Page 205 - Contribution To Phenomenology

198 DON MARIETTA

it is little wonder that we had such a faulty view of our natural
environment.
Atomistic thinking had a significant effect upon ethical thought We
thought in terms of individual rights and duties, and we did not manage
collective responsibilities very well. When we were not able to assign a
duty to a specific person, we did not know how to handle the moral
responsibiUty. In the face of environmental disasters, we could not find
relief from the court system without finding a specific claimant who would
suffer definite financial loss. Terrible things were done to the natural
environment when our individualistic approaches did not match the
realities of what was happening.
Closely related to atomistic thinking is the tendency to think in terms
of gradations or value hierarchies. When we had to think in terms of
relationship between things, we did not think in terms of systems, but
in terms of graded relationships, with one thing above another and
thereby more important than the lower. Some of these over/under
relationships were very basic. Mind stood above body, while culture was
over nature. The male ranked above the female, as the strong were over
the weak, the rich over the poor, and the white over the black. Since the
time of Aristotle, at least, we have placed the animal over the vegetable,
with the thinking animal above all. It is not too difficult to see how this
gave an exaggerated importance to some things and denied the full
significance of others. The things of nature took second place to things
of culture. Since women were associated with nature, as Nietzsche finally
expressed the commonly held bias, women were associated with things
thought to be of less importance than those which were in the purview
of men. It is not surprising that economic achievement ranked above
preservation of natural things. The impact of this can be seen in classical
economic theory, which attributed value to human work and considered
natural resources to be "free goods." John Locke actually held that
nature contributes a very smaU amount to the value of things which
humans have raised or manufactured. Even now, the economic strength
of nations, measured as gross domestic product, looks only at marketable
goods and services, but does not take account of diminishing natural
resources. Destruction of forests does not show up in the assessment of
economic health. Loss of fisheries does not get reckoned until a smaller
sale of fish affects the statistics.
An interesting sidelight on the discussion of economics is the
etymology of the word 'economics.' It comes from a Greek term for the