Re: Function, Symbiosis - value judgements

["McIntyre, Mike S." <***>]

Hi Dan,

I liked your Leopold quote, and I enjoyed your Tao Te Ching story.
Among the English translators of ancient Chinese philosophy, I have
always been partial to Arthur Waley.  He translated the Tao Te Ching
but not, at least in full, Chuang Tzu, which is a shame (he translated
portions of the latter in Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China).
I've long since misplaced my copy of Waley's version of the Tao Te
Ching, but in the preface, he wrote something that has stayed with me.
Here is my paraphrase of it from memory:

"For hundreds of thousands of years man has prayed, sacrificed, etc.,
to the sun, moon, earth, rocks, trees, etc.  We who do none of these
things can hardly be said to represent ~normal~ man.  Under the thinnest
possible veneer of homo industrialis -- which may be a very unstable
branch development -- lies endless strata of barbarity."

Of course, it is possible to read a lot into that statement, and run
in several different directions with it.  I'm not sure what Waley
ultimately meant by it.  Was he being archly pessimistic about the
prospects of homo industrialis?  Maybe.  For myself, and over time,
I have come to read it in a more optimistic light, helped along in
this by men like Henri Bergson, about whom I have written on the other
list.  In this context, I recently came across a passage by Bergson
that I quite like.  It is from his last book (published in France in
1932), The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (starting on page 309):

"Man will rise above earthly things only if a powerful equipment
supplies him with the requisite fulcrum.  He must use matter as a
support if he wants to get away from matter.  In other words, the
mystical summons up the mechanical.  This has not been sufficiently
realized, because machinery, through a mistake at the points, has
been switched off on to a track at the end of which lies exaggerated
comfort and luxury for the few, rather than liberation for all.
We are struck by the accidental result, we do not see mechanization
as it should be, as what it is in essence.  Let us go further still.
If our organs are natural instruments, our instruments must then be
artificial organs.  The workman's tool is the continuation of his
arm, the tool-equipment of humanity is therefore a continuation of
its body.  Nature, in endowing us with an essentially tool-making
intelligence, prepared for us in this way a certain expansion.  But
machines which run on oil or coal or 'white coal,' and which convert
into motion a potential energy stored up for millions of years, have
actually imparted to our organism an extension so vast, have endowed
it with a power so mighty, so out of proportion to the size and
strength of that organism, that surely none of all this was foreseen
in this structural plan of our species: here was a unique stroke of
luck, the greatest material success of man on the planet.  A spiritual
impulsion had been given, perhaps, at the beginning: the extension
took place automatically, helped as it were by a chance blow of the
pick-axe which struck against a miraculous treasure underground.
Now, in this body, distended out of all proportion, the soul remains
what it was, too small to fill it, too weak to guide it.  Hence the
gap between the two.  Hence the tremendous social, political and
international problems which are just so many definitions of this
gap, and which provoke so many chaotic and ineffectual efforts to
fill it.  What we need are new reserves of potential energy -- moral
energy this time.  So let us not merely say, as we did above, that
the mystical summons up the mechanical.  We must add that the body,
now larger, calls for a bigger soul, and that mechanism should mean
mysticism.  The origins of the process of mechanization are indeed
more mystical than we might imagine.  Machinery will find its true
vocation again, it will render services in proportion to its power,
only if mankind, which it has bowed still lower to the earth, can
succeed, through it, in standing erect and looking heavenwards."

Best regards,
Mike McIntyre


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Fiscus [mailto:***
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:57 PM
To: ***
Subject: Re: Function, Symbiosis - value judgements


Tim,

Here are those two quotes/passages I mentioned that present different views
on how or whether to tell good/bad, right/wrong in terms of human actions
in context of a biosphere, home, environment.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and
beauty of
the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Aldo Leopold
in "A
Sand County Almanac", 1948.

Two things I like here are that he uses life as an adjective to describe
a kind of
community; and he covers both the quantitative (integrity and stability) as
well as the qualitative (beauty) aspects of life as community.

I don't have my copy of Mitchell's translation of Tao Te Ching here, but
I can
paraphrase a neat passage in his notes. He credits this story to some
book or
author, but I forget which/who. The gist of the story is - A man's horse ran
away and all the people of his village came to offer their condolences
for his
loss. A sage said, "How can you tell that this is not a good thing?"
Later the
man's horse returned with another horse of another breed and the two created
very strong offspring together. The villagers offered their
congratulations, but
the sage said, "How can you tell that this is not a disaster?" The man
became
rich and successful in the horse breeding/selling business. In all the
horse
business going on his son was actively involved as a worker. One day he was
thrown by a horse and broke his hip. The villagers came and offered their
sympathy, but the sage said again, "How can you tell that this is not a
good
thing?" Later a war broke out and most of the young men were conscripted
and went to fight, and the majority that did were killed in the war. Due to
the broken hip the man's son was spared this fate.

Mitchell uses this story to back up the passages in the Tao that suggest the
wisest approach is to not label, assign, judge things as good or bad, but to
remain impartial, to embrace both aspects. He and the Tao also seem to
imply, though, that impartial is good, or that for world events or
dynamics,
"its all good".

I see "value" in both Leopold's assertive judgement as well as the Tao's
radical
impartiality. It is not an easy marriage but requires a kind of permanent
acceptance of paradox or unsettledness or uncertainty. As such it seems to
me that all decision making or policy that seeks to be science-based or
rational will forever require a leap of faith to span at least some
uncertainty
and unknowability. We can make our best model, know it is incomplete, but
then act based partly on what "feels right" with the model aiding but myriad
other factors contributing, some of which we may not be able to explain or
even articulate in words.

Dan