STAGE 1
EC(h)O-NESS ECOLOGICAL REVERBERATIONS
Faculty : Mathilde Marengo Andreea Bunica & Irem Yagmur Cebeci @Barcelona, Istanbul & Transylvania, 2020
EC(h)O-NESS: Ecological reverberations
STAGE 1 was developed as part of the Applied Theory Seminar at IAAC, Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia 2019/2020
Digital space for special “thank-you�s: to all the people that have contributed their time and mind so far to engage in scale-jumping conversations, to those that contributed their digital swipes and taps, and to all others that contributed their their existence as trigger points into forming a whole... Stage 1; one out of many parts.
Faculty : Mathilde Marengo Andreea Bunica & Irem Yagmur Cebeci @Barcelona, Istambul & Transylvania, 2020
INDEX / glossary / abstract PRELUDE / nature / syntheticism / ego-crisis ACTION & REACTION / unconscious supremacy vs. conscious desire / ethics of the self, politics of the other / parallelism
GLOSSARY
Human ecology = study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments Natural ecology = ecology : branch of biology concerning interactions among organisms and their biophysical environment (in context use for highlighting the difference between human-controlled and bio-chemically driven) Ego= the freudian ego (id, ego, supergo) Ego-centric= egoism, selfishness; Anthropic principle= anthropic bias Anthropocentric= incapacity to collapse the external world from a non-human perspective Wholeness= almost religious, referring to holiness; pleasure found in perfect, closed objects Partness= being a part of; Ego-group= the totality of ego parts within a group whole Ego-nucleus= the center of the radius Radius-nucleus= the center of the whole
ABSTRACT
EC(h)O-NESS is questioning ecological thinking in relation to the design of our built environments, debating whether the development of biological construction protocols- an apparent “loss� of control- is the key towards reconciling with our future. We question the transcending implications of building with biology across political, economical, anthropological and psychological strata in the context of deepening social, climatic and technological injustice as a reaction to our action as human species. We question the implications of not just using biology, but being biology, in all its vastness and ambiguity.
PREL
LUDE
C A N
biology be synthetic?
the adjective synthetic be scientifically attributed to the lexicon of biology? synthetic biology transgress the anthropomorphic order towards transitioning to the new nature?
WITHIN the process of human cognition and its associated sentience, we- as species, begin to fathom (physically) the lack of humour in the fatalistic morbidity of long-professed, vastly studied, analytically predicted, desperately warned, vocally protested cataclysmic near futures; more often than not, even cataclysmic ‘now’s. We- humans, as a race- are directly under threat. Morbidity manifests itself through the way in which we relate to Earth- morbidity blossoms amidst the deprecating relationship we have with soil. The urge of owning land, of rooting- of becoming within land is primal, it’s a cocooning of oneself in a pre-embrietal state where identity and cognition of the
self develop. Latour describes the crisis as the threat of land deprivation- in translation, deprivation of “origins, of the autotochtonomy of race, of secure borders” 1. The crisis manifests itself internally, agitating and challenging the perception of oneself. In crisis, one is under threat from within. Morbidity develops in the wake of our awareness that the milimetrically specific land conditions in which humankind came into the evolutionary process of Earth are changing2. Change is evolutionarily programmed into Earth’s behaviour (float note); however, accelerated change reported to disproportionately fractioned geological timescales might not be programmed within the coping mechanisms of human individs.
MANIFESTO MOTIVATED by implacable morbidity, we must reconsider our relationship with landwe must reconsider the way we construct, we interact, we inhabit, we consume earth. We need to reconcile with our nature. Within this context, we question syntheticism. We question biology. We question the way human architecture manifests and transforms environment- nature - and ultimately, the role our very own interactions with nature play in the unfolding of our collective future. The goal of this paper is to question the possibility of developing symbiotic construction processes through the introduction of synthetic biology as an early design tool and to study the repercussions such an action could propagate across social, political and environmental strata.
But what is nature?
