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GREEN PARADISE LOST |
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8. Distracted by Conflict from Seeing Whole The freshness of the early morning is magical. The gulls are almost quiet, and the sea has a soft velvety quality to it. It is so still this morning that the boat hulls have reflections below them, which almost never happens. Everything smells moist after the hard rain last night. The soft morning light strikes the pencil-thin shapes of boat masts and makes them gleam all out of proportion to their slim dimensions. A very light wind slowly ripples the reflections toward me, while some early-bird gulls swoop low for their breakfast. The whole area seems to be bathed in promise, in the implicit coming-to-be of a new day. Everything is holding its breath, waiting. One of our cats goes out to stalk in the high sea-grass. A small duck family, one behind the other, sculls along on the quiet water without causing a ripple. I hear vague waking sounds from the cottage next door. The wind picks up and streaks water once velvety-similar into triangular patches of lighter and darker water. There on the horizon the first sailboat, and over there the first motor boat. The day begins. Why Our Preoccupation with "Difference" and "Conflict"? If we experience each moment in the wholeness of our senses, then why have we been more intent upon the parts of what we saw than upon their coordination? More intent upon conflict in what we were seeing than upon symbiosis? Even a cursory look at our recent past suggests a number of reasons for our distraction. It is clear that we have been distracted by the surface phenomena. We've been very intent upon who is eating whom and who has been winning and losing. It has been easy to miss the dependence of the predator species upon the species which is its prey. It is also apparent that we have looked at our world with hierarchical glasses on. We have seen things structured as those glasses prepared us to see them. Consequently everything seemed structured in hierarchies of one sort or another -- hierarchies of status, or power, or logical priority, or even temporal sequence. Hence we rated species as well as individuals and social classes as "above" or "below" in terms of complexity, accomplishments, rationality, evolutionary place, or even who was "higher" on the food chain of who was eating whom. Finally, we have also taken themes of social conflict from the currents of thought in a particular historical epoch and then projected (or ''found'') those themes of conflict in nature too. Loren Eiseley, writing in Darwin's Century, tells how "England, in the first phase of the Industrial Revolution and frightened by the excesses of the French monarchial overthrow, [took] readily to the bleak expression of the human struggle as portrayed by Malthus. The doctrine of the survival of the fittest would lie ready to the hand of Darwin." [1] So men who had grown up seeing all around them the harsh competitiveness and struggle of the working classes to survive amid the excesses of early industrialization then looked at nature and saw it "raw in tooth and claw" and shaped by "the survival of the fittest." Conflict and competition among species for food and niches do exist. But we err if that is all we perceive. Some reputable scientists today look at nature and see coordination and symbiosis as more fundamental than conflict. In his book The Lives of a Cell the biologist Lewis Thomas reflects about what he sees to be a very basic force or tendency "for living things to join up, establish linkages, live inside each other, return to earlier arrangements, get along, whenever possible." [2] If this is, in fact, the drift of things, the way of the world, we may come to view immune reactions, genes for the marking of self, and perhaps all reflexive responses of aggression and defense as secondary developments in evolution, necessary for the regulation and modulation of symbiosis, not designed to break into the process, only to keep it from getting out of hand. [3] (Emphasis added.) In another section Lewis Thomas points to what he calls the simplest and most spectacular symbol of this tendency -- the phenomenon of cell fusion: In a way it is the most unbiologic of phenomena, violating the most fundamental myth of the last century, for it denies the importance of the specificity, integrity, and separateness in living things. Any cell -- man, animal, fish, fowl, or insect -- given the chance and under the right conditions, brought into contact with any other cell, however foreign, will fuse with it. Cytoplasm will flow easily from one to the other, the nuclei will combine, and it will become, for a time anyway, a single cell with two complete, alien genomes, ready to dance, ready to multiply. [4] Thus in cell biology as well as in subatomic physics the forward edge of discovery and thought are leading to ways of thinking about life and reality which deny our inherited ways of seeing the world as separate entities moving in empty space. It now appears we need to look at our world with new eyes which can see more. Ecology as a New Way of Seeing Abner Dean has drawn a cartoon showing a roomful of people at a cocktail party. At first glance the gathering appears normal; some are standing, some sitting, all are holding drinks and deep in conversations. But then you realize that some of the arms are greatly elongated and extend like spaghetti out around people so as to hold hands with other people across the room. The caption reads: "You have to know how to look at a roomful of people." Exactly! You also have to know how to look at the created world. We have not perceived the connections -- the hand-holding and exchanges of benefits among species which also compete -- in short, the extent of symbiotic relations which have been in nature all along. Ecology is the scientific