Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology
William Ophuls
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0262015900
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this provocative call for a new ecological politics, William Ophuls starts from a radical premise: "sustainability" is impossible. We are on an industrial Titanic, fueled by rapidly depleting stocks of fossil hydrocarbons. Making the deck chairs from recyclable materials and feeding the boilers with biofuels is futile. In the end, the ship is doomed by the laws of thermodynamics and by the implacable biological and geological limits that are already beginning to pinch. Ophuls warns us that we are headed for a postindustrial future that, however technologically sophisticated, will resemble the preindustrial past in many important respects. With Plato's Revenge, Ophuls, author of Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, envisions political and social transformations that will lead to a new natural-law politics based on the realities of ecology, physics, and psychology.
In a discussion that ranges widely -- from ecology to quantum physics to Jungian psychology to Eastern religion to Western political philosophy -- Ophuls argues for an essentially Platonic politics of consciousness dedicated to inner cultivation rather than outward expansion and the pursuit of perpetual growth. We would then achieve a way of life that is materially and institutionally simple but culturally and spiritually rich, one in which humanity flourishes in harmony with nature.
an end to the hubris itself by dissolving the dread-driven, neurotic hostility to nature that fuels the urge for domination. Ecology is the surest cure for modern hubris. To understand ecology is to see that the goal of domination is impossible—in fact, mad—and that the crude means we have employed to this end are destroying us. To understand ecology is also to see that some of the most vaunted achievements of modern life—our extraordinary agricultural productivity, the dazzling wonders of
cultural and religious moorings leaves them adrift in a meaningless cosmos, lacking clear metaphysical or practical answers to the basic problems of life. The resulting spiritual vertigo is responsible for much of the social and personal dysfunction mentioned above and also for the calamitous history of the twentieth century. Only a few artists, philosophers, and free spirits thrive on the radical openness of cultural nihilism. The average person hates it, and if people do not get satisfactory
institutions. Given the chaotic nature of the world system and the probable magnitude of the impending changes, we confront a future that is both Politeia 151 radically different and mostly unforeseeable. Moreover, we are bound to conceive the future anachronistically—that is, in terms of our current way of thinking, which posterity will not share, and our present level of knowledge, which posterity will surpass. Although the future will probably resemble the preindustrial past in many
consequently little moderation of spirit; there are trusts too great to be placed in the hands of any single citizen; interests become particularized; a man begins to feel that he can become 156 Chapter 6 happy, great, and glorious without his country; and then, that he can become great upon the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the common good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations; it is subordinated to various exceptions; it depends on accidents. In a small republic, the public
demoralization. If individuals are left to their own moral devices with nothing but rationality to guide them, said Will Durant, there can be no other outcome: Law and Virtue 17 The brilliant enfranchisement of the mind sapped the supernatural sanctions of morality, and no others were found to effectually replace them. The result was such a repudiation of inhibitions, such a release of impulse and desire, so gay a luxuriance of immorality as history had not known since the Sophists shattered