Page 203 - Contribution To Phenomenology

196 DON MARIETTA

period of time. The technologies employed have involved large machines
which use vast amounts of fossil fuel energy. These technologies are
highly entropic because large amounts of fuel are used in order to do
things quickly. This has been contrasted with "human-scale" technologies
and labor-intensive technologies. Not only is the employment of heavy
machines to get the job done quickly quite entrophic, it leads to
environmental damage because vast changes are made in the natural
environment so quickly that there is no chance to notice and respond to
"feedback/' the indications that undesired effects (so-called "side effects")
will follow the changes which are made. Unexpected damage to the
natural environment can occur before project designers can take warning.
A clear example of this is the Aswan Dam, a major project designed
to improve the economic life of Egypt. The changes made in the Nile
River had some undesirable consequences. The impounded waters lead
to a major health problem (the parasitic disease schistosomiasis) and to
changes in the salinity of the Mediterranean Sea, with its effect of
fisheries. There were, of course, effects on village life which were
unexpected, discounted, or ignored.
In southeast Florida, where I live, the hydrology was altered in a fairly
short period of time by the U. S. Corps of Engineers. Vast drainage
projects made more land suitable for agriculture and provided land for
development. Now we are discovering the "side-effects," threatened
eutrofication of Lake Okechobee, threats to the Everglades, and periodic
water shortages, not to mention the many problems which come with very
rapid population growth.
These examples of changes made too quickly in the natural environ-
ment show some of the quaUties associated with a "macho" approach:
employment of force very aggressively, impatience, lack of concern for
effects upon human life and society, along with lack of feeling for natural
systems.
What lies behind the "macho" approach? What sort of thinking allows
such recklessness. There was a combination of atomistic thinking,
hierarchical thinking, and what Warren has called the "logic of domina-
tion."^
Atomistic thinking is the opposite of the holistic thinking of much
contemporary environmentalism. With this atomistic thinking everything

^ Karen J. Warren, "Feminism and Philosophy," 6; "The Power and the Promise,"
128f.