discipline which has finally become a lens for seeing and describing the connections in the biosphere. What ecology helps us see is an earth covered with a vast array of ecosystems, both large and small, continuously interacting with one another in many ways which are not immediately obvious to humans. There are, in addition to the more localized ecosystems, the vast biospheral life-supporting systems. These are the recycling systems of the land, air and water. They are all powered by the energy of the sun and continually providing energy and food for countless ecosystems even while reprocessing their wastes. Another generation looked at clouds becoming rain and snow, which became glaciers and rivers and oceans, which in turn evaporated to become clouds again -- and saw in this the conflict of heat and cold and the conflict of seasons. But as this great hydrological cycle works, all that dwells upon the earth is watered and sustained in life. Similarly, the attention of earlier generations has been more caught by the fact that animals ate plants, and they have not been very aware that plants also give out oxygen which animals breathe in, and that in turn the animals breathe out carbon dioxide and provide nutrients in the form of manure which plants need to take in. Photosynthesis in the plants uses solar energy to convert that carbon dioxide and those nutrients into carbohydrates -- the beginning of all food eaten by animals, humans, fish, reptiles, birds, or insects. And everything which eats (or is eaten) finally dies and decays and becomes in turn fertile compost for future plant-growth and photosynthesis. Yes, there is conflict and competition. But it is all within ecosystems and biospheral systems which connect life with life. The Flies, the Geckos, and the Cats The first principle of ecology is wholism -- that everything is connected directly or indirectly and affects everything else. Nothing operates in isolation. One biologist tells this story to illustrate the point. Some years ago the World Health Organization launched a mosquito control program in Borneo and sprayed large quantities of DDT, which had proved to be a very effective means in controlling the mosquito. But, shortly thereafter, the roofs of the natives' houses began to fall because they were being eaten by caterpillars, which, because of their particular habits, had not absorbed very much of the DDT themselves. A certain predatory wasp, however, which had been keeping the caterpillars under control, had been killed off in large numbers by the DDT. But the story does not end there, because they brought the spraying indoors to control houseflies. Up to that time, the control of houseflies was largely the job of the little lizard, the gecko, that inhabits houses. Well, the geckos continued their job of eating flies, now heavily dosed with DDT, and the geckos began to die. Then the geckos were eaten by house cats. The poor house cats at the end of this food chain had concentrated this material and they began to die. And they died in such numbers that rats began to invade the houses and consume the food. But more important, the rats were potential plague carriers. This situation became so alarming that they finally resorted to parachuting fresh cats into Borneo to try to restore the balance of populations that the people, trigger-happy with the spray guns, had destroyed. [5] "Everything Is Connected" On a global scale these same interconnections are evident from the fact that DDT (as well as PCBs and radioactive nuclides) have been found in the tissues of all organisms tested to date. These substances have been found in the flesh of the flightless penguins of the Antarctic even though these substances have never been introduced by human activities onto the Antarctic continent. These substances have been obtained by the penguins through a series of food chains leading to the oceans and thus extending outside the Antarctic. As we see from these examples, chemical substances cycle through and among ecosystems by various paths and at various rates. Energy also passes through these ecosystems following a one-way downhill path, sometimes circuitous but always being dissipated eventually as heat, and never returning to its former usefulness. We are coming to perceive that what we as humans do takes place amid these ongoing processes. It is this continual flow of energy through ecosystem paths which Eleanor and Clifford West sense as they describe lovely Ossabaw Island on Georgia's Atlantic coastline:
Waters from the rivers, Diversity and Interdependence Not only are we interconnected in ways we have not understood; life is also coordinated and symbiotic. We have been blinded to this by our patterns of male competitiveness and by our notions of "survival of the fittest." Diversity and interdependence are motifs in creation which weave together like a Bach fugue. You cannot understand the one without the other. Yes, there is conflict. Yes, there is competition. But we need to readjust our mental models or paradigms so we are able also to perceive coordination in all these systems as more fundamental than conflict. We must put aside our mental filters which let us see nothing but conflict and competition. We must see the world as it is -- powerfully diverse and full of conflict as well as powerfully interdependent. Different Roles in the Dance of Life The ordering in such an interconnected and interdependent reality is functional, rather than hierarchical. None are really above or below. Each has a role to play in the dance of life. A symbol springs to mind. Picture several dancers holding hands, whirling in space and leaning backward against the tension of those clasped hands. It would be immediately obvious looking at them that no one of them is more important than the others; that they mutually hold one another in position; and that if one of them were to move in such a way