After data have been
collected, and concern has been voiced, the central question
for environmentalists is 'So what? What is likely to be done to remedy environmental
problems like the "destruction" of the countryside?'
One school of thought
believes that if only people know about what is going on then
remedial action will naturally follow. However, conservationists need to realise that
scientific evidence, rational arguments and compromise do not win political
arguments. In other words, sheer volumes of data - of facts and figures - are unlikely
to be very persuasive in themselves. For, as the contemporary environmental debate
has shown, people have an almost infinite capacity either to ignore or to heed
selectively the 'facts of the matter'. Having first made up our minds, frequently from
an irrational base, about what we want, we all tend to look for 'facts and figures' to
support our position, from which we will be dislodged only very gradually if at all.
Thus, we argue, and
perceive the arguments of others, not in an objective and
unbiassed way. We have presuppositions, or even vested- interest positions that
colour our perception of the facts. These are frequently economically based, as in
the case of the pro-business lobby, which has such an effective anti- conservation
voice in the corridors of power, but they are also shaped by a host of non- economic
factors. These will be socially and culturally derived, and imparted to us via our
education and socialisation. Anyone who wants to influence us or change our minds
will have to understand and take account of these presuppositions and vested
interests. It will be no good bombarding us with 'facts' which we are anyway
predisposed to dismiss. A wiser strategy would be to shake the foundations of our
beliefs by undermining the assumptions on which they are based. And this is how we
should approach differences with other people. As Bertrand Russell put it:
"When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd,
we should not
attempt to prove that it is somehow not true but we should try to understand how it ever came
to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the
scope of our thinking, and helps us to realise how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices
will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind".
We should listen to
what others say, and reflect not necessarily upon the 'truth' of
their arguments, but on why they make them and believe in them, i.e. from what
material or ideological vested interest position they speak, and what broader
assumptions and philosophy serve this interest. And if we wish to influence their
thinking, we shall have to study the history of how their thinking came to be as it is -
for we cannot effect a process of change without first knowing how changes came
about in the past. It is irrelevant to ask whether concepts, categories and
relationships are 'true' or 'false'. We have to ask, rather, what it is that produces
them and what is it that they serve to produce?
If we seek for the
future the kind of real social and environmental changes which
much of the standard environmentalist literature calls for, then we must develop an
historical perspective on how we and others have arrived at our present set of
attitudes. The shift has to be accompanied by widespread attitudinal changes, and
we should understand what material changes will be needed to help foster a new
set. People differ according to the prescription that should be followed to resolve the
environmental dilemma.
The emergence of technocentric
thought is traced to the development of rationalism
and the scientific revolution of the 16th century onwards, and attention is focussed on
attitudes of dominance over nature which stemmed from them. The contrasting
ecocentric ideology, of equality between man and nature, or subordination of the
former to the latter, is then traced to its romantic and scientific roots - the latter
based particularly on Malthus and Darwin. Both groups will recognise the existence
of the same environmental roblems and desire to solve them.
