The great reinterpretation requires a conversion to the world-view of ecology

"Every social transformation . . . has rested on a new metaphysical and ideological base; or rather, upon deeper stirrings and intuitions whose rationalised expression takes the form of a new picture of the cosmos and the nature of man."
   Lewis Mumford

"The quest for a communal reality assumes the shape of a massive salvage operation, reaching out in many unlikely directions. I think this is the great adventure of our age and far more humanly valuable than the 'race for space'. It is the reclamation and renewal of the Old Gnosis. For those who respond to the call, what happens within the world of science, though still consequential in public policy, will have less and less existential meaning. The scientists and their many imitators will become for them an arcane priesthood carrying on obscure professional ceremonies and exchanging their 'public knowledge' within the inner sanctum of the state temple."
   Theodore Roszak

"This generation may either be the last to exist in any semblance of a civilised world or that it will be the first to have the vision, the bearing and the greatness to say 'I will have nothing to do with this destruction of life, I will play no part in this devastation of the land, I am determined to live and work for peaceful construction for I am morally responsible for the world of today and the generations of tomorrow'."
   Richard St Barbe Baker

"Ultimately, reality matters."
   James Michael Goldsmith

No amount of empirical or theoretical evidence is likely to persuade mainstream scientists, or other protagonists of the world-view of modernism, to accept any of the principles set out in this book. If eventually they are to be accepted, it will not be because they will by then have been 'proved' to be true in the scientific sense of the term, but because the reigning paradigm or canonical knowledge will have changed to such an extent that they will have become consistent with it.

Until this occurs these principles are, in the words of Gunther Stent, "premature", in that "their implications cannot be connected by a series of simple logical steps to 'canonical' or 'generally accepted knowledge' with the current paradigm." [1] In this way, Gleason's "individualistic concept of plant association" was rejected when ecology was still a holistic discipline, only to be adopted once it had been brought into line with the paradigm of science.

At the same time, no amount of empirical or theoretical 'evidence' as to the untenability of a hypothesis can lead scientists to abandon it, if it is part of current wisdom or canonical knowledge. However, once it has ceased to enjoy that status, because it has been transferred to another paradigm, then the hypothesis will simply die a natural death.

In this way, hypotheses that have achieved the status of 'scientific facts' have, in the space of a few years, been "completely discredited and committed to oblivion, without ever having been disproved or even newly tested". This is, as Polanyi points out, "simply because the conceptual framework of science had, meanwhile, so altered that the facts no longer appeared credible". [2]

Clearly then, so long as we argue within the accepted 'conceptual framework', or the reigning paradigm, or the canonical knowledge of the day, we can never dissuade people either to accept a new idea or to abandon an old one. "Demonstration", Polanyi insists, "must be supplemented ... by forms of persuasion which can induce a conversion". [3] This is the crux of the matter. It is the conceptual framework itself which must be changed, and this, as Polanyi suggests, means converting people to a new conceptual framework.

For people to accept the principles listed in this book, it is the paradigm of science itself that must be abandoned and hence the world-view of modernism which it faithfully reflects; and they must be replaced by the world-view of ecology.

Such a conversion, or generalised paradigm shift, involves a profound rearrangement or recombination of the knowledge that makes up our world-view. It must affect its very metaphysical, ethical and aesthetic foundations. It must, in fact, involve a change akin to a religious conversion to which - as Kuhn, Polanyi and more recently Rupert Sheldrake have noted - a paradigm shift, even one occurring in a purely scientific context, can be realistically compared.

However, one must distinguish between a real religious conversion and a nominal one. All too often a religious conversion is of a very superficial nature; it is largely the terminology used in addressing the world of Gods and spirits that changes and little else. A real conversion seems to occur in quite specific conditions, which the psychologist William Sargant has compared with those that lead, more stressfully, to a nervous breakdown and also to the brainwashing to which prisoners of war are often subjected in order to make them confess to crimes that they have not committed. [4]

It seems probable too that the electric shock treatment often given to psychiatric patients fulfils a similar function. This explains why religious conversions are often preceded by physically and mentally exhausting ceremonies, the taking of alcohol and drugs and the achievement of trance-like states, as in the famous Dionysian rites. All this gives rise to a state of mind that may be functionally analogous to a nervous breakdown, a state of heightened suggestibility in which people can be inculcated with a new world-view.

It may be that the same process occurs - though in a less dramatic way - in new environmental conditions, such as those created by economic development, to which a traditional cultural pattern proves to be unadaptive, causing people to question and eventually to abandon the world-view on which it is based and with which they and their ancestors have been imbued for centuries or even millennia. Such people pass through a highly stressful, indeed, psychically intolerable experience, for the human psyche abhors a cultural vacuum, as it does the terrible social disorder to which it must give rise.

Such a situation occurred with the breakdown of paganism - as we refer to the traditional religion or world-view of early Roman society. In the chaos that ensued, there was a frantic search to replace the old world-view with a different one - one that could at least satisfy the psychic requirements of the increasingly atomised and alienated masses that inhabited the growing conurbations of the Roman Empire.

