December 7, 2014 - 15:08
In The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert stated the situation of environment and human in a more objective, or even pessimism way, which led me thinking that nature and environment are meant to be mutually exclusive, doubting that if there is ever a solution we could find to balance the relationship and avoid us from the self-destruction path. However, as the concept of ecological intelligence came up, it reminded me of a novel way to reflect on the relationship between human and nature. Ecological Intelligence means reading and embracing the world, thinking of the effects in a broader ecology, including the natural and cultural one. It’s important for us to read the world in an equal way, with our experiences instead of language and without superiority and deanimation.
According to Merriam-Webster, “Ecology is a science that deals with the relationships between groups of living things and their environments.” The word “Ecological” points out the mutual bond between humans and other living beings, humans and the environment. “Both cultural and natural ecologies involve interdependent systems, where no organism or action exists on its own.” (Bowers, 45) We can never live by ourselves; the environment is what sustains our lives. Never living by ourselves also means that we could never act by ourselves. Whatever difference you make will make another difference in the ecology, just like the science principle of conservation, when one change occurs, it will inevitably trigger another change, which maintains the system as a whole conservative. As the “contractual bond” mentioned in Latours piece, ecological intelligence involves making decisions and taking actions after considering the effect of the action on the whole environment, learning to take cultural, environmental reactions into account instead of just focusing on self-interest.
In order to think and act with ecological intelligence, people should first root the concept of ecological intelligence deep in heart. It’s impossible for humans to be ecological intelligent as we resist on or keep being influenced by the stubborn ideas like humans’ superiority and nature’s objectivity. To understand and consider other living beings and the natural environment, the crucial point is equality. In LeGuin’s story, Osden, the person with a supernatural ability of empathy, was excluded and abandoned, because of the inequality of the relationships between Osden and the other people. Osden can easily read their mind and reflect it to them while they know nothing about Osden’s mind and heart. We can’t continue to use our old ideological system, the system about subjectivity and objectivity, which prevents us from communicating with the nature in an equal way.
“Instead of always pointing out the danger of “anthropomorphizing” natural entities, we should be just as wary of avoiding the oddity of “phusimorphizing” them, that is, of giving them shape of objects defined only by their casual antecedents.” (Latour, 10) Actually, anthropomorphizing could be a good way in dealing with the unequal relationship between human and nature. Animation relates things on the world closer with humans and makes it easier for us to revere and empathize with them. In contrast, deanimation has a negative effect. Deanimation is trying to summarize the common rule of nature, judging new things depending on old rules, resulting in reinforcement of the inequality between human and nature.
In most cases, human lives in the fear created by themselves, we survived numbers of ends of the world, reached several times the limit of CO2 concentration. Just like Porlock in Leguin’s story, the monster that he claimed to attack him turned out to be the monster in his heart. The most important reason why others hates Osden is that he unveiled something hidden deep in their heart and torn their camouflage of superiority down. Superiority is something that we are reluctant to give up and the thing that keep the distance between human and nature. However, we are the products created by nature, we sustain on nature. To some extent, it is also the nature that allowed us to evolve into today’s stage. Just as Latour called the earth gaia, the mother of everything. It is important for us to embrace and believe in the power of nature.
Ecological Intelligence is about taking into account the interdependent relationship between human and nature when acting, getting rid of the influence of superiority, which is deeply rooted in daily life, such as language, science principles, and use our heart to read and embrace the earth.