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by Damianpoirier, on January 06 2010:
that's 10 minutes of my life wasted. Where did you find this blithering idiot?
by Arlind, on January 06 2010:
"blithering idiot" is not an argument
by Damianpoirier, on January 06 2010:
Fair enough. He rambles on for ten minutes saying crap that even infants know. Your trash doesn't vanish. It has nothing to do with the "fall of man". Oil doesn't come from a catastrophe (creationist flood science BS). Land fills will become the new mines for resource refinement. His worries and concerns are noted and summarily dismissed as not well thought out.
by Andres, on January 06 2010:
He did make some points I know/agree with. Other arguments including his closing statement, were a little alien to me/caught me off guard. Hadn't thought about ecology that way.
by Arlind, on January 06 2010:
What Zizek is trying to do here is to give a perfect "transhumanist" argument against those who, in their unconscious desire to replace religious certainty with secular ideology, ecology in this case, are undermining their own cause, that is, their fight against global warming and ecological destruction, by assuming that neo-luddite pastoral romanticism can redeem us from our sinful ways and bring us to a perfect union with Gaia. But this is nothing but pure religious ideology in a modern secular form. What we need is not more "nature", more love for our Mother Earth, etc. but exactly the opposite, and that is to see nature and ourselves as a result of infinite series of quantum, biological and geological "catastrophes" or contingencies, and starting from here to transcend our blind natural spontaneous motivations with radical thinking (which is not natural, because people naturally are intellectually passive and ignorant), just political organization of mankind (which is not natural, because men are naturally prone to be unjust toward the Other) and socially beneficial science and technology (which is not natural, because science and technology are naturally used to destroy, dominate and control).
by Damianpoirier, on January 06 2010:
Men are naturally prone to help each other. This is why we are no longer in caves. Science and tech can be used for good OR bad. It is predominantly used for good. We know this because we are no longer living in caves.
by Donjoe, on January 09 2010:
I was following him up to a point, but toward the end he lost me.
Anyway, I have to agree on at least one point: environmentalist principles will always be fundamentally anti-technological and their true believers (fundamentalists) enemies of progress. I'm not fooled by their occasional talk of high-tech renewable energy sources, their primary goal will always be to preserve some imaginary "Nature" which is balanced/ideal/perfect and which usually doesn't include humans (seen as the aggressors). I can never be a sympathizer of such a movement.
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