The Enlightenment brought many good things, but there was a dark side too.
Marcia Bjornerud, professor of geosciences and environmental studies at Lawrence University, describes the downsides.
Marcia Bjornerud is a structural geologist whose research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building. She is the author of several books for popular audiences: Reading the Rocks, Timefulness, Geopedia and the recently published Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks.
The Dark Side of the Enlightenment
As a scientist, I hesitate to speak ill of the Enlightenment. It lit the spark for great scientific advances that have vastly improved the lives of humans. But it also marked the start of a hubristic view of matter, as inert, lacking agency, ours to manipulate and outwit. Capitalism then eagerly coopted the idea and applied it to the natural world as a whole. Three centuries on, most Earth citizens see the planet as the passive backdrop against which the ‘real’ action unfolds — not an active protagonist in our narratives.
This attitude has allowed us to assume that we can radically alter the composition of the atmosphere without the climate system noticing, or introduce novel materials like plastics into complex biogeochemical cycles and imagine that this won’t lead to a cascade of unexpected outcomes. When the Earth does show signs of sentience, we respond with distress and outrage – how can it be that the planet we thought to be deaf and dumb is now acting unpredictably?
The perception of Earth as a stupid rock, a little slow on the uptake, a thing that just is, rather than a teeming tangle of sophisticated, still-evolving parts, is particularly dangerous in the hands of ultra-wealthy tech moguls. The idea, for example, that we could “terraform” a truly inert rock like Mars reflects utter ignorance of the deep evolutionary pathways that gave rise to the world we live in, the behind-the-scenes logistics – the microbial housekeeping crew — that make Earth habitable. (But then, these guys probably don’t clean their own houses either).
What a terrible irony that Enlightenment ideas have led now to a new dark age for humankind.
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