5.5 Empathetic Epistemology and New Directions in Environmental Education
In what follows I shall now argue that the humanitarian ideals which define this theme are also marginalized by the epistemology of power and transformative subjugation. The moral tension which exists arises partly from a conflict of epistemic values which define the goals of engineering pedagogy and praxis on the one hand and the values which define the goals of environmental education on the other. Alternatives to resolving engineering problems where different value positions based on different forms of knowledge are to cope with such problems and to make more enlightened and well-considered decisions which become most difficult to implement, because the power infrastructures to which they are juxtaposed are inimical to empathetic resolution (Laura & Cotton, 1998 & 2010). Ethical components must be considered during the project design and implementation, which should have been reflected in the theories and models of development paradigm (Crocker, 1991; Oliver-Smith, 2010). Decision making is a skill based on ethical reasoning in part and conducting ethical reasoning units should be a part of the engineer’s repertoire, which should and could be taught in school when those engineers accepting their train for being an engineer. However, there is a significant difference between teaching what to think and how to think. Teaching ethics in the classroom involves expanding students’ horizons to encompass the essential wisdom through the ages, and to apply the rational thinking on moral problems, issues and ideas of any complexity and enhance their skill at ethical reasoning and well-considered behavior and conduct (Cam, 2012). “Transformative learning” (Mezirow, 2003) therefore comes into play in this context. Transformative learning process involves “transforming frames of reference through critical reflection of assumptions, validating contested beliefs through discourse, taking action on one’s reflective insight, and critically assessing it” (Mezirow, 1997, p.5). Adults learn new frames of reference as a step up from elaborating their taking-for-granted existing frames of reference, i.e. concepts, beliefs, values, feelings, affective dispositions and judgments, etc. Frames of reference are the structures of concepts, values, customs, views, etc. through which we perceive or evaluated our experiences. The unshackling of the habits of mind which result in a point of view which make it free to understand new ideas and new values is a goal of sound environmental education (Gunn & Vesilind, 1986) are essential since we “have a strong tendency to reject ideas that fail to fit our preconceptions, of labelling those ideas as unworthy of consideration — aberrations, nonsense, irrelevant, weird, or mistaken” (Mezirow, 1997, p.5).
The deeper question which emerges from this perspective is whether our technological interactions, be they massive or small, preserve the balance between progress on the one hand and moral sensibility on the other. To what extent, that is to say, do our technological goals reflect a deeper global consciousness of our responsibility to delimit the parameters of engineering feasibility not so much by the measure of what is technologically possible, as by the measure of what is morally permissible? To what extent does the way in which we think about the world technologically integrate conceptually and make explicit the profound humanitarian significance of honoring the human events which define it morally?
The answer to this question depends on a radical reconceptualization of the dominant epistemological framework in which much of contemporary science and thus contemporary engineering practice takes place. I shall now endeavor to show more determinately that far from being ‘value-free’ or ‘morally neutral’, the dominant paradigm embraced by modern science enshrines within it a way of thinking about and interacting with the world that is what I shall call ‘value presumptive’. Independently of how well intentioned we may be in our application of scientific knowledge, the particular form of knowledge upon which we have come to rely limits our capacity to anticipate the consequences of our technological interactions in moral terms. What level of moral sensibility survives after the technological onslaught will inevitably depend upon whether the practical presumption of progress is preserved as a value in itself. The reason for this, I submit, is that the dominant paradigm of scientific enquiry presupposes that knowledge is itself a modality of power and thus that the ultimate value of our technology is conditional upon the extent to which it makes us powerful enough to reconstruct the world around us in ways that allow us to dominate, subjugate and control it. I shall be concerned to show that of the many possible forms of knowledge available to the human mind, the western world has selected a form of knowledge motivated and informed by the value which we, as a culture, place on power and control. The particular form of knowledge we have institutionalized, that is to say, is conceptually conditioned by our preoccupation to dominate and direct the living destiny of every living and non-living thing on this planet. This being so, the underlying rationale which motivates preferring one form of knowledge over another is the value we as a culture place on power and control. Our insatiable appetite for power drives us to a form of knowledge which covertly stipulates that the only knowledge worth having is that which allows us to re-order the world to nature in a way that suits our own ends and presumed interests.
