Political environmentalism is a movement shaped by twentieth century romanticism. And that is one source of its political difficulties, especially in America.<\/p>\n
Twentietth century romanticism\u00a0presumes a sharp divide between the creativity of the arts, which draws inspiration from the untamed natural world we perceive with our unaided senses, and the routinized development of scientific knowledge whose goal is to give us the power to transform, and thereby destroy, nature with our machines. It thinks of the natural state of nature as pure, peaceful, and unchanging and humans as malignant interlopers in thus natural world. Thus it looks incessantly back to the past\u00b8 to the time before mankind interfered with the natural world and it only appreciates\u00a0with some\u00a0reluctance\u00a0how we use technology to shape the natural world to serve the interests of human beings.<\/p>\n
This is a romanticism that stands against both science and humanism. And, the environmental movement it has inspired also stands opposed to science and to humanism and is, consequently, profoundly pessimistic.<\/p>\n
It is also deeply unpopular except among the professionals who have imbibed this romanticism and whose careers\u2014or inherited wealth\u2014enables them to stand apart from struggle with nature that characterizes the worlds of science and technology even while they still benefiting from the economic riches that struggle has created. One source of the huge gap between strong environmentalists and the rest of the American people is this: strong environmentalists seem to assume that there is opposition between human well being and the well being of nature. And given this choice, the American will always choose the former over the latter.<\/p>\n
There is, however, another, earlier romanticism. It is the romanticism of the great scientists and the great poets of the late 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries. It is the romanticism of Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge and of great scientist \/ artists like Humphy Davy and William Herschel. It is also the romanticism of Erasmus Darwin which greatly influenced his illustrious grandson, Charles.<\/p>\n This older romanticism understands that science and technology are endeavors that, no less than poetry, exhibit not only human discovery but human invention. It celebrates the genius of scientists and sees Newtown as an adventurer not a calculator.<\/p>\n This older romanticism understands that nature is never static or unchanging and that change is often product of tension and strife. The natural world is something both for which we are grateful, not least because we can transform it to suit us, and something that can be\u00a0threatening to us. The natural world is made up, as Blake saw, of both lambs and tigers and the sensible approach for humans is to emulate both lambs and tigers, depending upon our circumstances.<\/p>\n This older romanticism does not welcome every change, whether caused by humans or by natural processes untouched by our hands. Rather it encourages diversity and individuality in all spheres of nature and evaluates the human interaction with nature in terms of how far we go to protect and encourage diversity and individuality.<\/p>\n This older romanticism does not see humanity as standing above the natural world ready to use and abuse it. Rather it sees humanity as part of the natural world and our efforts to understand and change nature as coming from deeply natural impulses within not just us but the rest of the nature.<\/p>\n Thus this older romanticism is profoundly optimistic because, rather than fleeing from human technology as something that is always dangerous, it embraces the human capacity to understand and transform the natural world. It certainly does not sanction every way in which we transform nature. Rather it judges our powers and what we create and invent in human terms, asking that they serve our long term purposes, purposes\u00a0served by growing diversity and individuality and that requires us to be grateful for what we have been given as well as what we can create.<\/p>\n This romanticism is not only humanistic but welcomes scientific and technological progress. Thus if we could revive it, it is well suited to serve as the spirit of a new 21st<\/sup> century environmental movement that is in keeping with the romantic aspiration that, as much as the enlightenment, gives power to the American experiment, and animates so many of our citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Political environmentalism is a movement shaped by twentieth century romanticism. And that is one source of its political difficulties, especially in America. Twentietth century romanticism\u00a0presumes a sharp divide between the creativity of the arts, which draws inspiration from the untamed natural world we perceive with our unaided senses, and the routinized development of scientific knowledge whose goal is to give us the power to transform, and thereby destroy, nature with our machines. It thinks of the natural state of nature as pure, peaceful, and unchanging and humans as malignant interlopers in thus natural world. Thus it looks incessantly back to the past\u00b8 to the time before mankind interfered with the natural world and it only appreciates\u00a0with some\u00a0reluctance\u00a0how we use technology to shape the natural world to serve the interests of human beings. This is a romanticism that stands against both science and humanism. And, the environmental movement it has inspired\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-AH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2275"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5689,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions\/5689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}