Philosophy for a New Civilisation

Henryk Skolimowski has been associated with the Network for over 30 years, and is the originator of eco-philosophy. Trained in the universities of Warsaw and Oxford where he received his DPhil in 1964, Henrik has come to a radical questioning of the Western way of thinking in which he was brought up. The essays in this book look both forwards and backwards at the relationships between science, technology, values, capitalism, ecology, spirituality and democracy. They represent the journey of a questing western mind originally inculcated with the view that Western civilisation represents the ultimate human achievement. This may be true in some respects, but, as he points out, there is a darker side to our most powerful technical advances. A major theme is what he calls the 'poisonous chalice of technology', which has succeeded in destroying environments and creating weapons of mass destruction: 'the time has come, he argues, to realise that only Imagination can save us, and not Technology; that only spiritual amelioration can bring satisfaction and ultimately happiness.' Making weapons of mass destruction, he rightly asserts, is an inferior expression of human intelligence.

Henryk probes the spirit of technology to find that it is not interested in humanisation, but only in the process of control, manipulation and the enlargement of power. Moreover, it is wielded by a science wedded to objectivity and based on 'detachment, separation and ultimately alienation from the subject we study.' So there tends to be a dehumanising impulse at the heart of both the science and technology (though this can hardly be applied to all medical research). We need instead what Henryk calls a more enlightened and compassionate reason as a vehicle for understanding the cosmos and ourselves. He devotes three essays to expanding his thesis about technology, which he regards as a state of Western mind. This entails a treating nature as subject rather than object and formulating new models based on qualitative rather than quantitative criteria. In common with other writers, Henryk highlights the limitations of the scientific understanding of the human being as a highly sophisticated machine. Machines cannot be treated as ends in themselves; the mechanistic picture encourages an instrumental mentality whereby human beings are manipulated towards certain ends. The multiplication of unnecessary and artificial needs is one example in our modern consumerist society. He also argues that the alliance of secularism with democracy distorts its meaning and impoverishes the ideal of freedom. We have found, as he observes, that secularism breeds emptiness, out of which arises nihilism, relativism, and an atrophy of values. If the spirit of democracy is about freedom and liberation, that of technology, as noted above, aims at efficiency and control over nature and human beings; also, as one can see in the process of globalisation, technology seeks profit and market domination. One can only agree that rethinking the basis of secularism means 'a re-enchantment of the world, a re-sacralisation of nature and cosmos, a reintroduction of spirituality into the content of our lives.'

In an essay on technology and the sanctity of life, Henryk spells out three imperatives: 'to treat human life with dignity, to treat human life with respect, and to treat human beings as authentic irreducible beings. This enables him to distinguish genuine from artificial needs. He argues that genuine needs are life enhancing, contributing to a life of quality and meaning. Artificial needs are not life enhancing and contribute to the trivialisation of human life. One can then ask to what degree a given technology contributes to the satisfaction of genuine needs. In a purely quantitative system based on the imperative of economic growth, discrimination would inevitably reduce demand and therefore have a 'harmful' economic effect. Any consumption is good on this basis. But then the whole system is driven by the invisible hand of selfishness, greed and competition. Henryk's response to the problem of technology is his eco-philosophy, a contribution to what Schumacher called metaphysical reconstruction.

In the second part of the book, Henryk introduces a number of key new concepts. For instance, the world as sanctuary, ecological dharma and cosmocracy. These are then applied to our ecological, economic, social, educational and political situation. He also analyses the role of three western exemplars, namely Prometheus, and Jesus and Faustus. Prometheus suggests that progress is accompanied by sacrifice, and Jesus that love conquers all; Faust, however, represents will to power and living dangerously at whatever expense the environment and to the future. Henryk is also inspired by St Francis, and speculates about the differences in the church if it had followed his lead. In developing a new culture, we need to take account of the feedback from our actions. This, I would agree, begins with an adequate definition of a human being that includes a spiritual component. It also entails a subject-subject relationship with nature and an analysis of the nature of human fulfilment in terms of genuine needs. Then we need to evolve our social, economic and political systems to reflect this needs. I believe that this is beginning to happen with the new politics and economics of well-being, championed by the New Economics Foundation (see www.neweconomics.org). Henryk's philosophical, ecological and ethical thinking provides a basis for reimagining a world in which wisdom, harmony and beauty can triumph over raw power, violence and ugliness. It is an inspiring and necessary vision for the future.