5.5.1 New foundations for Educational Epistemology
As long as the decision-making context within which political judgments are made remain grounded in the epistemology of power, neither our exploitation of nature nor the violation of human rights will cease. In his book, Empathetic Education, Professor Ronald Laura has done much to push back the frontiers of educational epistemology with his articulation of an “Empathetic Epistemology of Participatory Consciousness” (Laura & Cotton, 1998, p. 198). My aim will be further advancing those frontiers by making Laura’s theory more comprehensive. The reconceptualization which Laura proposes of the epistemology of power redefines knowledge as a form of ‘empathetic connectivity’ and ‘participatory consciousness’, as a way of ‘impregnating’ epistemological concerns with ‘moral sensibility’. This being so, the very act of seeking knowledge, and thus the process of scientific discovery will embody humanitarian, environmental, and other relevant moral considerations designed to guide the enterprise of science and the domain of technological practice. I believe that Laura’s theory can be enriched by integrating the quantum philosophy idea of ‘entanglement’ with certain insights drawn from eastern philosophy. As I discussed previously, Zhuangzi has a different line of reasoning from Laozi whose exhortation to ‘Abandon Knowledge’ is the best way to emancipate us from it. This is not to say to oppose to the remarkable technological advances and suggest a return to cave-dwelling with no lights, as always criticized of being ‘Luddites’ (Laura & Marchant, 2006). However, Zhuangzi avoids the fatalist implications of Laozi by suggesting that technology can be morally grounded to make it compatible with the great Dao. Technology, that is to say, should be ‘subsumed’ into ‘Dao’. In this sense, the Dao would provide the moral guidance for using modern technology selectively rather than selfishly. In Schumacher’s words, “It is a question of finding the right path of development, the Middle Way, between materialist heedlessness and traditionalist immobility, in short, of finding ‘Right Livelihood’” (Schumacher, 1973, p.56).
Given the epistemology of power presumption within engineering pedagogy as illustrated in the case of the Three Gorges Project, ethical consideration of the impacts of this world’s biggest dam project will inevitably be only cosmetically utilitarian. This being so, the moral orientation of the decision-making process becomes marginalized and judged against the entrenched values presupposed by the theory of knowledge on which it is built conceptually. Driven ultimately by politically vested interests and the preoccupation with control become ideologically embedded, thereby overpowering the moral consideration that would otherwise be given. Whenever ethical issues are in conflict with a power-based epistemology, the decisional outcome will reflect its bias in favor of the value of dominance and control. As I have established in earlier chapter, the price we pay for this measure of control is alienation, dehumanization, and the ecological desacrilization of nature. Serious ethical discussion remains an after-thought, to be judged against the entrenched values hidden within the theory of knowledge on which the pedagogy of engineering and education itself is largely built. This being so, the ethical issues will rarely, if ever get a full hearing. In order to illuminate the nexus between knowledge and power, philosophers should endeavor to combine epistemology with ethics and socio-political science in order to counteracting the oppressions induced by epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007; Kusch, 2009). As Professor Laura reminds us, care-based “moral sensibility” requires a far more relational psychoanalysis, so that affective emotions such as empathy and sympathy, can make major contribution to decision-making process and actions (Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1987; Laura & Cotton, 1998&2010). I call this interconnecting web of ‘affective variables’, the ‘entanglement grid’. Within the ‘grid’ morality is linked to the contexts of “individual situations and the people involved, rather than abstract prescriptions or calculations” (Sadler & Zeidler, 2004, p.7). Empathy and sympathy are not values enshrined within the epistemology of power, because all values are inevitably subservient to the ultimate value of power, as the medium of control (Laura& Cotton, 1998). Given this epistemic paradox, I have been arguing that despite its engineering success at one level of utilitarian outcome, the massive disruption and devastation the Three Gorges Dam has unleashed upon the earth and upon those people who once inhabited the areas of its construction can no longer be neglected. Appreciation of the humanitarian limitations and ethical implications of pedagogies presupposing power-based epistemology make clear that the deeper moral issues associated with the Three Gorges Project are of monumental importance and should not, as they has been, either marginalized or compromised. The epistemology of power is not the only way of conceptualizing our relationship to the world around us, nor as I hope to have shown by this stage of the thesis, the best way of doing so.
