As technology enters nature's domain, do we have the wisdom to stop for a moment and consider what it might all mean? RETHINKING NATURE AND OTHER MATTERS Jeremy Rifkin is a thinker who has been exploring our future. In a time of public confusion about where we’re going, and legitimate concern about the problems we face, what we’re most frequently offered are stop-gap solutions from leaders who themselves have little time to explore alternatives. Rifkin suggests neither the quick fix nor the easily accomplished. What he proposes requires a complete rethinking of the way we view the world. But then, who said it was going to be easy. Early an activist again the Vietnam War, Rifkin now serves as a consultant and advisor to some Presidents, Congress, the AFL-CIO and many state and local governments. He provided expert testimony on future options for the U.S. economy for President Carter’s “ComAn Interview with Jeremy Rifkin By Lenny Dee Drawing by Ron Shepherd we would rather say yes to our own extinction in 20 minutes than say no to our world view, i/i/e have not yet become aware and conscious of our responsibilities. mission on the Agenda for the 19805.” In the past four years, he has also authored (or collaborated on) six books, which include: Who Should Play God? an examination of the social, moral, political and economic issues raised by genetic engineering and the artificial creation of life; The North Will Rise Again, an analysis of the confrontations between labor unions, local and state governments, banks and corporations for control of the vast pool of pension capital; and Entropy: A New World View, an analysis of the relationship between the first two laws of thermodynamics and economic, social and political development. His advocacy of the stewardship of our energy and resources is predicated on an understanding of these two laws. The first is the conservation law: “While energy can never be created or destroyed, it can be transformed from one form to another.” When we burn fossil fuels, for example, their energy becomes our power. The second law augments the first: ‘‘Every time energy is transformed from one state to another, a certain penalty is exacted ... it’s called entropy.” When we burn a piece of coal, the energy remains but is transformed into gases that then spread out into space. “Pollution is just another name for entropy. Entropy is the measure of the amount of energy no longer capable of conversion into work. ” Recently I had an opportunity to visit with Jeremy Rifkin. Much of his brilliance lies in his reformulation of the basic issues facing our civilization. Turning the format on its side, as he frequently does in examining things, he posed the first question to all of us. Jeremy Rifkin: Knowing what you know now about the splitting of the atom, both its benefits and its detriments, I would like to take everyone back to the University of Chicago, Stagg Field, 1942, with all the scientists sitting underneath the football field in their laboratory, and they have to make the decision in one day, do we split the atom? Knowing what we know now, how many people would vote to split the atom? That’s the big question. A lot of people, even though they are opposed to nuclear power, have a hard time saying that they are opposed to splitting the atom. Our world view of scientific and technical progress, the mechanical world view of Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke and Smith is our faith. And people say to me, “You can’t stop splitting the atom. It’s curiosity. It’s the human mind. It’s progress.” The flag of Galileo gets waved up the pole. “It’s freedom of inquiry. If we don’t do it, the Russians will.” And the major argument they will use is if the human mind can think of splitting the atom, this must be the next stage of evolution, and therefore the bomb is a part of evolution and it is futile to reject evolution because that’s the law of nature. This is one of the things that I’m pointing out in my new book Algeny. This is the ultimate deception of consciousness in Western Civilization. It turns out that every time the human family changes the way it goes about organizing the environment, whether it is inventing fire or agriculture or the industrial revolution, about that same time, concepts of nature change. And the new concept of nature always bears a striking likeness to the way people are appropriating or exploiting their environment. We know nature by the way we interact with it. Up to this point in time, we interact with it in order to appropriate it. What we do is project our own organizational experience onto the cosmos, creating an entire context which we call a concept of nature, and then we look at that context and say, “Damn it, we must be doing the right thing because the way we are interacting with the world adheres to the natural order of things.” That natural order is just a projection of our own experience, whether it be Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was a congenial companion with the industrial age, or the great chain of being which was a very congenial concept of nature for the 1300s in medieval Europe. So I think that what we need to do is take a look at how we conceptualize nature in the first place. Now, this splitting of the atom is very interesting. We think it’s evolution at work. Well, maybe it’s just a projection of our own needs. The reason we can’t say no to splitting the atom is because in our world view of science and technology, to say no to a technological revolution is unthinkable. That would be like capitulating our faith. We would rather say yes to our own extinction in 20 minutes than say no to our world view. I think that until we can entertain the question of saying no to a technological revolution, that we have not yet become aware and conscious of our responsibilities. Clinton St. Quarterly 17
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz