pitfalls

In this Interventions forum, the final of a series on ecology, we aim to critically examine prevailing narratives and ideologies surrounding these issues, highlighting potential pitfalls and offering alternative perspectives.

Our first piece, written by Chaia Heller, takes us back to the 1980s when she found herself at the crossroads of social and deep ecology. Frowning at the gates of Eco-la-la land, Chaia challenges the notion that a nature-based spirituality can single-handedly solve ecological crises.

In our second piece, Mary-Jane Rubenstein examines the fallacy of "for all mankind"-ism in the context of billionaires venturing into outer space. With a critical lens, she questions the philanthropic intentions of space-obsessed billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Finally, we end with a response from our Founding Director, Joerg Rieger in which he reflects on the entirety of the series.

We invite you to engage with these thought-provoking perspectives and reflect on the complex relationship between economy, ecology, religion, and justice. We hope that these pieces will inspire critical thinking and foster meaningful dialogue as we navigate the challenges and opportunities of our world.

To see the first in this series, The Work and Nature of Storytelling, click here.

To see the second in this series, Ecological and Economic Alternatives, click here.

Contributors: Chaia Heller; Mary-Jane Rubenstein; Joerg Rieger

Chaia Heller

One evening in1986, during the debate between social and deep ecology, I found myself frowning at the gates of Eco-la-la land.  I’d moved to Burlington, Vermont to study with Murray Bookchin, the creator of social ecology, a theory of a hierarchy-free society, living interdependently with the rest of nature. Our study group discussed writings by deep ecologists considering over-population caused by a de-spiritualized “technocratic industrial society.” Their solution? Advance a nature-based spirituality.  

As a twenty-something social ecofeminist, I’d grown weary of white men blaming brown women in the global South for over-population.  Their ironic calls to honor “Mother Earth” were ultimately racist and sexist.  Deep ecologists ignored centuries-long effects of systemic patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and racism on peoples and natures. Instead, they asserted an ecumenical “we” of humanity as responsible for ecological breakdown.

As we discussed that night, spiritual outlooks don’t cause ecological crises. We cited instead a political and economic system that prioritizes votes and profits over peoples and natures.  “This isn’t political philosophy,” I proclaimed, “It’s eco-la-la!”*  For me, eco-la-la land was a dystopian fever dream where a spiritualized and depoliticized eco-philosophy was unable to grasp the lethal ecological implications of intersecting forms of social hierarchy.

I wrote The Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature (Heller, 1999) years later seeking to secularize this spiritual yearning for an ecological society.  I looked to Audre Lorde’s ground-breaking, “Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power,” that defines the erotic as a creative lifeforce bonding and empowering us to create a pleasurable, joyful, and just society (Lorde, 1984). My “socio-erotic” attempts to translate a spiritual and immaterial creative lifeforce into a secular splendorous everyday materiality bound up in matrices of creative, mutualistic, and non-hierarchical forms of power.  

Social ecology and social ecofeminism emerge from a leftist tradition that sees sociopolitical forces—not spirituality—as causing ecological crises. Additionally, the Left historically advances secular political theories for reasons of demarcation and transparency. Demarcating the political from the spiritual allows political theories to be more generalizable, embracing both spiritualists and atheists. While politics mustn’t intrude upon individuals’ particular spirituality, individuals’ spirituality mustn’t intrude upon the political realm where we create policies for our community’s needs and desires for the benefit of everyone.

Transparency is crucial when forging political agendas and policies in popular assemblies. Hannah Arendt (Arendt, 1958) asserts the public sphere as the domain of “publicity” where we’re called to speak in transparent, rational, and logical terms.  Conversely, the private sphere is the domain of intimacy, privacy, and subjectivity where matters of the heart and soul are degraded when held up for public scrutiny or explanation.

While it’s reasonable to be asked to make plain and transparent why a building should be built here or there, it’s unreasonable to be asked to explain the logic driving our spiritual beliefs. Spirituality deserves an opacity born of mystery and unknowingness. 

As a semi-observant Jew raised in a 1970s counterculture influenced by Buddhism, how do I reconcile spirituality and politics? I celebrate what I call the “extra-rational” that bubbles up beyond realms of rational/irrational, complimenting political life. Spirituality, aesthetics, sexuality, and love, for example, are extra-rational features of humanity, deserving of Arendt’s shadowy privacy, intimacy, and inexplicability. The extra-rational part of me is central to my sensibility as a secular/political and spiritual being. And I lean into the socio-erotic to hold space for the extra-rational, celebrating a mysterious and inexplicable lifeforce with groups of people that include vital secularists.

Bookchin’s “rationality” is a way of knowing that’s subject to transparent logical explanation required for distinguishing between right/wrong, just/unjust, humane/inhumane, and ecological/anti-ecological. His “irrational” is knowledge that contradicts the social-mutualistic logic of human evolution that brought our species into being. Irrationality entails beliefs, practices, and political policies that promote social hierarchy, human oppression, and the destruction of the natural world.  

The extra-rational compliments the political sphere by rounding out a social logic required for democratic life. It provides a dedicated cultural space where mystery and shrouded knowledges thrive whether secular socio-erotic, or spiritual.  Moreover, individual spirituality deserves immunity from public scrutiny unless it becomes irrational, infringing on communal political liberties (i.e., patriarchal or inhumane spiritual practices that harm others).

Spirituality and any form of extra-rationality become eco-la-la when deemed a stand-in for clear, transparent, and logical analysis required for addressing political problems and solutions to problems including the ecological crisis.

A social ecology and social ecofeminist approach to the extra-rational embraces spirituality, aesthetics, and love, when we respect the integrity of the public sphere—that place where we come together in our most generalized identities, thinking and caring beyond our particular parochial spiritual or aesthetic preferences. Moreover, we can all avoid venturing into eco-la-la land by embracing a secular socio-erotic that empowers and inspires all of us to create a joyful, socially just, and rational ecological society.  

*I never wrote about eco-la-la per se (until now), although I’ve discussed it a great deal over the years when giving talks or teaching. In 1987 or so, Bookchin asked me if he could quote me which he did. Somehow, the term flew off to enjoy a little life of its own.

References cited:

Heller, Chaia, The Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature. Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1999.

Lorde, Audre, “Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic as Power.” In, Sister Outsider, Crossing Press, Berkeley, 1984.

Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Chaia Heller holds an MA in psychology from Antioch University and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Chaia is a writer, activist, and artist who has been teaching political and feminist theory at the Institute for Social Ecology for nearly four decades. Chaia has been active in movements ranging from ecofeminism and the Left Greens, to the global justice movement, Occupy, and disability justice.  Chaia is the author of The Ecology of Everyday Life (Black Rose Books) and Food Farms and Solidarity (Duke University Press).  

Mary-Jane Rubenstein

[Reprinted with permission from Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, published by The University of Chicago Press. © 2022 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.]

In the spring of 2021, Senator Bernie Sanders accused Elon Musk and his perennial rival Jeff Bezos of perpetuating a “level of greed and inequality” that was at once “immoral” and “unsustainable.” Immediately, the Musk-apologist site CleanTechnica annotated Sanders’ tweet with five orange question marks and a curved arrow pointing toward the word “greed.” According to this infamous technocrat’s most fervent devotees, Sanders misunderstands the humanitarian mission that has prompted Musk to spend so much time, energy, and money on his private company SpaceX, which aims to save “humanity” from imminent destruction. As Musk shot back at Sanders, “I am accumulating resources to help make life multiplanetary and extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”[1]

It’s a logic as familiar as Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk: one small step for “a man” allegedly amounts to one giant leap for “mankind.” But the Apollo missions ended up doing very little for the poor, Black, Indigenous, and immigrant people in Armstrong’s own country—not to mention the entirety of “mankind.” Similarly, the escalating pursuit of profit in outer space (think not only Musk and  Bezos, but Branson and a growing throng of space-mining companies) will leave non-investors even farther behind than they already are. After all, a corporation’s chief obligations are to its wealthy shareholders—not to its workers or even its clients, let alone the whole species. And yet the corporations keep feeding us a series of mystifying promises to “benefit humanity,” assuring us, in the words of science writer Martin Robbins, that “when we go into space, we will all magically become nice.”[2]

Under current conditions, though, it’s just so unlikely. Do we really expect that the billionaires who can’t find any cause worth supporting on Earth will finally redistribute their wealth once they get deeper into the final frontier? Do we really expect that the notoriously inhumane industries of mining, manufacturing, and global retail will suddenly establish decent working conditions on literally uninhabitable planets and asteroids? Where a person’s employer controls their access, not only to healthcare and food, but to air? And what about all the ecological damage these companies are doing in the meantime on Earth?

What happens to our environment when a single rocket scorches the land it leaves behind, drops its boosters in low-Earth orbit or dumps them in the sea, and deposits millions of pounds of rocket fuel into the atmosphere? What happens to the residents of Boca Chica, Texas whom SpaceX has displaced from their suddenly-toxic homes, including the humans who now can’t afford to live anywhere else, and the wildlife that increasingly has nowhere to go?[3] In what sense is this space-adventure benefitting all humanity? If these galactic messiahs kill off most of us in the process—along with the only biosphere that allows us to be—then what, exactly, are they saving?