To address these issues more effectively, and with a greater degree of moral or empathetic sensitivity, I shall now elaborate my extension of Laura’s theory of ‘Empathetic Epistemology’ as an alternative foundation to the ‘epistemology of power’. The point of integrating my idea of the ‘entanglement-grid’ to Laura’s model of empathetic epistemology is that ‘entanglement’ is itself a reflection of a quantum model of the cosmos in which the world is defined by its indivisible and seamless interconnectivity. As Leopold (1923, p.139-140) viewed it, the “indivisibility of the earth — its soil, mountains, rivers, forests, climate, plants and animals” was self-explanatory reason for respecting the earth “not only as a useful servant but as a living being” (quoted in Nash, 1990, p.66).
Empathetic epistemology, unlike the epistemology of power, fosters a way of interacting with nature that reflects the deeper truth that the things of nature are here to be responsibly borrowed, so to say, but never owned and exploited in ways which contradict the principle of ecological honoring. From this perspective my enriched concept of empathetic epistemology challenges the idea of our having a right to help themselves to the resources of nature, indeed to plunder, if not to rape them. These attitudes represent the confused thinking of a society obsessed with power and dominance. These are attitudes which are resolutely reinforced by a society committed to continued growth and expansion. ‘Empathetic Ecology’, as I envisage and elaborate it, recognizes specifically that the resources of nature are not for our taking, but for our nurture and cultivation. In this sense the earth is still our Garden of Eden, but because we have chosen not to live in harmony with and empathetically within it, we have used and abused it without conscience. Thus we have lived unconscientiously and without gratitude.
I have shown that Laura’s theory of ‘empathetic epistemology’ can be deployed to help reconceptualize the ways in which we come to know and thus relate to the world around us through the interpretory lenses of ‘participatory consciousness’, coupled with my model of ‘entanglement’. In planning our technological goals, that is to say, the ‘matrix’ question is reformulated in moral terms. The new question is: to what extent do environmental development of any kind plans reflect a deeper global consciousness of ‘participatory connectivity’, and our responsibility to delimit the parameters of engineering feasibility not so much by the measure of what is technologically possible, as by the measure of what is morally responsible? The method and focus of decision-making must shift from practically economic or financial criteria to more diverse and dialogic forms of inclusively participatory decision-making grounded in connectivity and spiritual insight (Oliver-Smith, 2001; Laura & Cotton, 2010). Those who are adversely affected by the development projects therefore have an equal participation and voice in the decision making process so that the conflicts of interest are adequately handled (Saxena, 2008). Participatory involvement is another dimension which informs the equation at a practical level. Participatory decision-making represents the practical context in which participatory consciousness is mediated. If authentic decisional participation is to be achieved, it is bound to be up against many traditional forms of political power which reserve such processes for the ideologically elite in power (Oliver-Smith, 2001). To redress the imbalance of power characteristics of scientific and technological state will not be an easy task (Baxi, 2001), for decisional participation would “inevitably redefine and reconstruct concepts such as progress, social good, larger interests, conservation, nation building, etc” (Saxena, 2008, p.356). Ramsey (1993) commented that science education should contribute aggressively to improve public understanding of science and help the public to participate intelligently in making informed decisions on issues involving science and technology (Cross & Price, 1996; Zeidler et al., 2002). A scientifically literate population capable of making social and political decisions with moral and ethical issues well considered as defining factors is highly desirable (Zeidler et al., 2002). This brings forth a whole array of ideas on how this balance could have been achieved in the context of the TGDP. If the power epistemology of political decision-making can be replaced with the new consciousness of empathetic epistemology, the indiscretions of human rights violations and the desacrilization of nature would be significantly diminished. For example, in planning development of the TGDP, the answer to the question whether the Three Gorges Dam should have been built in the first place would likely be very different. Similarly, we would give greater priority to the question of the inevitability and lack of moral justification for displacement which might serve to militate against building so massive a dam. If the decision remained to build the dam, then some of the new questions that should be asked relate to participation of displaced and host populations, alternatives to compulsory acquisition of land, valuation and compensation of land and other assets, provision of stable and assured training and employment, legitimate and continuing share in projects benefits, assistance during the whole project period, risk mitigating measures and monitoring and evaluation (Saxena, 2008). The paradigmatic shift in discourse, therefore, involves a revolutionary change of the prevailing beliefs and the current development mode, and thus its replacement with the construction of an empathetic epistemology of entanglement (ibid). Those who are likely to be adversely affected by development projects also have an equal opportunity in the decisions making process, so that conflicts of interest have a much better chance of resolution by minimizing ‘power-plays’ by any particular class, or group without leaning in favor of anyone in particular (ibid). All these concepts are value-laden, and the way in which they are defined reflects the relative power of individuals/groups who prefer them (Saxena, 2008; Laura & Cotton, 2010).
