Correspondence on Earth and Economy

First, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that just yesterday I watched a video where an objectivist read something Rand said about the encounter between European colonists and the many indigenous populations who originally inhabited North America. Basically, she tried to justify the genocide by saying the natives had no concept of individuality, rights, or property, and so it was somehow moral for the colonists to just take the land and kill them all in the process. I find this absolutely appalling, both because of how she seems to ethnocentrically apply the idea of non-aggression, but also because of how she conceives of the earth as something to be “owned” and only valuable when produced and sold by humans. This kind of anthropocentric attitude has lead to the largest extinction event in 65 million years (approx. 20,000 species are going extinct every year; the background rate is about 1 a year) and caused a forthcoming change in climate that could very well spell the end of civilization as we know it. So even though I am rather unsettled about her perspective, I will try to approach Rand’s philosophy “objectively”, as they say.

I just read Rand’s epistemology on Wikipedia. I know, not the best source, but its good enough for an introduction, eh? I have a few issues:

1) While I reject the extreme relativism of post-modernism, I think there are some very important insights it has provided that any serious philosophy today needs to take into consideration.

a) there is the issue of logic. There are many kinds of logic aside from the Aristotelian. There is no one absolute and correct Logic, as philosophers once thought. Logic is normative, in other words. So long as all involved agree on the kind of logic to be employed, it is ‘objectively’ true. In a similar sense, there is no longer one kind of geometry. Euclid’s geometry is now only one possible form of geometry, next to Riemannian, projective, etc. geometries. This is important considering how Rand dismisses the necessary/contingent distinction. We can say that there are many possible space-time manifolds because we know there are many possible geometries. So our particular space-time manifold is not necessary, it could have been otherwise.

b) there is the issue of multicultural sensitivity, which obviously Rand does not understand, as her opinion on the colonization of NA shows. Her “rationality” is not Absolute. It arose out of a particular cultural and historical context and is not necessarily objective for all people. There are many ways of knowing, each valid in its own sphere. Again, I’m not a relativist, but nor am I an absolutist or objectivist. I think there is truth, but we must always be careful to remember that truth can be approached from a whole variety of perspectives.

2) I think Rand’s epistemology neglects the importance of emotion for cognition. fMRI scans of the brain in action show the limbic system (associated with emotion) and the prefrontal cortex (associated with rational thought) are always active together, mutually dependent one on the other. This is true even when subjects are evaluating the truth of statements such as 2+2=4. This is true for us not only because it is logically correct, but because it is somehow pleasurable for us emotionally.

I could go on but I’ll stop now and wait for your response. Thanks for your interest in engaging me in all this, by the way!

The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has helped me conceive of how animals are thinking and conceptualizing beings despite the fact that they do not speak. Whitehead writes (in “Process and Reality”) that propositional thought does not require language. Dogs, for example, DO think spatially about object relations. Otherwise they would not be able to catch a frisbee. The pervasive Cartesianism that separates mind from body in our modern culture prevents us from understanding how bodily motility (human or not) is already a form of cognitive articulation. Language is simply a further development of the silent propositional logic of the body; it allows us to reflect upon our own meanings, to reframe situations and so define more appropriate and complex behaviors in a way not accessible to non-speaking animals. Obviously, as you go backwards down the chain of complexity, organisms become less conscious and more instinctual. But there is no sharp line separating humans from animals. Dogs are conscious, in my opinion. Insects are not, though certainly they are still experientially-aware in some limited sense (not blind machines or mere automatons).

We like to think of ourselves as the rational animal, but I think this is largely a future aspiration and not a current reality. Our current global socio-economic situation is about as inefficient and irrational, not to mention morally egregious, as I could imagine. Inefficient because it (industrialism) is thermodynamically unsustainable, morally egregious because it (capitalism) is feeding off the poor periphery (global South) to accumulate wealth and resources at the industrialized, “developed” centers/cities (in the West). One of the things Hornborg discusses at length in his book is how money/wealth is never “created,” but is rather part of a zero-sum game in which any gain for one party comes at the loss of another. Capitalism is inherently exploitative and based in unjust social relations. Money is fetishized (as Marx recognized) and obscures inequitable personal relations by raising a veil of abstract exchange value between us. We think some invisible hand, or intrinsic goodness of “the market” maintains fairness, but this is just ideological medicine for a deeply rooted psychological sickness alienating us from one another and the earth which birthed and sustains us. Human beings and their economy do not produce anything but new symbolic/cultural relations–the only true producer is the Sun, or perhaps plant life, which converts light into food and air for the rest of the biosphere to eat and breath. Until we recognize that ecological relations trump any contrived “economic law,” we will continue to pillage the planet and exploit the labor and resources of “undeveloped” people. The logic of capitalism requires that there be a class of poor people and cheap resources to be exploited by a class of rich owners. We will never live in a just and equitable world until we totally re-think our economic relations.

