Jul 14, 2018 08:26 AM
http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/is-fix...can-ideals
EXCERPT: ...The reason for this, the foundation for the problem, is the philosophical ground on which American institutions of governance are built. By this, I’m referring to the notion of God-given and inalienable rights, cited by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence but taken by Jefferson from the philosophical work of John Locke’s Two Treatises. The trouble with Locke is that his thinking came well in advance of ideas about the changing nature of nature itself and of its limits. To provide a major example, Locke knew nothing of the idea of extinction, an idea that would not arrive in the world of ideas until Georges Cuvier established it in 1800. For Locke, nature was a constant, given by God. By the time Cuvier issued his caveat—and he did not think of it quite that way—the major works of classical liberalism were written, and nations—the United States, France—were promising to guarantee certain rights of property and certain liberties, no matter what nature might say about the matter.
This is just where we still remain. Virtually all policy designed to forestall the consequences of climate change threatens, in some way, certain liberties and rights to property that are the bedrock of American political culture (never mind the fact that the consequences, unforestalled, deny whole island nations and people living near sea level of their rights and property). And so, from a certain point of view, it is rational to stand against any policy that limits liberty and confiscates property or diminishes its value. Garrett Hardin understood this quite well and explained it in his article “The Tragedy of the Commons.”
[...] To a climate change activist, the idea that higher productivity is rational is the problem, and it is a problem in perpetuity so long as our political and governmental institutions are grounded in an understanding of nature consistent with Locke, and with the absolute time and space of Isaac Newton, but inconsistent with a conception of natural change, best exemplified by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. That is, our political institutions were given form in a time when nature was considered rather static and inexhaustible. We might—or our progeny might—reconstitute our political entities on a new, more Darwinian basis. But until that happens, the battle is to persuade majorities in democratic societies that their interests are best served by giving up a little Newton and accepting a little Darwin....
MORE: http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/is-fix...can-ideals
EXCERPT: ...The reason for this, the foundation for the problem, is the philosophical ground on which American institutions of governance are built. By this, I’m referring to the notion of God-given and inalienable rights, cited by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence but taken by Jefferson from the philosophical work of John Locke’s Two Treatises. The trouble with Locke is that his thinking came well in advance of ideas about the changing nature of nature itself and of its limits. To provide a major example, Locke knew nothing of the idea of extinction, an idea that would not arrive in the world of ideas until Georges Cuvier established it in 1800. For Locke, nature was a constant, given by God. By the time Cuvier issued his caveat—and he did not think of it quite that way—the major works of classical liberalism were written, and nations—the United States, France—were promising to guarantee certain rights of property and certain liberties, no matter what nature might say about the matter.
This is just where we still remain. Virtually all policy designed to forestall the consequences of climate change threatens, in some way, certain liberties and rights to property that are the bedrock of American political culture (never mind the fact that the consequences, unforestalled, deny whole island nations and people living near sea level of their rights and property). And so, from a certain point of view, it is rational to stand against any policy that limits liberty and confiscates property or diminishes its value. Garrett Hardin understood this quite well and explained it in his article “The Tragedy of the Commons.”
[...] To a climate change activist, the idea that higher productivity is rational is the problem, and it is a problem in perpetuity so long as our political and governmental institutions are grounded in an understanding of nature consistent with Locke, and with the absolute time and space of Isaac Newton, but inconsistent with a conception of natural change, best exemplified by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. That is, our political institutions were given form in a time when nature was considered rather static and inexhaustible. We might—or our progeny might—reconstitute our political entities on a new, more Darwinian basis. But until that happens, the battle is to persuade majorities in democratic societies that their interests are best served by giving up a little Newton and accepting a little Darwin....
MORE: http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/is-fix...can-ideals
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