as to cause another to fall, the support upon which each depends would be gone. We are one of those dancers within the dance of life. But we are mutually held in position by every other species, by the rain and sun and the vast unseen food chains and recycling systems, even down to the smallest phytoplankton in the oceans. We mutually support one another in the interconnections which flow through our bodies and life-histories. We Are within -- Not apart from -- the Dance of Life We err if we think of ourselves as separate from this dance of life, or above it. We are inextricably and irreversibly within it. But in our vast anthropocentric pretension we are now destroying the other dancers, oblivious to the "rhythm that is greater than our own.'' [7] In a system everything affects -- and is affected by -- everything else. On the other hand, in a hierarchy those on top -- those with power -- affect those below. And those below do not talk back! But secretaries do affect their bosses' behavior; sergeants and lieutenants and privates do limit what generals and colonels can attempt; the Borneo house cat at the "top" of the food chain is affected by the diet of the gecko lizard and the exposure to DDT of the houseflies. The ordering within hierarchical systems perceives only who gives the orders and who takes them. It is an ordering based upon a chain of command and upon a simple, straight-line and one-way understanding of causality. Such thinking is linear thinking and when taken literally as a description of how a whole system is organized or ordered, it is incomplete and misleading. Inevitably those lines of command generate effects which come back to affect whatever is at their starting point. Those who are "above" in hierarchical systems frequently underestimate the extent of their own self-interest in the well-being of those "below." Self-Interest's Boomerang Malthus and Darwin led us off the track with their emphasis upon ruthless competition. We have misread the biosphere and the energy-dance of life. Similarly in the human realm we have been led off the track by understanding human relations in dog-eat-dog terms. If every relationship were one in which someone won and someone else lost, then clearly your own self-interest would lie in winning as much of the time as you could. But seeing the world that way assumes a Newtonian separate-bodies-in-empty-space view of things. It misses completely the systemic and interrelated character of life in human society. It is insensitive to what I call self-interest's boomerang. Self-interest is one of the ways we focus upon what is good for one part of a system, rather than upon what is good for the whole. Self-interest which stops at your own skin is an expression of the (erroneous) conviction that you can do a good thing for yourself even if you diminish another part of the system, or even diminish the whole system. The illusion is that the "I-win" part of a social system can be disconnected from the "You-lose" part. This assumes there is an "away" to throw our social problems to. Or, conversely, that there is some "away" winners can retreat to, such as to the suburbs or to high-security high-rise urban apartment buildings, escaping all the losers who somehow still hang onto life and hang onto the anger they have learned. But human society in its vastness, its diversity, and its complexity, has many of the system-characteristics of the simple boomerang: what is cast "away" returns after a little time from a somewhat different direction. In social systems the result is frequent irony. Consider, for example, the principal figures in Watergate who were tried in Washington, D.C., before largely black juries on conspiracy charges. These were the same men who had devised and implemented for President Nixon his so-called Southern Strategy for winning the 1968 election and who later, in order to deal with Vietnam War protesters, had sought enactment of that conspiracy legislation. Or consider New England's present-day struggle to pay for its swollen welfare rolls. New England's industrialization in the early 1800s had been financed in substantial part by profits from New England ships engaged in the Triangle Trade, taking trinkets, rum and slaves between New England, Africa and Southern ports. New England struggles now to pay those delayed bills as it receives back to the welfare rolls, along with many who are white or Hispanic, many also who are descendents of slaves who had originally been sold to the Old South. Again, ghetto youth had been ravaged by drugs in the 1940s and 1950s while a white power structure in our cities concentrated on other urban problems. Many whites felt they could get away from drug-related problems by living in white suburbs. Not until white youth in the suburbs and in the colleges began using those same drugs in quantity did drugs become a priority problem. And in my experience, those who complain about law-and-order and feel abused because they cannot walk the streets safely at night, do not seem to understand that they themselves laid the foundations for this crime and violence when they tolerated social and economic arrangements which do not provide for all people work and dignity and a stake in the established order. The feedback loops in our interconnected social systems are as tangible as those in our natural ecosystems. We have just not had eyes to see them. Many still think they can get "away" from those who have been hurt and made angry in the competition and "survival of the fittest" legitimated by our social Darwinism. They think they will have, as their forebears did, some place to go to for a new start -- a "West" to move on to after you have depleted the goodwill and nutrients of the "soil" you have grown in and depended upon. The Whole-System Ethic Cartoonist Stan Hunt helps us laugh about the futility of such attempts to get away while still depending upon