“
Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us may have been absolutely required… in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man. [Alfred Russel Wallace, 1904]
”
THE “puddle theory”3 illustrates a non-scientific approach to the weak anthropic principle4: if one finds themselves in a seemingly perfect fitting puddle, then the puddle must’ve been made for them; if the puddle disappears, the observer meets this encounter with disbelief. Mankind finds itself similarly challenged: following the Goldilocks principle5 into developing an anthropic bias, the universe has evolved to become “just right” to culminate, no less, into the existence of the human race. This psychological phenomena begins to be described through the quantum physics variation of the anthropic principle, PAP (participatory anthropic principle)6: the universe has to develop sentient life forms- observers- in order to be perceived and converted into concrete reality. The sentient observer and the universe find themselves in a participatory, mutually binding state of necessity,
GLOBAL TRANSFERING the conquest of perception to the “concrete reality”- our immediate surroundings, the human anthropic bias has been evolutionarily developed in direct correlation with nature. Nature, in this scenario, becomes the definition of a localised near-understanding of Earth: we observe from within, and we project towards outside, limiting our perception of nature to the local geological and temporal scales of our existence7. In the absence of a global perspective over nature, a tendency towards abstractization, romanticization and appraisal for its
aesthetic properties rather than an indepth functional understanding of nature is pursued8. From an anthropomorphic perspective, humans attribute a degree of innocence and divinity to nature, associated with the idea of Gaia9: nature as the lush, the mysterious, the wild; nature as exorbitant greenery. This association carries with it reminiscences of the “puddle theory”, explaining our anthropic bias: pristine nature is there for humans to inhabit, it was made for us, and therefore, we are an external, alien entity removed from the natural domain.
THE abstract perception of nature is contradicted when nature is seen through global geological and temporal scales. The Anthropocene (chthulucene, technocene etc.10) represents the current geological epoch and it is characterised by the evolution of homo sapiens as dominant species and the consequent transformative impact on Earth’s flora and fauna resulting from this dynamic. Assessing our impact from an anthropic perspective, we have modified nature throughout- commencing with the evolution of homo habilis in the early Pleistocene epoch on the African continent11 , we have brought the notion of “wild nature” to extinction: through the introduction of the human species, Earth’s ecosystem has been transformed sequentially over millennia; in the process of human evolution, through direct or indirect interaction12 a sixth mass extinction has been initiated, landscapes have been transformed, climate change and geological mass movements have been accelerated13. From a geological perspective, however, botanist Chris D. Thomas14 argues that whilst the acceleration of Earth’s natural cycles
is obvious, nature is thriving: the transformation of the natural landscape and its conversion into multiple biotas (from the agricultural pasture to the wild forest and now, to the urban ecosystem) is encouraging the diversification of Earth’s flora and fauna, triggering a second Pangea effect. Alike previous geological epochs marked by the pregnant imposition of dominant species (see: mega-mammals in the Cenozoic epoch and large-scale reptilian populations during the Mesozoic), Earth belongs to the opportunist species; a large percentage of the species that we encounter today are species that originate far on the geological timeline and have suffered sequential mutations into becoming what we now understand as local nature. At this scale, the human specimen abides by the rules: our mere existence became possible through the extinction of large reptiles during the last Ice Age. We, similarly to all other species of Earth, have evolved into the sentient specimens we are today through an opportunity window that arose on the large-scale timeline of nature.
LOCAL WHITIN this framework, nature is defined as a constant process of migration, replacement and evolution, inclusive of mankind; our sentience does not give grounds to our anthropic bias. Nature is local, global and universal, and humans are nothing but another dominant species. We are nature, and as such, our existence closely impacts and is closely impacted by the multitude of “other”15 agents- both from the biosphere of what we perceive as the natural world, and from the sub-nature sphere we have “synthetically” created by design.
But what is synthetic?
Synthetic [/sɪnˈθetɪk/] ;adjective Made artificially and not produced from natural substances.
FOR something to be synthetic, it has to be characterised as non-natural, non-pure.
“Synthetic� can be attributed to notions, objects, living beings, space and the relationships formed between those. Within the realm of botany, we perceive certain species as natural- vernacular, of local origin, whereas new additions (less than 500 years16) to an existing ecosystem are regarded as artificial- synthetic. This perception is matched socially within the contemporary geopolitical climate crisiswe perceive ourselves as local to land, whereas immigrant populations entering our ecosystem are regarded as unnatural, as a personal attack to our sense of origin, of place, to our nature17. Encompassing identity and origin within solid boundaries18, however, is a non-natural- synthetic- concept in itself. Nature is liquid, in a state of constant fluctuation and successive modification in response to multidimensional internal and external stimuli; evolution occurs in a state of imbalance, where an organism is faced with the need to adapt.
