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Xiao Handout 1 Ecological Crisis As Philosophical Crisis
Xiao Handout 1 Ecological Crisis As Philosophical Crisis
Yang Xiao
Handout #1
Ecological Crisis as Philosophical Crisis
Agenda for today
1. What is our ecological crisis?
(1a) What is climate change?
(1b) Why it is not necessarily the same as the environmental issues?
2. Why technology cannot solve all the problems without karma? – Against
“Crazy Technologists”.
3. “I want to understand”
What is Our Ecological Crisis?
During the Anthropocene (the age of humans, when humans have become a “force
of nature”), which started around the Industrial Revolution (the 18th Century) or
perhaps around the 1950s (more than 90 percent of the warming on the Earth has
happened over the past 50 years), humans have been emitting more and more carbon
dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere of Planet Earth, making it thicker and thicker. It
is “very likely” that, due to the greenhouse effect, this has caused “global warming”
– the rise of temperature on the surface of Planet Earth. It is “very likely” that this is
further connected to a series of phenomena that have been happening or will be
happening in the near future: the rise of sea levels, frequency and severity of
extreme weather, extinction of species, droughts and famines, civil wars, climate
refugees, the eventual disappearance of island nations and coast cities, and so on
and so forth.
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
31 years ago, two important events took place
in the summer:
• 中英暑期哲学学院第一期 and James Hansen, a NASA scientist, testified
at a US Congress hearing, presenting evidence for the likelihood of global
warming (June 23rd, 1988).
• 雾霾(环境污染)(以及后面会提到的马粪)是可见度高,可闻度高的
“技术剩余物”。它们本身直接有害。 二氧化碳不是。它是无嗅无
味无毒的“技术剩余物”。本身无害。它的害处是间接的。因此,
不易引起人们的注意.
Slogans that cover the environmental issues in a narrow sense:
“美丽中国 ”(a beautiful China),
“绿水青山就是金山银山” (Clean water and green mountains are money)
• “We will make China a beautiful country with blue sky, green vegetation and clear
rivers,” President Xi Jinping promised in September 2016 when world leaders gathered in
Hangzhou for the G20.
• However, the Chinese government does also have slogans that cover the ecological
issues in the broader sense:
Cities in China have been adopting the German way: moving polluting
factories to frontier provinces or importing them to other countries.
An example I encountered recently: a polluting chemical factory in a
small city in Hunan (湖南湘乡市) was moved to Yunnan Province (云
南)
Many polluting factories in China have recently been moved to Vietnam
越南 and Cambodia 柬埔寨.
After these countries, which countries can they be moved to next? North
Korea 北韩 (北朝鲜)!
(Of course, there soon will be no place on earth to go!)
However, Global climate change (全球气候变
化 ) is “global”
CO2 produced locally enter the atmosphere of Planet Earth, and become
a global problem for the whole planet. The German model will not work.
What we are dealing with is no longer dadi 大地 (soil, earth, a local part
of Planet Earth), but rather Planet Earth 地球 as a whole.
We now live in the Age of Planet Earth. This is why it should not have
come as a surprise that climate change was first discovered by a NASA
scientist:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/02/joy-as-china-shelves-
plans-to-dam-angry-river
2. Why technology cannot solve all the problems without
karma? – Against “Crazy Technologists”.
• Obviously, there are aspects of climate change that are about technology: we
need to find new, alternative, clean and cheap energy to replace coal and fusil
fuel.
• We are not against technology. We are against technologism, or “crazy
technologism”
Liu Cixin 刘慈欣, arguably the most famous sci-fi writer in China once said:“我是一
个疯狂的技术主义者,我个人坚信技术能解决一切问题”(I am a crazy
technologist. I personally believe that technology can solve every problem).
Liu’s short story, and movie based on it, “The Wandering Earth”, is a disguised
technologist “solution” to climate change!
Moving Planet Earth out off the solar system.
• I want to reformulate his claim as a question:
“Can technology solve every problem ”cleanly”?
Here “cleanly” means “without karma”, “without a curse 诅咒”, without
“another technological surplus 剩余物”
Karma is the Buddhist concept of “action” and the Chinese terms for
karma are one of the most frequently used ones by ordinary Chinese:
ye 业,yuan 缘, yuanfen 缘分,yinyuan 因缘, yinguo 因果, baoying
报应, yinyuan baoying 因缘报应
利用一个关于纽约的马粪的故事来引进一个新概念:“技术剩余物”
or “技术的因果报应
• The example to illustrate karma that almost everyone in China knows is
from The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber (the best
translation is done by the greatest translator David Hawkes):
• Two lovers, Baoyu and Daiyu. Although they are deeply in love, the girl
cried constantly. Why?
• The author, Cao Xueqin曹雪芹, gives a beautiful Buddhist explanation
还泪说: 前世因缘 (karma in their previous life): 女孩前世是三生石
畔的一株灵珠草,男孩前世,给花浇水,救了灵珠一命。。
The “karma of technology”: “纽约气味变化”问题
In the late 19th-Century (before the invention of automobile and fusil fuel), rich people in
New York had the comfort and convenience of what we have called “modern life style”.
• Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel The Age of Innocence (and later Martin Scorsese’s film based
on it) gives a glamour portrait of such a life in the 70s and 80s in the 19 th-Century New
York.
The story from Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s new book
Superfreakonomics
• “As a proverbial expression, it's half a millennium old. The older fuller
form was curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost,
meaning that your offensive words or actions are likely at some point
to rebound on you.”
Arendt as a Buddhist Thinker
• Arendt has an essay entitled, “Home to Roost”.