What the epistemology of connectivity shows, I suggest, is that some types of technology are so potentially disruptive of the established harmony of nature or of human rights that they should never be deployed. Longino (1983, p. 8) has suggested that the social values governing the application of knowledge and scientific practice are “constitutive values which indicate that they are the source of the rules” stipulating what determines acceptable scientific practice. This approach would then have special relevance for the TGDP debate. de Wet (2001) questions that the fundamental structure design of whole project process, including displacement and resettlement will ensure that on the one hand all, at least a large majority of those project-affected will benefit from it, and on the other mitigate the massive environmental intrusions caused by it. He also doubts that problems induced by displacement and resettlement can be erased simply by improvements of project planning. He has emphasized multiple times in his articles that the complexities inherent in the resettlement process are difficult to resolve. In that sense, so huge a dam such as the Three Gorges Dam should not have been proposed in the first place. The issue for empathetic ecology then becomes a matter of developing forms of connectivity with maximize our participation in nature in ways that assist, not diminish our stewardship of it. The importance of environmental and cultural resources and humanitarianism in dam projects increases the level of necessity of finding a way to valorize different types of knowledge and different decision-making approaches (Brandt & Hassan, 2000). All these different forms of knowledge are value-laden and reflect the relative power of individual/groups who define them (Saxena, 2008).
In the case of TGDP, when the displacement population rises above a million, it is clear that the projected numbers alone are themselves sufficient to constitute a self-validation argument to establish that a population this large should not be displaced. If, on the other hand the recommendation is in favor of dislocation, then we need to provide wiser, richer and more diverse options for displaced people (McDonald-Wilmsen & Webber, 2010). Questions of the level of technological interaction with nature as balanced against the capacity of nature to replenish itself in the face of expropriation will still be critical, but there will also be a difference. Underpinning our unbridled commitment to the technologization of nature is an attitude of dominance and control many people find difficult to relinquish. The educational concept of knowledge as power carries with it the idea that through technology we can avoid having to confront the realization that it is the way we have chosen to live that needs changing, if we are effectively going to reconceptualize our relationship with the tools of technology. We are obsessed with our technologies because they provide the promise that we can live lives of excess and indulgence without penalty, as long as we continue to create new technologies which compensate for our own shortcomings. In this regard our faith in technology is a faith in technology as a form of social salvation, and from a theological perspective, perhaps even personal salvation.
To reiterate the paradigmatic shift to an empathetic epistemology of entanglement, the role of education should be to educate the moral sensibilities of human conscience to recognize the moral value and responsibility of stewardship we have with regard to the world around us and to each other. This new heuristic is not so much about knowing facts per se, as it is about understanding the character of our empathetic responsibility for the care of the natural world to which we are inextricably tied. When this happens, we become less enamored of power to manipulate humans for the sake of vested interest. We are still in a sense knowledge ‘empowered’, but we are not obsessed with controlling. We are epistemically empowered not to dominate and subjugate, but to connect. This is the kind of power that comes from our thorough understanding of the world around us that at the same time reflects and confirms our moral connection with it (Laura& Cotton, 1998; Bruguier, 2008).Environmental education should be more than just teaching about the science of the environment. The goal is in part to help students become ethically aware (Cross & Price, 1996). Such awareness and understanding of the power of scientific knowledge and its limitations is necessary for students to make moral decisions about the impacts of new forms of technology which help to shape a new generation of students to become “informed citizens who can participate fully in a modern democracy” (Driver et al., 1996, p.1). Thus, every act of knowing now enshrines the value of connecting with the world in such a way that the value of empathy defines our decisional outcomes. This in turn relates to defining the ways in which we choose to reconstruct the world to suit man’s purposes.
