“Techno-scientific and industrial development fosters faster
and faster change over the world across all aspects of life, without any
consideration of meaning and purpose: change happens, period” (p. 315).
“‘We cannot escape our condition, our chance lies no more in
progress than in a return to nature; it lies only in a precarious balance
between nature and artificiality which only an acute and conscious watch can
maintain’” (p.323).
Cerezuelle, Daniel. "Nature and Freedom: An Introduction to the Environmental Thought of Bernard Charbonneau." Rethinking Nature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Cerezuelle, Daniel. "Nature and Freedom: An Introduction to the Environmental Thought of Bernard Charbonneau." Rethinking Nature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Author Daniel
Cerezuelle focuses on the philosophy of Bernard Charbonneau, who founded a
French environmental and political ecology movement in the 1930s. Cerezuelle
firmly believes that Charbonneau provides mankind a better understanding of the
problems that well-developed, technological societies face today. In the work,
the author attempts to summarize many of the main arguments Charbonneau made
throughout his work as an activist and a thinker. Charbonneau firmly believed
that the development of technology and science in society was bringing about
“the great mutation” to human beings (315). This great mutation causes “a
complete subordination of reality to the logic of technological and industrial
imperatives” and is a self-accelerated movement. The philosopher basically
argues that as technology and industry develop, the more society loses the
ability to control those technological and industrial changes and their effects
on human beings.
Like Wendell
Berry, Charbonneau believes that the only way to deal with this problem is by
finding a balance between artificiality and nature, for he firmly believes that
we need to stay apart of nature in order to retain freedom. The reason why
Charbonneau claims that freedom can be lost from over development of technology
is due to the fact that more restraints are generally applied onto society
because of those developments. In order to avoid the loss of freedom and the
potential for chaos, Cerezuelle argues, “we must break with the logic of
accelerated development” (328). Another wish the French philosopher has is for
society to become more involved in agriculture as a practice and turn away from
what he calls “agribusiness”, which I took to mean for the Western world to
care and respect more the process of agriculture itself instead of focusing on
the ability to make a profit. However, the article ends with an acknowledgement
that the author himself is not sure where the limit on developments should lie.
What
similarities and differences do you see between the arguments of Charbonneau
and other authors such as Wendell Berry and Heidegger? Do you think that the
development of technology and science is more dangerous than useful? Do these
developments limit our freedom?
I too believe that the development of technology and science can deem to be dangerous at times, as we have seen, expecially in regards to our commoditized relationship with nature. But, I also believe that stemming off of Heidegger and Cerezuelle's observations, technology can be useful in the sense of bettering out ecological crisis as well as our "enframed" mindset. You say that the word agribusiness is damming because it denotes a sense of profit, but what if we were to change the enframed mindsets of those who participate in agribusiness. Obviously that is the point of these readings, especially Heidegger, to try to persuade universally a more heightened appreciation for nature beyond profit. But, my point is why not turn to agribusiness initially and try to specifically alter the practices that contribute to their exploitation of nature.I think that a grass roots effort starting with those who participate in agribusiness is necessary in order to motivate the mass public. Of course coming up with a means for this end is challenging, but i think it would be highly beneficial if people could see a complete revitilaztion in the way big corporations and other businesses handle their exploitation of nature by striving to remedy through unexploitative measures. Getting back to the question at hand, I think that further technological developments would be necessary in order to do so that would be both pleasing to nature and the agribusiness institutions.
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