I should point out that even this formulation (“our legs do our thinking for us”) seems to suggest a dualism between “you” and “your” legs, as if there were some metaphysical chasm separating one from the other. It is more ontologically honest to say “I am a body” than “I have a body,” for who is this “I” apart from the body-as-lived? You are the active attunement of your body to others and the world. Your volition is a function of your biological constitution: animation-from-within, will, purpose, etc. are not exclusively human possessions. Rather, they are part and parcel of being alive. Every organism is in this sense ensouled. Even the biosphere as a whole constitutes a living system with its own intrinsic telos. In fact, human purposes are best described as derivative of the primary directionality of the cosmos at large (which are diverse, ranging from creativity to cataclysm). The human being is quite unique, I wouldn’t want to deny that. We are the leading edge of a 13.7 billion year cosmogenesis, leading because we are the first species, not only to know (to be self-conscious) in the general sense, but specifically to know transcendent love. Ironically, self-consciousness is only possible if we have internalized otherness. Internalizing otherness is synonymous with loving another selflessly, giving oneself to an other for the sake of something greater than either of you as individuals.

All this is directly precisely against the Randian ethos of enlightened selfishness. To my mind (as they say), such a doctrine ignores the discoveries of modern depth psychology (Nietzsche, Freud, Adler, Jung, Lacan, Hillman, Tarnas, Rozak…) concerning the various reasons and ways in which the ego is not the master of its house (the psyche). The notion of acting out of rational self-interest is a tautological platitude. It’s meaning is always self-referentially defined, and so the ego can perpetually convince itself that it is in control, even if in actual fact its life remains largely unpredictable and mysterious. The philosophical or reflective life is not the norm, not by any stretch of the imagination. It involves what I mentioned above, an incorporation of what initially appears foreign or other (in the case of philosophy, this is Wisdom/Sophia) by way of loving cognition. Philosophy is quite literally the love of wisdom.

Industrialism is the use of machines (both technological and social) to transfer extropy (negentropy) from the global periphery to “developed” centers of capital accumulation. In the process of thus transferring highly ordered energy and materials (i.e., extropy) from resource rich localities to technologically sophisticated cities, industrial machines produce tremendous amounts of entropy (waste, pollution, etc.). The net gain in “productivity” and “profit” for those at the center is at the expense of the ecosystems, peoples, and cultures surrounding them (for example, the US imports Ecuadorian oil in exchange for the exported weapons their government needs to secure the resource from rebellious peasants). Economics is a zero-sum game. There is no growth in one sector without the destruction of another. This is the main lesson we learn by applying thermodynamics to the global marketplace.

All organisms produce waste, it is true. But unlike global industrial capitalism (GIC), nature reproduces itself differentially, in myriads of forms and niches. This provides for long-term stability (evolutionary stability, no doubt… stability is here defined not as static conservation, but as the continuous movement toward diversity and mutuality). GIC reproduces homogenously, turning the whole planet into English speaking, McDonalds eating consumers because it is built atop a logic of general-purpose money whose value is so abstract that it can substitute for almost any cultural meaning. Hence the rapid commodification of EVERYTHING, from food to friendship, so typical of the waning years of the industrial system. Marx was right about at least one thing: capitalism is invincible to outside ideologies, but inevitably tends toward its own self-destruction (because of ecological inefficiency leading to biospheric crisis and moral egregiousness leading to class revolt).

I have nothing against mutually-enhancing relationships between people. In fact, I think they are our only hope! I’m arguing that GIC requires a general-purpose monetary system, and that such a system necessarily trends toward the commodification of all facets of life. If you define capitalism differently, that’s fine. But as I (and the economists I have read) use the word, it means a specific social arrangement predicated upon the use of abstract, general-purpose money not tied to any concrete social or material reality other than what neoclassical economists call “use value.” The result is alienation from oneself and one another, as the only valid way of relating to the world becomes instrumentalism (i.e., how am I to best use other people and nature to get what I want?).

We do have perceptual capacities limiting our interaction with others and the world, but such limits are also possible gateways. Relating to others (and even ourselves) via abstract use-value closes the door to the many other ways of being-towards-others and being-in-the-world. We should be careful not to naturalize the ideology implicit in GIC, that which turns the human subject into a disembedded consumer.

The earth is best seen as a dynamic whole, but for the purposes of analytical understanding we can divide it into a core with several spheres. The core is (to the best of our scientific knowledge) liquid iron. It is spinning rather quickly and produces an electromagnetic field that protects the earth from solar radiation. Without the electromagnetic membrane produce by the activity of the core, life would not be possible on the surface. The lithosphere could be described as rock, but it is not of a single piece but 12 major plates. I don’t need to bore you with a lesson on plate tectonics, I’m sure you’re familiar. It suffices to say that the movement of these plates represents a sort of self-healing wound. The lithosphere is constantly remaking itself, keeping its surface fresh. The process occurs at speeds so slow relative to human life that it is no wonder we have trouble recognizing it for what it is. The biosphere is the thin film of organic life surviving between lithosphere and atmosphere, an atmosphere whose composition the biosphere created and maintains. The noosphere is hard to describe exactly (because it provides the very possibility of description), but most certainly includes the conceptual meaning you and I are exchanging here as language-speaking humans. All of these spheres of activity unite to birth a single living earth. The sun, of course, is the source of it all. We are basically inside the sun, surrounded on all sides by its heliosphere. Its multi-billion year process of dying supplies earth with the energy it needs to live. Perhaps you do not feel a sense of awe and reverence for these heavenly bodies. I can’t help it. Even if I understand rationally/scientifically how it all works, the mystery as to why it should be at all leaves me spellbound and mystified. The only authentic reaction I can muster is of a spiritual sort.

Sorry I have written so much, but I wonder if you’d mind if I posted our conversation on my blog? It is too interesting and poignant not to share!

Yours,

Matthew