L
lynnvinc
Guest
There’s been some anti-environmentalism expressed here at CAF and also in Western society.
I suggest this comes from the same Enlightenment roots that founded American society and opposed the Catholic Church, and is based on old and faulty concepts of person and society.
While there has been much good in Enlightenment philosophy that corrected several evils – it brought us democracy and human rights – it has been more and more abused in modern times. I’m thinking the extreme tea-partyism that rejects Catholic social teaching is an example of it.
The concept of person and society promoted by the 18th c. Enlightenment philosophers was of original, free and autonomous individuals – independent of others and free of societal (and Church) restrictions and having total RIGHTS – who came together to form society to reduce inter-human conflict and secure other protections, only giving up a tiny portion of their freedoms as necessary for society to function. And then kings and the Catholic Church started abusing their power and taking away freedoms beyond what was outlined in the original social contract. The environment in their view was merely passive resources to be exploited, without any repercussions, such as pollution, etc.
This is in contrast to traditional societies that stress DUTIES over rights (or at least in the context of stressing rights, as the other side of the “rights” coin) and understood humans as emeshed in society and interdependent. These traditional societies focused on The Ten Commandments, dharma (righteousness and duties), and the Li – not “The Ten Rights.” And re the environment, traditional societies had a deep respect – a sabboth for the land, and God’s commandment to “keep the garden” (not destroy it), and God did not create the world to be a wasteland, but to be habitable (Is 45:18). They were closer to their source of subsistence (it wasn’t just a bunch of packaged food in some supermarket), and understood the environment needed care and protection.
The Enlightenment view is also in contrast to modern science that tells us we are interdependent with the environment – for human viability we need healthy air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, materials with which to build our homes and products; and we need to avoid highly toxic chemicals permeating our skin, etc. We impact the environment and it impacts us (keeping us alive or killing us if polluted). The Enlightenment view is also in contrast to modern social science that tells us we humans are interdependent and have always been social beings, not autonomous beings wandering thru the forest, without others, without mothers or fathers.
And I think the reason this environmentally and socially harmful Enlightenment philosophy (if carried to its extreme, as it is here in America) is being used to abuse the environment (our subsistence base) and our brethren is because we live in a human-built world and get our social needs fulfilled by gadgets. We have socially contructed the environment or nature as wild creatures in wild places (polar bears and rainforest) beyond the fringe of civilization – perhaps cute at times, but expendable. We do not perceive the environment as the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the climate that makes our agriculture and food production successful. We see it as something way apart from our insulated selves, and the anti-greens then complain that greens are saving baby seals, but don’t care about human babies – without realizing human babies too need the environment to be viable.
Anti-greens would reject what JPII, BXVI, and Pope Francis say about creation protection, and twist their meanings, perhaps giving very faint lipservice to stewardship – as if simply saying that word has fulfilled ones DUTY to stop harming people and others of God’s creation thru environmental harms.
If I’m wrong in my assessment, let me hear your educated views on this. I’m not an expert in philosophy.
I suggest this comes from the same Enlightenment roots that founded American society and opposed the Catholic Church, and is based on old and faulty concepts of person and society.
While there has been much good in Enlightenment philosophy that corrected several evils – it brought us democracy and human rights – it has been more and more abused in modern times. I’m thinking the extreme tea-partyism that rejects Catholic social teaching is an example of it.
The concept of person and society promoted by the 18th c. Enlightenment philosophers was of original, free and autonomous individuals – independent of others and free of societal (and Church) restrictions and having total RIGHTS – who came together to form society to reduce inter-human conflict and secure other protections, only giving up a tiny portion of their freedoms as necessary for society to function. And then kings and the Catholic Church started abusing their power and taking away freedoms beyond what was outlined in the original social contract. The environment in their view was merely passive resources to be exploited, without any repercussions, such as pollution, etc.
This is in contrast to traditional societies that stress DUTIES over rights (or at least in the context of stressing rights, as the other side of the “rights” coin) and understood humans as emeshed in society and interdependent. These traditional societies focused on The Ten Commandments, dharma (righteousness and duties), and the Li – not “The Ten Rights.” And re the environment, traditional societies had a deep respect – a sabboth for the land, and God’s commandment to “keep the garden” (not destroy it), and God did not create the world to be a wasteland, but to be habitable (Is 45:18). They were closer to their source of subsistence (it wasn’t just a bunch of packaged food in some supermarket), and understood the environment needed care and protection.
The Enlightenment view is also in contrast to modern science that tells us we are interdependent with the environment – for human viability we need healthy air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, materials with which to build our homes and products; and we need to avoid highly toxic chemicals permeating our skin, etc. We impact the environment and it impacts us (keeping us alive or killing us if polluted). The Enlightenment view is also in contrast to modern social science that tells us we humans are interdependent and have always been social beings, not autonomous beings wandering thru the forest, without others, without mothers or fathers.
And I think the reason this environmentally and socially harmful Enlightenment philosophy (if carried to its extreme, as it is here in America) is being used to abuse the environment (our subsistence base) and our brethren is because we live in a human-built world and get our social needs fulfilled by gadgets. We have socially contructed the environment or nature as wild creatures in wild places (polar bears and rainforest) beyond the fringe of civilization – perhaps cute at times, but expendable. We do not perceive the environment as the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the climate that makes our agriculture and food production successful. We see it as something way apart from our insulated selves, and the anti-greens then complain that greens are saving baby seals, but don’t care about human babies – without realizing human babies too need the environment to be viable.
Anti-greens would reject what JPII, BXVI, and Pope Francis say about creation protection, and twist their meanings, perhaps giving very faint lipservice to stewardship – as if simply saying that word has fulfilled ones DUTY to stop harming people and others of God’s creation thru environmental harms.
If I’m wrong in my assessment, let me hear your educated views on this. I’m not an expert in philosophy.
