Ethics & the Environment

Abstract:

I argue that while social theorists have striven to recognize the connections between subjectivity and environmental degradation, our efforts have to some extent been outflanked by industrialism's historical assimilation of thought and experience. This entanglement with industrialist conceptions has led to both theoretical confusion and personal despondency. I argue that in contrast to popular narratives of enhanced individual choice and human domination in the Anthropocene, there has been a narrowing of human awareness and reason over the past several centuries, and that the role of the person in industrial societies has been progressively subordinated to the interests and organization of the industrial order. As a result, feelings of apathy, powerlessness, and depression reflect a residual and realistic embodied awareness of our assimilation into a context that we are discouraged from recognizing. I end by considering how we might transcend this narrowed subjectivity and rediscover our continuity with the natural world.