"Natural" and "Unnatural" Evolutions
Young,
You said that "natural evolutions can't be stopped,"
they can "only be delayed." Maybe we agree here,
maybe not. I'll agree with you completely that
CHANGE cannot be stopped, only delayed. Sooner
or later, even the most resistant human culture
must adapt to changed conditions or perish, and
as long as our species lives, conditions will
change. That's what my book is all about, namely,
how changes in the material conditions of life
force normally-resistant societies coasting
along on cultural inertia to undergo rather
rapid and sweeping adjustments.
Where we differ, I think, is in the linear
assumption underlying that term "natural
evolutions". You're assuming that the PATH
of the changes is already determined, that
humans have no choices to make other than
"forward quickly, without delay" or "forward
more slowly and hesitantly, with delays". I
don't buy that. That is, like Darwin, I've
given up on being teleological, on believing
that our ultimate fate is precoded for us.
Well, okay, I believe the sun is going to
fizzle out some day, and if our species is
still around then, we'll be hard put indeed
to get along without the sun, but other than
such gross aspects of our outcome like that, I
think the path we'll follow could be one
of many, many choices.
Was the collapse of the Roman Empire and the
ensuing reign of barbarianism in Europe a
"natural" evolution, a "delay", or merely
an "evolution" that lots of people didn't
particularly like, that few considered to
be "progress", but that was nonetheless an
evolution in which human societies adapted
to the exhaustion of Rome's scheme of consuming
freshly-conquered slave populations, etcetera?
When we all adapt to the coming depletion of
fossil fuels, we'll most certainly "progress"
on to the next phase of our history, but I'm
not so sure it's going to be a happy progression
for people in a lot of ways, nor is there only
one way that human societies can go once those
fossil fuels are gone, just as there wasn't just
one way for Europe to cope with the repeated
denudation of its forests. You get the idea.
For a more detailed critique of the kind of
linear, positivist assumption that goes into
your position, read Arnold Pacey's very
accessible _The Maze of Ingenuity_.
In short, human societies have more options
than just "go" or "stop", and one is not
necessarily an enemy of progress per se
if one opposes certain technological options
and supports certain other alternatives.
Indeed, the floppy could have been rendered
obsolete by the LS-120. The Zip drive
wasn't INEVITABLE. And I am no friend
of trash incinerators, in my neighborhood
or anyone else's.
To avoid angering others on this thread for
cluttering things up with digressions, please
feel free to email me privately if you want
to continue this.
Cheers, Tom (carroll@rpi.edu) |