The potential of empathetic epistemology to reinstate qualitative components of scientific investigation in a way that could transform the integrity of engineering pedagogy and thereby improve our capacity to make moral decisions as they relate to philosophical issues in environmental engineering impacts represents a huge step forward. Similarly, it provides a foundation for what Laura calls ‘compassionate participatory consciousness’ which makes far more comprehensive our understanding of social justice and thus humanitarian interest. The reflection upon this new way of construing the world of nature may serve to provide an epistemic heuristic for interconnectivity, a way, that is, of proposing hypotheses about the nature of knowledge which are much richer and more comprehensive than the traditional ones. In recognition that there may yet be better models for understanding nature, we can at least now see that the universe in which we live is one which depends for its ‘state of health’ upon its integrated unity for its cohesiveness of functional interaction. This being so, we suggest that a more comprehensive interpretation of education related to the sustainable environment and development is one which reflects not so much an epistemology of power as an epistemology of empathetic connectivity and entanglement.
The primary way in which we interact with nature in modern days lies in our resolute commitment to technological development. The knowledge which provides the basis for this kind of technology is closely linked to power and thereby is never neutral. Our insatiable appetite for power continues to be propagated in school education which expresses social control through consumerism and the promise of freedom from heavy labor. Educational knowledge of this form misguidedly permits the environmental expropriation and degradation of the earth. When confronting the social and environmental consequences of modem science, we should also be seeking ways of changing the environmental practices of empathetic epistemology. Unabated technological transformation as proliferated by reductionist science which states everything can be made and can be understood reveals the extent to which education can be covertly manipulated for anti-ecological purposes.
It is my contention that by empathetically reconceptualizing the nature of the universe in which we live, it is possible to promote the purpose of an environmental education redirected in part to the development of children’s spirituality as a way of desacralizing the world which derives from the new discourse of empathetic epistemology which inspires changing conceptions of scientific literacy (Ramsey, 1993; Cross & Price, 1996). This can be regarded as a response to community concerns with the increasing social and ecological issues associated with much of modem technology and particularly computer technology (Cross & Price, 1996). The effect of the breakdown of the conventional value-free notion of scientific knowledge, is that it encourages an attitude of social responsibility, caring and participation towards the environment and indeed towards each other (Cross & Price, 1996, Laura, 1998). Social responsibility should be adopted as an important criterion for science education. It is necessary to include an awareness of ethical issues and socio-political considerations in the context of science-technology-society and environment (STSE) interactions in order to understand the socio-cultural, economic, and political implications of science on daily life and make responsible and ethical decisions about how to address such issues (Aikenhead, 1985 & 1994; Solomon, 1993; Zeidleret al., 2001). Scientific literacy education includes more than informing the general public in science facts and theories; it requires that people be informed and active citizens, so that they can understand about the interface between science, technology and society, and therefore be capable of applying wit empathetic integrity the scientific process to social problems (Zeidler, 1983; Fensham, 1985 &1988; Miller, 1996; Aikenhead, 2003).
5.5.2 Towards a New Paradigm of Ecological Empathy and a Better Life
Once the knowledge as power paradigm is shifted from its position of epistemic priority, however, and substituted by an empathetic knowledge of participatory consciousness and entanglement, it is time to initiate a fully, public discussion on what it is that is fundamental to our humanity, and how our reflection on this question means taking much less for granted about our fellow human being and the world of nature around us (Kompridis, 2009; Kompridis, 2009). Thus, self-interested and instrumental attitudes toward nature have become antiquated, and are a remnant of Cartesian philosophy and the ontology of the 17th century (Kompridis, 2009). Fortunately, the recent rise of the environmental movements has taught us to respect for the inherent value of nonhuman nature. We need to develop a new conceptualized system of human ecology, because our current education system “has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity” (Robinson, 2006, TED talks). If this can not be done soon, we may unwittingly invite the desacralizing instrumentalizations of human nature to deface humanity once more with “their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls” (Kurzweil, 2000, p.4).
The great German philosopher Martin Heidegger has said that the actual threat to man comes from his essence (Heidegger, 1977). A fundamental change in the spiritual outlook of a society must proceed. Mappin and Johnson (2005) note that the way environmental and engineering education has changed since the 1970s to now reflects a profound change of personal and community behavior. Empathetically directed personal attitudes can now influence informed environmental decision-making. The new objective of this discourse is more concerned to change social values with an aim to think and act in environmentally sustainable terms which served also the objective of social justice. In order to achieve sustainable development, scientific knowledge and technological applications are necessary, but they are not sufficient for decision-making (Simonneaux & Simonneaux, 2009a). There is much more than just the cognitive process of learning needed to be reinforced, socio-psychosocial and ethical dimensions which will truly affect the outcomes of an empathetic epistemology of environmental education (ibid). Duschl (1990), Taylor (1996), Fuller (1997) and Gregory & Miller (1998) all argue that scientific knowledge is socially constructed in a process of discursive activity in which argument is a central part (Driver et al., 2000).
