Page 183 - Contribution To Phenomenology

176 ULLRICH MELLE

Tokar, a writer on Green politics and thought: "The further the earth's
ecosystems, our health and our personal lives are degraded by technologi-
cal progress, the more our civilization becomes dependent upon
technological solutions to try to manipulate its way out of the mess that
has been created."^^
Edward Goldsmith, the editor of the renowned British journal The
Ecologist, radically opposes this "more-of-the-same" strategy. He sees a
radical and irreconcilable opposition between the technosphere and the
biosphere, so that "the ethic of perpetual technospheric expansion is in
reality no more than an ethic of biospheric destruction."^^ According to
Goldsmith, humankind can only survive and the true needs of humans
can only be satisfied as long as humans are an integral part of Gaia,
fulfilling their assigned role in the Gaian hierarchy. The Gaian ecosphere
is a highly co-operative, self-regulating, self-sustaining enterprise, which
maximizes its own stabiUty and realizes the optimal conditions of living
for all of its natural parts, the human species included. There exists then
an identity of interests between humanity and Gaia. For Goldsmith "it is
the fundamental flaw of the world-view of modernism to ignore this
perennial truth. "^' Only as vernacular manAvoman in endemic
societies—this is Goldsmith's radical and controversial claim—are humans
supportive and supported members of Gaian hierarchy.
The project of technospheric transformation and expansion is grounded
on what Goldsmith calls the world-view of modernism, the great
misinterpretation, which postulates a thrifty nature that first has to be
made productive by human science, technology and industry before it
yields the benefits required for cultural development. The result of this
great misinterpretation. Goldsmith maintains, was the creation of a
technospheric surrogate-world, which is radically at variance with human
nature. "As economic development proceeds, man is thereby condemned
to living in a world to which he is ever less well adapted biologically.

^^ Brian Tokar, "Social Ecology, Deep Ecology and the Future of the Green
Political Thought," in: The Ecologist 10.4/5 (1988), 140.
^^ Edward Goldsmith, "Towards a Biospheric Ethic," in: The Ecologist 19.4/5
(1989), 74.
^' Edward Goldsmith, "The Way: An Ecological Worldview," in: The Ecologist
10.4/5 (1988), 168.