Promises and Perils of Modernity

Introduction

This blog is based on a guest lecture I did at UNSW on the same topic. What I was attempting to do here was to look at the issue of how, based on the dominant cultural view that has emerged in the west, we attempt to control the environment. That is, since the Enlightenment, the dominant cultural view of our relationship between society and the environment is one of ‘control’: that scientific and rational decision-making can harness the power of the environment and overcome any challenges we face.

The truth is, that in the western world modernity has, until know, met many of these promises. We have used the resources of the world to a great deal of success: we have powered the industrial and post-industrial revolutions, and now have a consumerist lifestyle that even 30 years ago seemed unimaginable. We have relied on science to overcome the limitations we have faced: an exploding world population was met with a green revolution that increased food output; pollutants that have been harmful to the environment such as CFCs have been replaced; and we are finding more efficient ways to use energy. We are living longer and wealthier than we have ever been.

The problem is, I am going to argue, is that the very reasons for our success and wealth are also leading to the potential of humanities downfall. The very consumerist lifestyles that have driven our wealth are leading to potential devastation. It is for this reason that we have called this lecture the ‘promises and perils’: and I want to focus on the perils.

I will be looking at three authors: Jared Diamond, Ronald Wright and Ulrich Beck


Jared Diamond’s Collapse

Jared Diamond’s most famous work is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The focus of the book:

How societal collapses may not only involve an environmental component, but also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbours, and trade partners, and societal responses.

In writing the book Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history. Diamond's approach differs from traditional historians by focusing on environmental issues rather than cultural questions.

I do not have time to cover Diamond’s thesis in this lecture and we will return to it later in the semester. What is key here is that Diamond lists some key factors that have led to various societies collapsing. These are lists eight factors that have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies.

Importantly, he notes that key here is environmental abuse (including habitat destruction; soil problems; water; effects of introduced species on native species; and overpopulation). However, he also states that: "it would be absurd to claim that environmental damage must be a major factor in all collapses: the collapse of the Soviet Union is a modern counter-example, and the destruction of Carthage by Rome in 146 BC is an ancient one. It's obviously true that military or economic factors alone may suffice" (p. 15).

Diamond says Easter Island provides the best historical example of a societal collapse in isolation.

Let’s imagine what the last Easter Islander was thinking when he was cutting down the last tree:

• A scientist will come along to find a substitute;
• I am sure that the problem has been over-exaggerated;
• I am sure that there will be more trees over there somewhere; or
• It is this that made us wealthy, so why should we stop now!

It is this final point that I want to turn to: what are people thinking, and what are they willing to do. Diamond finds that societies most able to avoid collapse are the ones that are most agile; they are able to adopt practices favourable to their own survival and avoid unfavourable ones.

It is this point that ends Diamond’s thesis: the real problem is that the modern world remains in the sway of a dangerously illusory cultural myth – that most governments and international agencies seem to believe that the human enterprise is somehow 'decoupling' from the environment, and so is poised for unlimited expansion.

To emphasise the point, Diamond draws a distinction between social and biological survival (because too often we blur the two). The fact is, though, that we can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal.

In the end, Diamond raises some cultural issues dealing directly with our promises of modernity and science:

• So we should take problems seriously – as well as the difficulty in finding solutions;
• Societies may reach a cognitive impasse having mental fixations that prevent their later problems from being recognized;
• Societies make choices: both good and bad ones – which ones are we making
• Role of the elite… they did not insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. Is our contemporary society different? Just look at the gated community – which you can get away with it for only short time. It is not viable to have a two tier society
• Importance to reappraise our core values – often painful. Blueprint for trouble is when we cannot do this – especially when these core values are the source of our strength. For example, consumerism (resource consumption) and isolationism


The problem is progress – Ronald Wright

Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization itself: a 10,000 year-old experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled.

Wright examines the meaning of progress and its implications for civilizations past and present: The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology that placed an unsustainable burden on all natural systems. History has shown us that each of the societies coming before us fail – and the 20th century represents our last opportunity to succeed where our forefathers almost without exception have not.