THE repulsive perception of “alien species” can be classified as an attempt at maintaining purity19- from an anthropic bias standpoint, purity matches our notion of nature- pristine, divine. As exemplified through the recent response to “alien” attacks on humanity in the Covid-19 crisis, the protection of pristinity is situated amidst a polemic of solidifying borders. In crisis, we return to our origins and we protect our land20. Returning to a global perspective, purity is an artificial term- evolutionarily, as described within the geological timescale before, all of Earth’s species, and Earth’s very fabric- soil, land- are characterised by migration, succession, adaptation. Everything we perceive as “local” today
originated elsewhere. Everything we perceive as “nature” today has been thoroughly modified by our presence. Everything we perceive as “immigrant” today, is simply a reactionary part in the man-made acceleration of species migration, extinction, tectonic movement, climate change. Within this framework, we define synthetic as a misperception of nature. The association of “synthetic” and “biology” forming the neulogic term “synthetic biology” to mark the advancements in the field of biological engineering signals an oxymoronic construction. The definition of synthetic is incompatible with the definition of biology, therefore rendering the term in itself to become an artifice. 21
Egocrisis
“
... To the extent that the ego generalizes this ability to overcome an old identity and to construct a new one and learns to resolve identity crises by re-establishing at a higher level the disturbed balance between itself and a changed social reality. Role identity is replaced by ego identity. [Jurgen Habermas,CES, 1979]
�
WHEN we attempt to understand and internalize the very concept of crisis, analyzing in depth the meaning of what Tim Mortons calls “ecological dump mode” or “factoids” about climate emergency causing a PTSDlike sensation within the consciousness of the receiver22, we start speaking about planetary boundaries being crossed; we start speaking about the emergence of non-Goldilocks conditions on Earth, about non-human existence. David Wallace Wells illustrates the characteristics of crisis through explaining it as a continuation of the sixth mass extinction commenced at the beginning of the Holocene epoch; The Uninhabitable Earth starts imagining the Earth at 2 degrees warming by 2100. Then at a hopeful 3. At a likely 4. And so forth, describing increasingly morbid death by heat, drowning, earthquakes, economical collapse, hunger23. The traumatic painting of Earth- the wholeand all of Earth’s parts- humans, land, animals, birds, insects, computers, robots, artificial intelligence, etcis vividly painted and advertised. However, a picture of crisis does not define what crisis is24. Is crisis an attribute of the whole, or is crisis an attribute of the parts?
WHOLENESS EARTH as a whole is illustrated through the Gaia hypothesis. Materialized in 1979 by British biologist James Lovelock, Gaia produces a godlike imagery of Earth: Gaia exists at the fine line between scientific and teleological theory. The scientific theory envisions Earth as a macro-organism encompassing all organisms and their inorganic surroundings; all parts form a whole25, a self-regulatory system where the biota works ceaselessly to maintain the optimal conditions for life. Earth- the ecosystem- gains the proportions of a whole that is greater and holier than all of its constituent parts; Earth becomes a patriarchal canvas for the blissful existence of all, allowing nature to gain chameleonic properties, blending in as background pittoresque imagery26, mechanically fulfilling its purpose, but whose functions are mysterious to mankind. Within this framework, Gaia gains god-like properties, becoming subject to the personification of Earth following the model of pre-Greek religious cults27 . Gaia is omnipresent and omnipotent: nature is mysterious and
sentient indifference is justified. Conceptually, Gaia- wholeness- represents visions of being pure, of being a seamlessly closed circle, of being nurturing, protective, of being without flaw. Tim Morton argues that holism implies the absorption of all parts inside the whole28; attempting to understand Gaia from this perspective would imply that all beings and non-beings within the radius of Earth melt into constructing Gaia as a mono-entity, a closed hyper-object made out of liquified parts. The logic of liquifying the parts of a hyper-object implies that all parts constituting the whole of Gaia are nothing else but micro-Gaia entities, existing in the exact same way. Following the philosophy of triple O, this logic would devoid all parts of non-Gaian ontology, attributing the crisis to the notion of the hyper-object itself; therefore, the definition of crisis produced through wholeness is a crisis of an Earth composed of Earth-like parts alone. The crisis of wholeness is an ideological crisis- a crisis of the idea of Earth.
PARTNESS WHOLE is one, parts are many29. In order to accurately define the planetary crisis, we need to allow the fractured existence of the whole- we need to allow parts and partness to exist. We need to allow humans and non-humans to exist as individual ontological objects. Each part has its own flavour, painting the overall pallette of the crisis. The broad definition of the ecological crisis ties back to notions extrapolated from the participatory anthropic principle: crisis is a participatory state composed of both human and non-human objects.
E-VOLUTION: e means ego
HOWEVER, zooming in into the definition of crisis, we begin to break down the whole into its parts- again. Taking a deconstructivist approach, we must understand the parts constituting the whole of crisis- we must understand how the overall concept reverberates within its components, how each internal object of the crisis whole is feeling and interacting with crisis. Incapacitated by our intrisinc anthropocentric perspective, we first study the crisis object in human beings. Freud classifies the primordial instincts in humans as the dualism between life and death instincts; life- Erosdefines the double orientation of the human psyche through the ego-instincts and the sexual-instincts: the first immediate orientation is aimed at self-preservation, and the following is aimed at the survival of the species30. The ego-instincts’ prime scope is ensuring and maintaining the satisfaction of basic biological conditions of survival, assuming what in Freudian theory is called the reality principle. The freudian ego is subserving the raw urges of the proto-self, the id. The id develops in infancy through the acquisition of internal objects- in psychology, object draws the connotation of a “mental and emotional image of an external object”31; internal objects are causally linked to the image, feeling and interpretation of external objects. Positive or
negative internal objects are created by association, either via id’s primal desires or later via ego’s rationale, forming primitive levels of cognition. From a metapsychological perspective, infant internal objects drive the formation of the life and death instincts, affecting the structure of both the Freudian ego and later the superego32. The resulting objects are scattered on different layers of one’s psyche, forming internal objects of varying grades of mysteriousness in relation to the conscious self. The interaction with the external representation, meaning and manifestation of crisis drives uncontrollable conscious or unconscious interpretations performed at the id and superego (the moral manifestation of the self, where guilt is developed and activated) levels. This psychological interaction with the mysteriousness that the object of crisis emanates, first externally, is then replicated internally and converted into an internal crisis object at the level of the rational self, the ego. Following the logic of partness, crisis- whole- is defined through its constituent parts manifested through the ontology of individual internal crisis objects. Therefore, the ecological crisis becomes a crisis of the self, an ego-crisis, particular to each and every self contributing to the overall palette of the crisis.
CRISIS SPACE IF we treat crisis as the symbiotic duality between action- the external whole constituent of the external parts- and reaction- the internal crisis object and the internal crisis parts, then we identify crisis as being a multi-scalar entity, manifesting itself from the individual, to the social, to the continental, to the planetary, the universal, the galactical, the intergalactical, etc. Crisis space is then manifested as emerging from the ego, as the center nucleus of each crisis radius space; each interaction between the ego and the external crisis hyper-object generates an individual crisis radius space. The interaction between distinct crisis radiuses generates a spatial tesselation of crisis opacities and overlaps, aggregating into the formation of the general crisis hyper-object. We view crisis as a circular system composed of successive action and reaction modes- a symbiotic interchange between external- environment- and internal- ego. Within this context, we contrast the manifestation of global crisis with the freudian ego-instincts aiming to trace back to the genesis of our internal crisis objects and the re-assimilation of our internal objects into external objects as projections in the social-nature space.
PRE-NEOLITHIC societies formed as kinbased unstructured tribes, where the sense of survival and protection of the rational ego was the only life-related societal driver; the “social” order related to protecting the weak members of the group in front of external danger objects: tribes removed elders, women or children from hunting activities36. Hunter-gatherer societies establish an instinct-based model for interacting with external space, where the human ego is still hybridized between the transcendental and the proto-empirical observation of nature37. Human space equates to nature space- nomad tribes are not bound to land; the tribe-radius is scattered, fractured, penetrated by nature objects, hybridized by opacity overlays between intra-species radiuses of proto-egos overlapped by radiuses of inter-species specimens. Boundless tribes exhibit fuzziness through their shifting, constantly adjusting radius- tribe radius is sequentially recalculated in relation to encountered nature-object radiuses; in this context, the proto-human is not yet above nature, the proto-human is part of nature-fuzziness, part of nature-chaos. The rise of agriculture in the post-neolithic revolution time-space equates to the in-
vention of the circle: the wholeness of the boundary. The circle encourages security, the circle feeds the development of the rational ego- the circle means survival; the circle also means the evolution of the quotidian ego, causing a split between the transcendental and the empirical internal objects of the developing human. The evolution of centralized societies gives grounds to the development of patriarchy- externally, the societal entity starts to appropriate the very notion of wholeness; from wholenessthe image of the collective ego equates to the image of a closed object; purity, pristinity, protection are assigned to the duties of the individual ego. Within closed boundaries, where fuzziness is replaced with seamless geometrical objects, the ego becomes ego-centric, competitive in relation to the radius-nucleus of the society boundary; maybe the society radius-nucleus becomes the purest, safest, pristinest space for the individual ego to occupy. New individual life drivers emerge at the individual radius level, related to the preservation of identity; the ego-radius doesn’t just occupy space within the wholeness of the boundary; the ego-radius has individual meaning, beyond
the gender roles assigned to the self; the ego-radius means more, can do more, can reach the radius-nucleus space. The centralized society is many circles within a circle: first the closed circle of the ego, of the self, of the self-identity and then the larger, all-encompassing radius of the egogroup: wholeness, holiness. The ego-group radius is tightly bound to land- to agriculture, to production, to security, to survival; space consumption responds directly to the life instinct. In this context, where the inflexible bound becomes assimilated with the facilitation of survival, the explorative, wanderlust-like, transcendental relationship with space exhibited by the hunter-gatherer communities is replaced with a state of closedness; space becomes a fortress, an empire of hiding oneself from the atrocities of the outer world- of hiding from all other predators, all other thieves, all other climate disasters. The ego becomes the hero and the hero becomes the sole survivor. The assumption of the hero-ego appeals to the self under freudian id-like premises of gratification of one’s hidden desires,
giving birth to ego-centric, narcissistic societal models, where the closed bounds of wholeness become fight arenas for the affirmation of the self. The ego-centric ego strives to become the radius-nucleus; the ego-centric ego is a predator, in hierarchical superposition over all other species, and in hierarchical competition with all other intra-species egos. Within this psychological framework, the human-nature anthropic bias gives way to predatorial inter and intra-species interactions manifested through an urgency to consume, to syphon resources inwards, to lock them inside drawn inflexible boundaries- closed circles. Wholeness in the Capitalocene38 is characterized by self-consuming parts, where the internal crisis objects of the self are triggered by a political mechanism that works ceaselessly towards fuelling the id’s mysterious internal consumption objects. Within this framework, the ego’s return to nature occurs only when nature invades one’s closed, tight bounds of wholeness; nature’s existence is limited to nature-object leaks inside the pristinity of the circle. When the circle is under attack, the ego’s attention is distracted from the primary radius-nucleus attractor.