The operative fallacy here is known as “longtermism.” Popular among Silicon Valley types, the longtermer conviction is that the galactic immortality of the species is more important than the current well-being of any given community. Hunger, poverty, racism, warfare, hurricanes, floods, pandemics, genocides, and extinctions might seem like enormous concerns, but ultimately they are just the ups and downs of the evolution of the species. As techno-philosopher Nick Bostrom assures us, “from the perspective of humanity as a whole…even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the great sea of life.”[4] So the key is to rise above the everyday struggles of particular human beings and focus instead on the long-term existence of the species.

In in addition to being a dreadful reading of Hegel, longtermism is effectively a high-tech version of what Malcolm X called “pie in the sky and heaven in the hereafter.” Sick of the suffering Black Americans continued to undergo for the sake of an unjust law and order, Malcolm blamed America’s racist social system on the Christian teaching that earthly suffering would be rewarded in the afterlife. To his mind, the doctrine of heaven maintained and even glorified oppression, convincing Black Americans that it was useless or even ungodly to overthrow their oppressors. From the perspective of eternal bliss, poverty, racism, and even enslavement would seem like nothing at all—mere ripples on the great sea of life. Similarly, the space-hungry billionaires tell the poor, the refugees, the sick, imprisoned, endangered, and extinct to hold out for heaven on the asteroid belt.

There’s a murderous numerology at work here, which sets the eight billion people on the planet against, say, the 1023 people who might exist if we manage someday to colonize the Virgo Supercluster.[5] You see, 1023 is numerically more—a whole lot more—than eight billion or 700 million. Therefore, the longtermers insist, our energies should be directed toward the hypothetical humans rather than the actual ones. In fact, they caution, actual humans might not be actual at all. They could be computer simulations.

The idea has been around in one form or another since Descartes’ Meditations, but it came raging back in 1999 with The Matrix and in the gamer-geek philosophy of Bostrom, who argues that if it is possible (even in principle) to create a conscious simulation, then we are almost certainly living in one.[6] In the meantime, the futurist economist Robin Hanson reasons that if we are living in a simulation, we should behave as brashly and boldly as possible, so that our simulators remain sufficiently entertained to keep us plugged in. Assuming that we are living in a simulation should have the overall effect, says Hanson, of making us more present-oriented and more selfish than we might otherwise be. “Your motivation to save for retirement,” he reasons, “or to help the poor in Ethiopia, might be muted by realizing that in your simulation, you will never retire and there is no Ethiopia.”[7]

Perhaps our era’s most energetic space utopian, Elon Musk has taken a deep dive into longtermism and has emerged convinced we’re most likely living in a computer simulation.[8] Our consciousness is probably the creation of superintelligent beings running a superadvanced version of Minecraft, while the rest of the universe is just a virtual backdrop to our trivial pursuits.

Or it’s always possible that we’re not so much simulated as manufactured. “If it’s not a simulation,” Musk speculates, “then maybe we’re in a lab and there’s some advance alien civilization that’s just watching how we develop, out of curiosity, like mold in a petri dish.”[9] But whether we’re mold spores or Mario and Luigi, the quest is clear: to stay alive by going forth, increasing, and multiplying. And here’s the thing: if the world around us is just a quantum computation, or an alien petri dish, then who cares about coral reefs and wetlands? If they’re really important, the simulators will make more. And if they don’t make more, then the herons and frogs and sea turtles will have been a necessary trade-off to get humanity up to the next virtual level on Mars.

It is at this point that the desperate among us might seek out those poets and prophets who can see through the absurdities of our current situation. Those poets and prophets who, rather than giving us the same world on another damned planet, can actually imagine other ways of being.

[1] https://twitter.com/cleantechnica/status/1373263440391864323

[2] Robbins, M. (May 6, 2015). "How Can Our Future Mars Colonies Be Free of Sexism and Racism?" The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2015/may/06/how-can-our-future-mars-colonies-be-free-of-sexism-and-racism.     

[3] Utrata, A. "Lost in Space." Boston Review https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/alina-utrata-lost-space.

[4] Bostrom cited in Torres, P. (July, 2021). "The Dangerous Ideas of Longtermism and Existential Risk." Current Affairs https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk.

[5] See ibid.

[6] Bostrom, N. (April, 2003). "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?" The Philosophical Quarterly 53(211): 243-255.           

[7] Hanson, R. (2001). "How to Live in a Simulation." Journal of Evolution and Technology 7(1): http://www.jetpress.org/volume7/simulation.htm.      