Not surprisingly, they turned eastwards for inspiration, to where similar social conditions already existed. Franz Cumont describes the proliferation of eastern cults among the culturally deprived Roman masses. Eastern gods, such as Attis, Adonis, Mithra, Osiris and Isis, all had their devotees. But it was the religion preached by St Paul, the religion of Jesus Christ, that was to prevail. [5]

Anthony Wallace seeks to explain the process involved. [6] He sees every person in society as

"maintaining a mental image of the society and its culture, as well as of his own body and its behavioural regularities, in order to act in ways which reduce stress at all levels of the system."

This mental image or model, he refers to as "a mazeway". However, when a person under stress receives repeated information indicating

"that his mazeway does not lead to action which reduces the level of stress, he must choose between maintaining his present mazeway and tolerating the stress, or changing the mazeway in an attempt to reduce the stress."

This involves "changing his total gestalt, or his image of self, society and culture, of nature and body, and of ways of action" - in this way a new culture comes into being. Such a culture is generally referred to as millenarian. They proliferated in Europe during the tenth century, a period of socio-economic change that caused very serious social stresses. Many of the movements that sought to establish new cultural patterns during those troubled times were convinced that the year 1000 presaged the end of the world and they called upon their adepts to prepare themselves spiritually for this momentous event.

Such movements are also referred to as 'messianic' in that they are often led by a prophet who sees himself as divinely inspired - as a re-incarnation of a previous great religious figure, or in the case of movements of this sort occurring among the Jews, as the Messiah himself.

These movements have proliferated throughout the Third World, during the colonial period in particular. In Lagos, there has been such a proliferation of messianic cults that their leaders have gone so far as to set up the world's first trade union of messiahs. Wallace refers to such cults as "revitalist", and defines a revitalisation movement as

a deliberate, organised, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture. Revitalisation is thus, from a cultural standpoint, a special kind of culture-change phenomenon: the person involved in a process of revitalisation must perceive their culture, or some major areas of it, as a system (whether accurately or not); they must feel this cultural system as unsatisfactory; and they must innovate not merely discreet items, but a new cultural system, specifying new relationships as well as, in some cases, new traits. [7]

Wallace considers that both Christianity and Islam, and possibly Buddhism too, originated in revitalist movements. Indeed, it seems that all organised religions are 'relics' of old revitalisation movements, surviving in routinised form in stabilised cultures.

The increasing failure of all policies based on the world-view of modernism and its derivative paradigms - those of science and modern economics - to satisfy our most fundamental psychic needs or indeed solve any of the worsening problems that threaten our very survival on this planet, gives rise to psychic conditions increasingly propitious to the emergence of revitalist movements.

The chances are that such movements will be affected by ecological ideas that are increasingly in the air and whose relevance is becoming ever more apparent to even the blindest among us. There are signs, too, that such movements are likely to preach a return to the vernacular way of life.

Thus while the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Moslem world and of Hindu fundamentalism in India can be seen as an unpleasant trend towards chauvinism, bigotry and intolerance, it is clearly also a reaction against Western economic imperialism and the disruption of the cultures and traditions of Moslems and Hindus by Western science, technology and industrial development.

Significantly, too, a considerable proportion of the revitalist movements that have so far sprung up in the Third World have been 'nativistic' - which is to say that they have correctly attributed the ills against which they were reacting, to the way of life imposed upon them by their colonial masters and preached a return to the Way of their ancestors.

Many such movements have been violent and unpleasant, of that there is no doubt. Usually too, they have been put down with equal violence and unpleasantness as their ideas were seen as a threat to the established order. However, there is reason to hope that the ecology-based revitalist movements of the future will seek to achieve their ends in the true non-violent Gandhian tradition.

It could be that Deep Ecology, with its ethical and metaphysical preoccupations, might well develop into such a movement. So could the Earth First! movement in the USA, whose religious and metaphysical basis has recently been described by Bron Taylor. [8]

We cannot afford to wait and see whether such movements will develop into revitalist cults that are powerful enough to transform our society. Instead, we should work towards their development by helping to create the conditions in which they are likely to emerge.

Let us remember that the world-view of ecology is very much that of the vernacular community-based society, whereas the world-view of modernism is that of industrial society. We must set out to combat and systematically weaken the main institutions of the industrial system - the state, the corporations - and the science and technology that they use to transform society and the natural world.

At the same time, we must do everything to help recreate the family and the community and above all a localised and diversified economy based on them, reducing in this way our increasingly universal dependence on a destructive economic system that, in any case, is in decline and may well be close to collapse.

As we multiply our efforts in these directions, so we must create the terrain in which ecological ideas can take root and flourish. May they inspire those who will lead us back to the Way and thereby restore and preserve what still remains of the beautiful world we have been privileged to inherit.

References