Egonature
CRISIS TOUCH AND FEELING IF space is defined as a meta-entity we consume unconsciously, architecture- the built environment- is the physical representation of the group-ego. Architecture is the physical deconstruction of the group-ego’s identity wholeness; in the same fashion as pre-neolithic cave paintings of the pseudo-human, architecture becomes a symbol, an encoded form of communication from the ego to the alter; a message from the radius-nucleus ego to the submissive alters. Architecture exists in the monument-realm, advertising all economical confluences and resulting political regimes past. This marketable characteristic of built space indirectly transfers the predatorial characteristics of the ego to the physical tissue of our synthetic natures- indirectly, architecture makes a stand for social injustice, for the global polarization of wealth, for the natural resource deficit, for climate change, for those likely four degrees of warming by 2100. However, architecture cannot do better; technology cannot do better either. We cannot simply change the world, we cannot sponge-erase the rise of the ego-centric nature-less human, the monopoly of the capital ego-groups, the acceleration of climate change, the hyper-speed with which we consume, regurgitate, transform, construct, deconstruct, die. We are here now.
Architecture is a consequence
ACTION &
REACTION
We start to understand we are somewhere, not nowhere. [Tim Morton, 2018]
We start to contextualize the ego, the action, the reaction; we start to assign relationships of causality to hyperobjects that are too mysterious to understand. Where do we go from here? We start to understand othernessoutside of the radius that surrounds the ego-nucleus. We start to perceive opacities- how things overlap, how radiuses aren’t imagery of pristine circles, but maybe they are eaten, chopped, overlapped circles of different opacities at the end of their interaction with all other radiuses that infiltrate the hybrid physical-mental space that surrounds the self. We start to understand anthropocentrism- how all radiuses will always be a circle for
us, how they can never be anything else but circles, because we can never be anything else but human. We start to see space maybe as a tessellation of circle-geometries, where the opacity, the bite, the deformation language is interchangeable, is constantly morphing; where physical space maybe resembles more the internet-space; where everything is floating and communication pops up to translate interactions with its users and then fades away. Maybe this is how the pre-neolithic hunter-gatherer tribes saw space, maybe this is the meaning of being a nature-object. Maybe the space-object is open, or maybe it was never closed. Maybe there are no objects.
We start to liquify space and our relationship with it. Maybe start to understand that we are space too- just like we are nature. Maybe there are more relationships to be had with space besides occupying and consuming. Maybe accepting, and being are some of them.
Unconscious supremacy vs. Conscious desire
“
A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the Stag, so the Horse came to a Hunter to ask his help to take revenge on the Stag. The Hunter agreed, but said: “If you desire to conquer the Stag, you must permit me to place this piece of iron between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these reins, and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I may keep steady upon you as we follow after the enemy.” The Horse agreed to the conditions, and the Hunter soon saddled and bridled him.Then with the aid of the Hunter the Horse soon overcame the Stag, and said to the Hunter: “Now, get off, and remove those things from my mouth and back.” “Not so fast, friend,” said the Hunter. “I have now got you under bit and spur, and prefer to keep you as you are at present. [The Horse, the Stag and the Hunter, Aesop’s Fables]
”
THE patriarchal, predatorial self that led us here acted from a place of idfrom a place of unconscious, mysterious desire. The resulting synthetic environment we all inhibit is a subconscious representation of the self. Within the premise of devising the mysterious hyper-object that biology is and placing it into the hands of the supremacists, we begin to wonder what are the risks? Can we really make kin? Can we explore an ego-less relationship with nature? Is there space for the conscious desire to modify nature in order to devise new construction protocols- new ways of materializing the hybrid physical-mental interaction with otherness? Socially, we begin to question whether technology- the physical tools of materializing, in this case the emergence of the field of synthetic biology- can materialize the appropriation of the human-nature psyche or whether it poses the threat of encouraging the predatorial self. We begin to question the difference between the unconscious supremacy and the conscious desire to modify- to better, to enhance, to humanize.