For example, engineers are taught to believe in the contribution of dams to economic growth, while often possessing little or no in-depth understanding of ecological, social, political and economic issues related to the dam construction (McCully, 2001). Engineers have responded to societal needs by developing economic not empathetic sensibilities, simply because that is what the power-based pedagogy of their profession has taught them to do. Even if there is little to blame engineers for their shortsightedness, there is no point in trying to make them the scapegoats for our current environmental problems (Gunn & Vesilind, 1986). Yet their professional practice does not exist outside the domain of societal interests, since engineers and the application of their profession do have an important impact on society (Nichols & Weldon, 1997). Their professional practice is, potentially, more “pervasive and interdisciplinary than any of the other professions” (Gunn & Vesilind, 1986, Preface 2). Therefore, it is not only important that engineering education provide students with the opportunity for intellectual development, economic assessment, and technical capabilities. It is also equally important that it educates students to think ethically and empathetically about the social, environmental and humanitarian dimensions of their engineering activities (Nichols & Weldon, 1997; Driver et al., 2000; Martin & Schinzinger, 2005).
We have explicitly stipulated that the power-based theory of knowledge assumes a distinction between the knower and the known, between subject and object, if you prefer. Within the traditional school structure in China, knowledge is achieved by objectifying our activity of observations of nature by detaching ourselves from it. The world exists, so we have been led to believe, independently and innately of how we take it to be. Realist epistemology rests firmly upon this presumption. We earlier expressed our skepticism of the way in which pedagogies of power have informed socio-cultural patterns which emphasize distinctions between ‘subjective knowledge’ and ‘objective knowledge’. I would argue that the traditional distinctions between subject and object, mind and matter are also spurious, though at this late stage in the thesis, this divagation would be extraneous to my present consideration. Human consciousness can no longer be described unambiguously as distinct and separate entities from the physical world. Consciousness is itself an essential feature of the world of reality, the external world around us. We cannot separate our existence from nature, because we are a part of it (Laura & Cotton, 1998; Laura et al., 2008). Attempt at the domination and control of nature is still popular in many “advanced” cultures today thereby facilitating, at least in in the minds of their leadership power-base intrusions into nature which expropriate the resources of the earth with impunity. By attempting to measure and describe the world ‘outside ourselves’, we now find that we are at one and the same time describing ourselves (ibid). The topology of nature cannot exclude the way in which human consciousness is enfolded into it. As a Chinese ancient poem goes, “the truth is incomprehensible to one too deeply involved to be objective”. This being so, nature cannot be objectified in the required power-based epistemic sense because in essence, we become deeply involved as being an element of the nature which we are trying to observe. We cannot separate ourselves in this way from nature, because we are in the radically holistic sense of Bell’s theorem, a part of it (Laura & Cotton, 1998 & 2010). Bell’s theorem states the impossibility of a Local Realism of some of the unexpected consequences of quantum mechanics because quantum mechanics assets that particles can be in many locations at once, in other words that quantum mechanics cannot both be local and realistic, which shows a much more intimate relationship between physics and philosophy (Herbert, 1987; Schneider, 2005; Shimony, 2013). The fundamental interdependency to which Bell’s theorem alludes also sheds light philosophically on a profound paradigm shift in the covert value-orientation which underpins our traditional theory of knowledge. All this can be summed up by Daoism’s basic concept of “oneness with the universe”.
Once we take care of the obvious then we can make progress in having a better human society. So where do we go from here if environmental education is ever to serve the interest of the environment per se rather than an economic way of life dependent on the vicissitudes of transformative subjugation. It should by now be clear that unless the form of educational knowledge we select is motivated by empathetic connectivity with nature rather than power over nature, there is no place to go. Environmental education will simply reproduce, albeit in admirably cosmetic ways, the same contexts of technological invasiveness and intrusion that warrant extirpation from the school curriculum. Appreciation of the rich field of connections between human and non-human things provides a new sense of the domain of our ecological responsibilities which emerge from man/nature’s mutual interdependence and imbrication and this leads to an empathetic redefinition of the tools of technology (Kompridis, 2009). I have argued that technologies which derive from the educational epistemology of power are virtually never neutral. Motivated by power and the human desire that technology should enhance our well-being, technologies will by their very nature be tools of power and expropriation. The technologies we create are thus saturated with power. Given the fundamental interconnectivity of all of nature, for every increase in power brought to us by technology, will be a diminution of power and consequent disruption somewhere in nature which results. If technologies are motivated by the participatory mode of epistemic consciousness, however, it is possible — as we saw in the case of empathetic architecture — to develop technologies which are more sustainable, equitable and efficient. They represent technologies and management practices which are designed to connect rather than alienate us from nature (Laura et al., 2008; Laura & Cotton, 2010).
