Session 5 Blog Post for March 3

Lynn White, Jr.’s deconstruction of our ecological predicament and Donald Worster’s response both strive to establish a reason for our current preference as a society (at least in the systemic sense) to commodify nature as a tool of instrumental value.  With these readings in mind, what motivators allowed for the commodification of nature by humans and within a social construct that has established humanity as more valuable than other parts of nature, how can we reestablish a human modesty that may introduce a true respect for aspects of the world not influenced by humans?

As was mentioned in the readings, we as a species have managed to, through both religious and materialistic motivators, create a perspective on earth that is detached from nature.  We raise our requests and desires above the rest of the world in a very selfish and illogical way.  While this preference to put one’s own immediate desires and those of one’s species above and disconnected from any natural system may seem logical insofar as it is logical to want to maintain a constancy of existence by protecting oneself from a world that is scary and unpredictable, it is no longer logical within the contemporary context and maybe never was the logical thing to do.  We know now that our current trajectory is unsustainable, even with accounting for normal technological development.  It is argued in the readings that normal technological development may even accelerate our decline.  I would argue that our current predicament and this seemingly declining trajectory is quite predictable.  It was predictable that we would employ religious dogma to establish our importance in a mysterious and scary world.  Humanity naturally established a system to combat their insignificance and reinforce their ambition to be significant.  Later, we would establish a culture of materialism, as Donald Worster puts it, so as to create a system for establishing significance that was more sensitive to the contemporary preferences of scientific and logical thought brought on by Adam Smith and his writings in The Wealth of Nations.  Today we are changed again as a society.  This time it will be a change necessitated by our environment and our need to understand better our place in the world.  We may find intrinsic value within ourselves as humans still today.  I think it is important that we retain this understanding of our value.  It is the system as a whole that will be more valued because of this retained understanding of humanity.  We are simply more informed now.  Respect for natural systems will be born from our more full and seemingly imperfect understanding of these systems.