WHEN asked, the public opinion over biological modification generated mixed results. A public workshop and interview based report39 shows that people only support synthetic biology conditionally. Even though attendants were enthusiastic regarding the potential outcomes, there were also worries about its controllability, the beneficiary behind it, the drawn out effects on wellbeing and consequences in the face of abuse. Enthusiasm was exhibited primarily as a fascination for its potential to solve polarizing issues such as global warming, serious disease and food and resource depletion. The concerns were particularly targeting the speed at which the technology is progressing reported to the uncertainty that surrounds its long-term impacts. Releasing modified organisms into nature was likewise found to be concerning to a small number of individuals, bringing up a fear that manufactured science might conflict with nature and nature could somehow look for revenge. They found nature to be excessively perplexing, dynamic and stochastic to deal with in an exact manner. Artificial rather than ‘natural nature’ apparently had less an incentive for individuals – explicitly less characteristic worth. While individuals understood that the world was man-made and that our landscape, flora and fauna have been shaped by centuries through human action – this was viewed as not quite the same as the conscious production of nature. Attendants were also profoundly addressing questions such as: “Who is
behind the project, who benefits?”, addressing concerns about who drives the technology, rather than about the science itself.40 “My concern is the financial aspect, you know, you can trust people but once it starts to be finance driven, who is going to get the profit out of it? That tends to be when it runs riot.” (Male, DE, 55+) The public perception over synthetic biology does root in fear, even though there is also hopefulness. The memory of past experiences prevents people from blindly trusting science without comprehending the force behind it. This is rooted in the fear of leaning their trust towards technology with significant monetary or authoritative benefits that could lead to said technology being used against them, even though the initial expression has been towards benefiting the larger society. Due to the large economic and political polarization of the global capitalist systems, man feels isolated from nature, both physically and mentally; the ego is removed from being a part of the wholeness of nature, leaving society to partition “nature” and “human” as competing entities. The departure from nature is so deepened that individuals rely their self in the hands of political and corporate powers more than their own nature.
BUILDING with nature cannot henceforth follow the polarizing technological model of previous technological revolutions; biology cannot be mindlessly consumed, manipulated, shifted, monetized and sold. Building with biology requires being biology, exuding a harnessing, nurturing physical-mental space where nature- a whole of which the self is part- just is. Constructing with biology means implicitly constructing with self, finding sympoiesis- revealing joint evolutionary relationships respective of the other’s hyper-temporality and expression of the world.
Ethics of the self, politics of the other.
“
“No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. If you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts.(...)Broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery.” [Margaret Mead]
”
WHAT does sympoiesis mean as seen from the anthropocentric seat of the nucleus-radius competing ego? What does hyper-temporality mean in relation to the urgency of the id? What does constructing with biology mean if not manically dominating and owning nature? What does ethically reshaping our human-radius to become fuzzy again imply? What sort of radical thinkers, radical changers, radical doers does the biological revolution need? What sort of civilization 2.0 is needed to radically, permanently, deeply “change the world�? What else does the human specimen need to be, what other goals does the ego need to strive to achieve, what else does the superego need to be held accountable for?