Empathetic ecology, on the other hand, based upon ‘empathetic epistemology’ and coupled with and the abstract principle of entanglement and ecological honoring, obliges an expansion of the range of moral consideration from oneself to one’s community, on to a moral perspective that includes all human beings and eventually to all the resources of nature (Starkey, 2007). It recognizes that human life and the resources of nature have an intrinsic value in themselves and thus that the ‘rightness’ of whatever we take needs to be balanced against the cost in damage inflicted upon the independencies of the form of nature we preserve (ibid). The primary goals of a project customarily focus on “meeting practical (i.e. material) rather than strategic needs, instrumentality rather than empowerment” (Cleaver, 1999, p.598; also see Oliver-Smith, 2001, p.40). In essence, this view entails that a tree has an intrinsic value in and of itself. Its value is not conditional but fundamental. The intrinsic value of a forest, for example, is not dependent on being cut down, and reconfigured into marketable items of economic exchange. The disparity of value-orientation manifested by power epistemology on the one hand and environmental ethics on the other is subtle but educationally significant. It plays, I submit, a critical role in understanding the epistemic source of the moral inertia which has impeded and slowed reflection upon the ethical issues implicit in the Three Gorges debate. The problem is that the reasoning process enshrined in the ‘epistemology of power’ dictates that decisional priority is covertly and ineluctably given to the values of control and dominance as the primary ways in which we interact with nature and define our relationships to our technology. Power epistemology is motivated by the obsession with power and control and thus leads all too readily to planning judgments which are highly politicized and tainted by vested interests of governments, corporations, communities and individuals. Unless humanity accepts the concept of intrinsic values inherently embedded in nature, the attitude of being an alien interloper (Botkin, 1991) with a “consciousness of non-participation” (Berman, 1981) will lead us nowhere (Jenkins, 2002). Empathetic ecology fosters a way of interacting with nature that reflects the deeper truth that the things of nature are here to be responsibly borrowed, so to say, but never owned and exploited in ways which contradict the principle of ecological honoring. In the sense of ecological honoring, it is clear that the failing of the Three Gorges Project lies in its having mediated the values of power and dominance more vehemently than the values of empathy and compassion in the service of ecological honoring and humanism.
Rifkin reminds us that human consciousness must attune itself to the rhythms of the natural environment which define the participatory parameters of our interaction with it. As Rifkin (1985, p.97) put it, “the most important truth about ourselves, our artifacts and our civilization is that it is all borrowed”. Once we establish the concept that the resources are lent to us by the nature, it is only natural for us to foster the attitude of gratitude towards the Mother Nature. Rifkin points out that “to acknowledge indebtedness is to accept the idea that we owe our being, our very survival, to the many living and non-living things that had to be sacrificed in order for us to perpetuate ourselves” (quoted in Laura & Cotton, 1998, p.172).
And the future is also likely to see the incorporation of the ethical values of the empathetic epistemology with the natural environment as a combination of small-scale innovative new technologies, locally managed and environmentally sensitive, together with “micro-dams, hydro-systems that run with a river’s natural path, shallow wells, low-cost pumps and rainwater-harvesting techniques” (McCormack, 2001, p.83; Buckeridge, 2008).
Once we have come to realize the folly of our ways, then our first steps should be to reconnect with all that is living in our lives. In reality this translates to a simplification of our lives through the abandonment of at least the depersonalizing and dehumanizing technologies we have come to take for granted. Through living our lives in participatory consciousness, we can honor nature, honor others, honor ourselves and rediscover a newfound reverence for life and a new awareness of the spirit within all living things.
We will in the end have saved the soul of this planet that might otherwise have been lost. On my model of the entanglement grid, living empathetically, is tantamount to living in connective relationship with the world as a fundamental condition of human well-being and happiness.