and
bring it to the agenda.
The World Social Forum’s slogan “Another World is Possible”, the UN’s
climate conferences, locally organized free ecological forums, social
urban movements, the agreement of big countries on issues like reducing
carbon intensity, countries’ discussions on bio-security, the creation
of ecological collectives, hundreds of thousands of activists around the
world risking their lives to draw attention to ecological issues, the
discussions of eco-socialists and eco-feminists, the organization of
ecology festivals, UNESCO compiling a list on endangered world heritage,
sustainable energy conferences, the slogan “The dead don’t wear gold” of
those whose soil has been contaminated, and thousands of actions,
events, organizations, work, increasing awareness and activism are all
signs of an effort to close this gap between nature and society.
However, when considering the size of the catastrophe we are facing,
these inititatives remain dispersed and insufficient. Let us look at the
call made by an ecology site: “The ecological crisis is not a
coincidental feature of capitalism. It is in the DNA of the system. It
is not possible to resolve through reforms this incessant hunger, the
desire to multiply profits perpetually. The only thing that capitalists
can think of when considering the ecological crisis is how much more
profit they can make out of it. Therefore, the struggle against the
ecological crisis cannot succeed until the capitalist system is
removed.”
Indeed, the mentality of the solution is important. To create a common
ecological mindset in the face of the capitalist, civilizationist
mentality that created ecological destruction means to organize and
mobilize all of these efforts and bring about a faster and more
efficient intervention. Abdullah Öcalan’s statement that “the revolution
of the 21^(st) century is ecological” not only stresses the extent of
the solution, but also its importance, as well as the idea that the
crisis is indeed resolvable when the solutions are implemented. This
statement is also important to understand and expose the cleverness of
market circles and their views that the global ecological crisis can be
resolved within capitalism or through reforms. When we look at the
effects of the problem on our lives, even if roughly, it is clear that a
revolutionary viewpoint and practice is necessary. In order to see this,
the problem must be approached in an ethical way. Because if our real
standard in our attitude towards nature is the natural society, and if
natural society is the stem cell of the ethical-political society; our
perspective on the resolution of ecological issues must contain an
ethical dimension: “It is not possible to defend the rationality, ethics
of any societal system that does not unify with nature. The reason for
the system being overcome in terms of rationality and morality is the
fact that it is in the greatest conflict with nature. The relationship
between the chaos experienced by the capitalist societal system and
environmental catastrophe is dialectical. Only the exit from the system
can overcome the radical contradictions with nature. It is clear that
environmental movements alone cannot overcome this contradictory
character. On the other hand, an ecological society necessitates a moral
transformation as well. The anti-ethical system of capitalism can only
be overcome with an ecological attitude. The ethics-conscience
relationship necessitates an empathetic and sympathetic spirituality.
This in turn can only carry meaning with a competent ecological
equipment. It is friendship with nature, it is the belief in natural
religion. As such, it means to re-unite with the natural organic society
with a new and awakened consciousness. A societal consciousness devoid
of an ecological consciousness cannot help but dissolve and corrupt, as
seen in the case of realsocialism. Ecological consciousness is
fundamentally an ideological consciousness. It is like the bridge
between the borders between philosophy and ethics. Only if the politics
that aim to save us from the contemorary crisis are ecological, it can
lead us towards a right societal system” [7].
“No matter how small, there are the remains of natural society in
everybody” [8]. Perhaps this means to look at our inner mirror when
looking for solutions. Only if everybody turns towards this inner mirror
to examine one’s own responsibilities, consciousness and actions,
ecological problems, and nature’s mysterious, extraordinary existence
can be felt. With this in mind, we must not allow capitalism to
propagate individualist solutions to what requires a global system
change.
[1] – Abdullah Öcalan, 2004, Bir Halkı Savunmak, Devletçi Toplum –Köle
Toplumun Oluşumu, p.33
[2] – Abdullah Öcalan, 2004, Bir Halkı Savunmak, Toplumsal Ekolojiye
Dönüş, p.133
[3] – Josephine Donovan, 1985, Feminist Theory: The Intellectual
Traditions
[4] – Abdullah Öcalan, 2004, Bir Halkı Savunmak, Toplumsal Ekolojiye
Dönüş, 134
[5] – Abdullah Öcalan, 2004, Bir Halkı Savunmak, Toplumda Komünal ve
Demokratik Değerlerin Tarihsel Özü, p.95
[6] – Demokratik ve Ekolojik Toplum İçin Bir Taslak (Proje) Düşüncesi,
p.112
[7] – Abdullah Öcalan, 2004, Bir Halkı Savunmak, Toplumsal Ekolojiye
Dönüş, p.136
[8] – Imralı prison island notes