CIVILIZATION BUT what is civilization in the first place? Back to the pre-neolithic. Life and death instincts in relation to the self are manifested even before the formation of unconscious proto-societies40; the fight for survival urges the unconscious ego, the unconscious “I” to develop ego-centric proto-forms of cognition; the “I” evolves to develop mind-expressions through the analysis of what Haule describes as primitive emotions classified on the basis of one’s limbic response to environment threats41. Haule argues that precedence for the development of consciousness and society can be found in the Upper Paleolithic period, when proto-humans first demonstrate the ability of establishing communication between the ego and the alter, through the development of artistic conventions: the art object is not a solitary expression of the ego anymore, but the art object conveys meta-psychological meaning to the alter35: communication. The ego strives to share its understanding of its own ego-radius to the alter. The very relationship of communication, of mental connection between the self and the other becomes an act of conscious extension of the ego into the physical space, preceding the establishment of “civilization”. Anthropologist Margaret Mead highlights the importance of developing social behaviours towards the formation of modern societies, sustaining that the first sign of civilization in the ancient culture
is the discovery of a healed femur bone: “No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. If you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts.(...) Broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery.” Within this framework, civilization equates to the ego’s ability to break out of the wholeness of its own radius; it means understanding that survival is not ego-centric, it is at least ego-group centric. Darwin described the natural world as operating under the motto “diversify and survive”, explaining nature’s resilience and sequential character, where species are in a process of constant evolution in response to their environments; the Social Darwinists use a pasted version of Darwin’s tree of life logic to explain intra-species social relations, coining the principle of “conform or perish”42: an attempt at supporting the hierarchical superposition of certain political and societal models over others. The “conform or perish” approach explains
society as naturally diverse- however, in this scenario, diversity is the very factor that affects one’s ability to survive and in the basis of diversity, social selection is performed in the form of “war, colonization or adoption”43; the inferior societal models are then forced to either conform, or perish. Social Darwinists tell a story of brute force and narcissistic domination- a story that precedes feudalism, colonialism, capitalism etc. Big fish- the dominator- eats small fish- the dominatee; economical power play gives way to the ascendant and in turn the ascendant gains the right to run over the fragile. Kropotkin argues the megalomaniac desire of the predator self through highlighting the relationships of mutual aid in nature44. Rooted in Darwinian logic, Kropotkin supports the idea that civilizations- human and non-human alike- emerge within the development of co-existence: species navigate life forming relationships with others attempting to survive. In relation to the capitalist system, Kropotkin doesn’t deny man’s uncontrollable desire to rule, but he argues that capitalism is nourishing the internal object-descriptors of competitive-ness, of survival of the ego. This desire comes in contrast with the interspecies relationships exhibited in nature, where in the race against the extinction of the self, in spite of attempting their own survival, species in mutually beneficial communities do not display dominant species coming stronger in a process of internal elimination.45
Have we lost our civilization-ness? Is the consumerist-ego blinded by internal objects, surrounded by completely opaque ego-radiuses? Do we, within our inter-wholeness radius, eliminate the others to feed our own mysterious desire to consume? Is the self ethical if the self is blinded by its own radius?
THE capitalist whole, founded on patriarchy and hierarchy relies on the very process of internal elimination- relies on the process of owning: land, property, objects, money, others, power. Morton argues that without property, capitalism dissolves within itself45; without holding the right of owning as a desirable asset, human politics are devoid of meaning. Applying this logic to the human-nature relationship, if nature would be rightful in relation to the self, if all non-human objects had rights- the right to exist- then nothing would be property-ness- capitalism would dissolve: if everything exists, if everything has rights, nothing can be owned; if everything exists, everything has life, everything has time, everyone’s radius is valid, external from the ego-self, if everything is non-appendable, non-own-able, non-submissive-able, then there is no more radius-nucleus for the ego to strive to occupy, to consume, to own anymore. Then the ego is left to be one of the many- and what is ethics or politics good for without a hierarchy to apply it to anymore? What is politics if there is no superego trumping all, deciding what creatures or non-creatures have the right to ex-
ist? What is politics without the power of having power over the life or death condition of the other? What is ethics without having politics to apply them to? Being ethical means being non-natural: ethics, a man-named word, is the instinct with which we handle our political relationship to all others- does this chimpanzee deserve the right to exist46? To have a self-awareness? Yes, but only if “I”, ego, can hierarchically understand the way in which the chimpanzee understands itself; if the ego can normalize, unitize, humanize the other’s perception of self, then the other can gain political rights. Ethics are inherently human- applying ethical principles to non-humans means submerging the other through a process of anthropomorphism; it means forcing the other to enter the close-knit boundary of civilization, where the ego can safely study the other. Ethically allowing an other to enter the human-political scene means force-applying human temporality and cognition to the other. Would it be more ethical to have no ethics at all?
Parallelism
- PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS -
to EXIST WITH NATURE
you must be nature;
to BUILD WITH BIOLOGY
you must be biology;
to MODIFY OTHERNESS
you must be an other;
to CHANGE
you must be changed;
to BE CHANGED
you must be fuzzy;
to BE FUZZY
you must be open;
to BE OPEN
you must just be.
Repeat.