Wright's concerns reflect that of Diamond’s:

“Our civilization, which subsumes most of its predecessors, is a great ship steaming at speed into the future. It travels faster, further, and more laden than any before. We may not be able to foresee every reef and hazard, but by reading her compass bearing and headway, by understanding her design, her safety record, and the abilities of her crew, we can, I think, plot a wise course between the narrows and the bergs looming ahead… (we must act)...without delay, because there are too many shipwrecks behind us. The vessel we are now aboard is not merely the biggest of all time; it is also the only one left. The future of everything we have accomplished since our intelligence evolved will depend on the wisdom of our actions over the next few years. Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world so far by trial and error; unlike other creatures, we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes.”

He sees societies self-destruct from a combination of lack of foresight and poor choices that lead to overpopulation and irreparable environmental damage.

So returning to the guy from Easter Island – according to Ronald Wright, he was not even thinking!

He asks: "Why, if civilizations so often destroy themselves, has the overall experiment of civilization done so well?" For the answer, he says, we must look to natural regeneration and human migration.

Again, covering everything that Wright argues is not possible, but key for us are "progress traps" throughout the book — including even the invention of agriculture itself. Wright labels such cultural beliefs and interests that act against sustainability — and hence civilizational survivability as a whole — the very worst kind of "ideological pathology":

We still have differing cultures and political systems, but at the economic level there is now only one big civilization, feeding on the whole planet’s natural capital. We’re logging everywhere, building everywhere, and no corner of the biosphere escapes our haemorrhage of waste. The twentyfold growth in world trade since the 1970s has meant that hardly anywhere is self-sufficient. Every Eldorado has been looted, every Shangri-La equipped with a Holiday Inn. Joseph Tainter notes this interdependence, warning that "collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. ... World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. P.124–5

Ecological markers now indicate that human civilization has surpassed (since the 1980s) nature's capacity for regeneration. Humans in 2006 used more than 125% of nature's yearly output annually: "If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital of nature" (p. 129).

Wright concludes that "our present behaviour is typical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance" (p. 129). "It is a suicide machine" and "Things are moving so fast that inaction itself is one of the biggest mistakes. The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall by what we do, and don’t do, now". We must therefore "transition from short-term to long-term thinking", "from recklessness and excess to moderation and the precautionary principle" (p. 131).

The problem is, however, that we our culture is simply focused on progress and expansion, and changing this around seems impossible.


Risk society – Ulrich Beck

The third perspective is Ulrich Beck’s "risk society": a term that highlights how our very practices create risks and increasingly becomes organized in response to these risk. The thinking is that this is a consequence of its links to trends in thinking about wider modernity, and also to its links to popular discourse, in particular the growing environmental concerns during the period.

In contrast, to the positions above, society is increasingly preoccupied with the future (and also with safety), which generates the notion of risk, Society must organise in a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself.

So the guys on Easter Island are still chopping down the trees, but thinking about how they can make money from it and who will wear the consequences.

The risk society is a phenomenon firmly from the perspective of modernity: which is seen as a shorthand term for modern society or industrial civilization – it is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society... which unlike any preceding culture lives in the future rather than the past.

Beck argues that it is possible for societies to assess the level of risk that is being produced, or that is about to be produced. The problem is that disasters such as Chernobyl means that public faith in the modern project has declined leaving public distrust in industry, government and experts.

Beck contends that widespread risks contain a 'boomerang effect', in that individuals producing risks will also be exposed to them. This argument suggests that wealthy individuals whose capital is largely responsible for creating pollution will also have to suffer when, for example, the contaminants seep into the water supply.

So, modernity creates risks that are worn, initially unevenly, and the boomerang to everyone. While this is happening, many are making money from it, and hence this is unlikely to change quickly.


Conclusion


Modernity has made many promises – and has fulfilled these. The problem is, now that it is failing us, how do we walk away from its processes.