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Nature's Unruly Mob (Hardcover)
Paul Gilk; Foreword by Helena Norberg-Hodge
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R1,092
R921
Discovery Miles 9 210
Save R171 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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There have been various thinkers who have attempted to explain the
Earth-altering (even ecocidal) features in modern life. Jacques
Ellul, for instance, a French intellectual, became famous for his
exposition of technique. But technique does not adequately address
the institutional context out of which technique itself arises. In
these essays, Paul Gilk stands on the shoulders of two American
scholars in particular. One is world historian Lewis Mumford, whose
work spans fifty years of scholarship. The other is classics
professor Norman O. Brown, who brought his erudition into a
systematic study of Freud. From these intellectuals especially,
Gilk concludes that the accelerating ecocidal characteristics of
globalisation are inherent manifestations of perfectionist,
utopian, predatory institutions endemic to civilisation. Our great
difficulty in arriving at or accepting this conclusion is that
civilisation contains no negatives it is strictly a positive
construct. We are therefore incapable of thinking critically about
it. A corrective is slowly emerging from Green intellectuals. Green
politics, says Gilk, is not utopian but eutopian. It is not aimed
at perfectionist immortality but, rather, at earthly wholeness. Yet
the ethical message of Green politics confronts a society saturated
with utopian mythology. The question is to what extent, and at what
speed, ecological and cultural breakdown will dissolve civilised,
utopian certitudes and provide the requisite openings for the
growth of Green, eutopian culture.
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