RADICAL-NESS, revolution, does not mean extreme action; it does not mean physically deconstructing and rebuilding Earth, giving everything and everyone more rights, more justification to exist, taking more political decisions to stop climate change, guilt-tripping more working-class men into wondering why they’re still owning co2-emitting washing machines, funding more closed-doors science studies, asking more questions about what biological greenwashed architecture is- wouldn’t that be an inherently anthropocentric power display? Revolution maybe means to be. To understand. Revolution maybe looks static, but maybe it is about how it feels- it is about feeling a different feeling; feeling like a different self, possessing a different kind of ego-ness. Maybe it wasn’t the discovery of fire- the physical act of discovering fire- that changed the world; maybe it was the thought and feeling the self had about the fire. Maybe revolution is less of an act of doing, and more of an act of being, of becoming- maybe it’s not running in the streets with pitchforks and ball wreckers, tearing down the buildings and replacing them with bio-architectures. Maybe it’s an act of thinking, of wondering, of wonderlusting, of understanding our own psyche, of understand-
ing how we relate to space, how we consume space, how others do the same. Maybe it’s an exercise of closing our eyes and trying to picture the radius-space of all objects around us- maybe it’s more of a meditative exercise of feeling all objects around us, of feeling the space the self-object occupies in the radius of all external nature-objects. Maybe eco-ness is echo-ness. Maybe being eco means stopping completely, freezing in a float-time moment where all you do is breathe and feel, where you don’t worry about how scary hyperobjects are, how scary speed is, how scary the future is. Maybe the future in itself is nothing else but a collection of now-ness; many other “now”s. Perhaps ecological thinking is nothing else but reassessing ourselves, worrying about ourselves, bettering ourselves- what if we used the ego-centric ego to compete with our own mind? With our own spatial presence? What if this ego-eco-ness is actually the echo-ness? What if the conscious modification of the self is the one that reverberates? What if the butterfly effect starts- ironically, cliche-ically, corny-ly- nowhere else but within the self? What if eco-architecture starts with the space the ego-radius emanates? What if eco-architecture is an attitude? What if it simply means understanding that to modify anything else- to modify nature for the purpose of this exercise- means being open and fuzzy; means accepting that things are parallel, and whatever it is you’re modifying, it will modify you back?
Citations 1. Bruno Latour, Down to Earth, pg. 6 2. David Wallace-Wells, The Unhabitable Earth 3. The puddle theory, as described here and here 4. Anthropic principle 5. Goldilocks principle 6. Participatory anthropic principle (described here) 7. Bruno Latour, Down to Earth 8. From conversations - Jordi Vivaldi 9. Gaia, from conversation (Jordi Vivaldi), Latour on the Gaia 2.0 10. Explanation over different definitions of the current epoch 11. Origins of the human specimen 12. Direct interaction= conscious action (hunting, gathering, agriculture etc); indirect interaction= repercussions of human development (ex. Climate change & the impact on local populations of plants and animals) 13. The horrors of the human kind- the uninhabitable earth, david wallace wells 14. The inheritors of the Earth, Chris D. Thomas 15. Donna Harraway’s definition of the others 16. The inheritors of the Earth, Chris D. Thomas 17. Bruno Latour, Down to Earth 18. Liquid modernity, Zigmund Bauman 19. Chris D. Thomas + from conversation: Marcos Cruz 20. Latour- on property and land ownership 21. From conversations- Jordi, Paolo 22. Tim Morton/ Being ecological on experiencing climate dump mode 23. David Wallace Wells, scenarios from The Uninhabitable Earth 24. Reference to Tim Morton’s deconstructivist logic on the imagery of an object and its assigned mysteriousness 25. The Theory of Gaia 26. Tim Morton referencing nature as a background mechanism, as pittoresque, that one does not notice unless the mechanism starts malfunctioning / from Being ecological 27. From Gaia and the Anthropocene, The Return of Teleology- Damiano Bondi 28. Parts vs whole, from Being ecological/ Tuning 29. ditto 30. Freud on Instinct and Morality (Donald C. Abel) 31. Ego, drives and the formation of the Internal Objects (Simon Boag) 32. The Freudian definition of the superego 33. From The Collected Works of C.G Jung, discussing unconscious societies, the formation of occultism and religious based belief 34. Jung in the 21st Century Volume One: Evolution and Archetype (John Ryan Haule) 35. Between Reason and History: Habermas and the Idea of progress (David S. Owen) 36. Neolithic revolutions and State Formation 37. Haule’s description of the pre-neolithical ego, both transcendental and empirical; 38. Moore’s definition of the Capitalocene epoch 39. BBSRC. Synthetic Biology Dialogue. 2010. 40. ditto 41. Rogers, J. (1972). Darwinism and Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33 42. Why Social Darwinism is not Darwinism (link) 43. Darwinism is not Darwinism 44. Kropotkin, Petr A. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: Heinemann, 1908. Print. 45. Morton, T., 2018. Being Ecological. p.110.
EC(h)O-NESS: Ecological reverberations Faculty : Mathilde Marengo Andreea Bunica & Irem Yagmur Cebeci @Barcelona, Istambul & Transylvania, 2020