Brilliant but Infuriating

I am finally getting around to reading Herman E. Daly's classic and essential book Beyond Growth.

I have just finished reading the Introduction.  It is brilliant, as I expect the rest of the book to be, if I can get myself to read it all.

But it is also infuriating to me.  I could never have believed Daly would raise my anger so much.

In the final section of the introduction (reflecting the final section of the book), he insists, contrary to the very evidence he presents, that scientific materialism is incompatible with a concern for the environment.  He tells the story of a conference organized by Carl Sagan and others, meeting with religious leaders, to reach a joint agreement (which they did) regarding the environment.  He finds this whole exercise to be shallow (which perhaps it was) and impossible.

It is true that something else is required than scientific materialism.  But he is wrong to say that scientific materialism subsumes all value and ethical systems.  It is merely orthogonal.

All that's is required is a fairly simple set of values or ethical principles, such as humanism or rationalism.  I would call mine universalism and regard it more as an ethical system than a value system.

It seems axiomatic to me that I regard all other lives as something resembling my own, and therefore worthy of protection and respect.

This includes not only past and present lives, but future lives.  I am connected to all of these in that my existence was a product of past, a part of the present, and future lives will be in some ways a product of mine.

Future lives are not really even lives yet, but potentials.  There is a vast potential for humans to create a beautiful and mutually loving world for humans and other earthly living things, or to destroy it.  I would feel very badly about destroying it, and very happy about helping to maintain and enhance it's goodness.

When Sagan and others brought up the importance of the children they weren't just being cute, but in this same sense as I have just described.

This is in fact highly compatible with scientific materialism because in this system there is no other cosmic force that needs to be reckoned with.  There is no Christian or Jewish or Muslim god who is going to replace or enhance this world according to Their Plan and/or timetables.  Not surprisingly, monotheisms are associated with lack of concern for the environment as a leading priority.  They propose that all we need do is follow God's plan (short form: be fruitful and multiply) and God will take care of the rest.  In fact, it is monotheistic religions which are incompatible with environmentalism, and that explains a lot of where we are today.  Scientific materialism is relatively blameless, and in fact mostly associated with environmentalism.

Within a universalist perspective, We are the gods who bear much responsibility for how things unfold, from this point forwards.

Daly can't seem to get beyond his characterization of scientists and academics as value free postmoderns.  Though it may not be true of imperial economists and sociologists he has known, I believe many if not most scientists and academics reject value free postmodernism.   It does not require the (ultimately useless IMO) subjectivist mental gymnastics of an Alfred North Whitehead empiricism which a sense of human purpose at the center of all reality.  It only requires a sense that being fully human includes embracing some kind of value or ethical system.

Carl Sagan explains his concern for the future of the earth eloquently in the last episode of his series Cosmos.  He explains how it comes out of his system of values, and never finds it to contradict his scientific materialism, but rather to resonate with his awe (love) for the universe.

I believe we are indeed the children of countless accidents.  But that only makes our reality, and that of those like us, even more worth preserving.  There may not be time enough left in this universe for another identical set of accidents to occur, or even close enough to preserve the best of what we are.

Ultimately, to get Beyond Growth, we will have to get beyond traditional monotheisms and capitalism.  But there is no need to replace scientific materialism, only augment it with an appropriate ethical system.