[8] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-we-live-in-a-simulation/

[9] Musk cited in Andersen, R. (September 30, 2014). "Exodus." Aeon https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation        

Mary-Jane Rubenstein is a scholar of religion, philosophy, science studies, and gender studies. At Wesleyan University, she is Professor of Religion and Science in Society. She is also affiliated with Environmental Studies and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Joerg Rieger

One of the foundational insights of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt is that what exploits people is also what exploits the planet, and vice versa. In other words, experiences of exploitation are profoundly connected (including exploitation related to class, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, etc.). These deep connections are what accounts for what we are calling deep solidarity, which pulls together the various experiences of exploitation and turns them into the production of resilient alternatives, pushing beyond mere efforts to resist. Add to that a deepening theological awareness that the divine is somehow at work in solidarity with human and other-than-human forces where the pressures are greatest, and you have the “Wendland-Cook surplus.” Hopefully this will help cut down on “eco-lala” (Chaia Heller in this Interventions series) and what we might describe as “theo-lala.”

The last three installations of Interventions have further deepened many of the connections between exploitation and the formation of alternatives substantially. While the authors come from various walks of life, all of them are engaged in projects that have demonstrated their potential to make a difference. Not surprisingly, the topic of solidarity comes up again and again.

Storytelling that is rooted in material struggles, we found in the company of Priscila Alves Goncalves DaSilva, Robert Kell, Madeleine Lewis, and Eljijah Prewit-Davis, is a powerful force that has empowered communities for ages, possibly as far back as the dawn of humanity. One story about slowly cultivating the land and letting other-than-human nature do its thing connects ecological processes with the protection of working people (Prewit-Davis). What better example for Wendland-Cook’s concern to tie the liberation of people and the planet together? Another story from life in a Brazilian favela addresses the guilt that is imposed on people who are not only exploited but often excluded altogether for no fault of their own, and pushes back against it (Alves). The other two stories narrate the impacts of climate change on local communities and the way resistance grows out of it in tangible ways. Both stories describe how this is happening in the South of the United States, which is often considered too backwards or too slow, but which is now leading some of the resistance and where religion might potentially be reclaimed for transformation of the status quo (Lewis and Kell).

While understanding the depth and the misery of our current situation is crucial—the first question at Wendland-Cook is always “what are we up against?”—the goal is not disgust or despair but the formation of viable alternatives. Timothy Eberhart, Francisco Garcia, and Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger introduce us to the work to which they have dedicated their lives and careers. That these alternatives exist and are flourishing and growing is witness to the fact that something bigger is at work. This is where theologians might find God, and this reality—whatever else it may be called—can actually be experienced in tangible ways. Eberhart’s “dangerous memories” note alternatives to ecological devastation, including cooperatives, progressive populist traditions, Christian socialism, and land owned by communities. Further in the past, he discovers European tribal alternatives that fought Roman imperial interests and lived in sync with the earth (the tribe of the Swabians mentioned is also my own and I grew up speaking its dialect). Henkel-Rieger’s engagement with worker cooperatives is closely tied up with my own work, not only because she is my partner. Her stories inform us that alternatives to capitalist-driven climate-damaging corporations are already live options. Garcia narrates his transformation from activist to organizer, concluding with labor organizing in Tennessee that combines environmental, community-focused, and religious concerns, in which the Wendland-Cook Program participates as well.

Finally, as Chaia Heller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein are arguing in their own ways, pie-in-the-sky projects will not help us now, whether their nature is religious, technological, economic, or ecological. This is an all-important wake-up call to those among us who adhere to faith traditions. Many of us would agree that here is too much pie-in-the-sky in religion, not only in otherworldly dreams about heaven but also in some progressive idealistic imaginations and religious fantasies that fail to engage the reality of systemic exploitation and extraction. Religion can be as much part of the solution as it is part of the problem. While I am not sure where Heller and Rubenstein would draw that line in their search for constructive religion, at the Wendland-Cook Program our Solidarity Circles are designed to link up lived faith communities and embodied solidarity economies. Constructive religious and constructive economic and ecological development can feed into each other, challenge each other, and reconstruct each other.

As these three Interventions series have shown, another world is not only possible, but it is taking shape in many ways. While we cannot magically extract ourselves from the challenges of the present system that most of the authors name as capitalism, there are ways not only to subvert what is going on but to sublimate it into something else. Examples range from reacquainting ourselves with other-than-human worlds, to organizing people and the planet, to developing cooperative production and networks. In the process, the work of theology is being transformed in ways that we are still discovering. This time around we are expecting it to make a difference for good.

Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and the Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program.