a very interconnected and interdependent society. Hunt shows us people perched around the perimeter of a rubber lifeboat bobbing on the waves far out in the ocean, and one of the people is saying to the others, "Pardon me, but your end of the lifeboat is sinking." What we need is a whole-system ethic which identifies the absurdity of a doctrine of self-interest which ends at our own skin and does not help us see beyond the immediate present to the larger contexts upon which we depend for life and of which we are a part. An ethic which looks at whole-systems certainly begins by examining systematically in decision after decision such questions as: Who gains from this or that? who profits? And does anyone lose by this or that? ... the poor? the earth? ... generations yet to come? Some costs are inherently unknowable now, and must be allowed for, because they become payable if there are future surprises (and experience tells us there often are). Such questions are particularly important when those deciding (or benefiting) are different from those who will in one way or another be asked to pay the bill. When we ourselves must pay, we take care to ask ourselves about the costs; we must be equally careful or perhaps more so when others (whom we are connected with and affected by) will pay. Choices framed in win/lose terms pose a special problem for an ethic sensitive to connections within a system. When armed with a systemic ethic, one can make a good case for avoiding and rejecting the terms of all choices which are win/lose choices, whether the system is your body, your marriage or family, or the nations of the world, or some other system. Even where effects are delayed (as when post-dated checks come due much later) or where effects are displaced (so someone else has to pay the bill), such win/ lose arrangements are utterly destructive of system morale and harmony. The system solidarity of family life is diminished by resentments. Individual morale is eroded by illness or other system-impairments. So too, trust among groups, nations, and generations is drained away by persistent imbalances in the terms by which benefits, costs and risks are exchanged. The all-win character of whole-system ethics has often seemed difficult and impractical when viewed from positions of some security, privilege and power. But nations, like individuals, sometimes learn from experience. After World War I the winning Allies had extracted reparations from the losers in that war. The seeds of starvation and despair were sown in post-war Germany, and we reaped the whirlwind in the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Following World War II there were those among the leaders of the winning Allies who felt they had learned a lesson from history. Instead of beating down the losers by again extracting reparations, we chose to pour money into the countries we had just defeated in what came to be called The Marshall Plan. A judgment had been made somewhere that our common welfare was going to be only as good as the postwar welfare of the losers in that conflict. The Case of the Big Apple New York City's continuing financial crises provide an interesting example of our vacillations between win/lose and all-win policies, and of our still-dawning awareness of interconnections. When the bankruptcy of New York City was perceived, midway through President Ford's administration, to mean only the fall of one spendthrift city which had too many poor and too many social services for its income, the then-powers-that-be in Washington and Wall Street were willing to see the Big Apple punished like a wayward daughter. New York City was to be an example to others who might be tempted to similar financial behavior. But then it began to become apparent that if New York City went down the drain of financial bankruptcy, then it would take with it the marketability of municipal bonds for all cities and also the profitability of many major U.S. banks (which had been heavily invested in tax-exempt municipal bonds). In short, "default" on its bonds by New York would have had ripple effects not only in national but in global systems of banking and trade. As all this became more clear over several weeks and months, it suddenly appeared to many who have a say in such matters that the price of "punishing" and making an example of New York City was too high. Whether we had realized it or not (and whether we liked it or not), we were connected by heretofore unperceived threads to the Big Apple and its swollen budgets and urban poor. The City of New York worked diligently in subsequent months to make its suppliers across the country aware of the implications of the City not paying its bills or the City stopping further orders. Suppliers (as well as their employees and Congressional representatives and the rest of us) suddenly learned much more specifically how what happens to New York City affects profits, jobs, and communities far away. Enlarging the Scope of Our Self-Interest Our interdependence is so complex that we may well conclude it is foolish to destroy any part of what we depend upon but do not fully understand. That is the point of the all-win ethic: we need to refuse as inadequate and probably too simple those alternatives which are presented to us in win/lose terms. We are supported by many invisible threads which connect us to other dancers in the dance of life, and some of these dancers and these threads we are not even aware of. It is only at our own peril that we destroy them. In such a world it is no longer simply altruistic or religious to "Love your neighbors" or, as Jesus counseled, to "Love your enemies." This perception of our world and its web of connections so enlarges the scope of our self-interest that, as Hazel Henderson has observed, "For the first time in history, morality has become pragmatic." [8]
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