Our Limits to Growth- Erik Klingbeil

Our Limits to Growth- Erik Klingbeil

I would call our economy, not materialist, but abstract, intent upon the subversion of both spirit and matter by abstractions of value and power. In such an economy, it is impossible to value anything that one has. What one has is only valuable insofar as it can be exchanged for what one believes that one wants- a limitless economic process based upon boundless dissatisfaction… The wildernesses we are trying to preserve are standing squarely in the war of our present economy, and that the wildernesses cannot survive if our economy does not change. (145-146)

Wendell Berry is neither a deep ecologist nor a hardline nature conquistador; he takes a stance that acknowledges the priorities of each. He prefaces his argument by laying a foundational understanding of our reliance upon nature. In so doing, he brings attention to the fact that while nature is abundant and has furnished the products of the modern age it is also finite and our society’s productivity is contingent upon its health. While we are whole heartedly dependent upon nature it is also necessary to tame nature for our own comforts in life. Yet the balance between taming nature and preserving nature is a fine and delicate line upon which we as humanity balance. 

Wendell draws this distinction by likening the natural world to wilderness and the untamed dangers of the natural world as wildness. It is important that humanity not simply destroy the environment as indiscriminate mindless apes but rather valuing objects based upon the burdens that its production place upon nature. Wendell appeals to a reconstruction of how humanity's values objects in our economy. In the production process, value is given more to the work of people rather than the intrinsic values of raw materials and the damage that is incurred to nature when they are removed. Because little regard is given to the sacrifice that was incurred by the object itself, the extent of economic and materialist value is based upon how objects allows an individual to achieve what they want rather than a what they physical have. Therefore an insatiable mind can have limitless economic potential without regard to the environmental restrictions on those desires. As such, humanity needs to understand and apply the ground work of necessity to create a more realistic understanding of materialism and the economy. 

Yet, Wendell understands that anthropocentrism is not all together wicked as inferred by deep ecologists nor healthy for humanity’s sustainable relationship with nature. He uses the example of global overpopulation to illustrate a reality that is clearly burdening environmental preservation. While Wendell does not support the culling of populations, he does argue that the ideology of technological heroics will have to be discarded. Humanity will no longer be able to rely upon technology to problem solve what only human industrial reduction and abstinence can achieve.

Questions:

(1)    Wendell challenges his readers to ask three questions: what is here? What will nature permit us to do here? And what will nature help us to do here?

How do these questions apply to modern economics? How can applying these questions help us to approach more interaction with nature is a more holistic way?

(2)    Are the changes that Wendell exposes in our understanding of materialism and nature possible for humanity to achieve?

(3)    Wendell refers to technological heroics. Who in the global economy believes in technological heroics? What are the alternative ideologies and is their assimilation a reasonable expectation in the future?