The Umwelt of Ehrenfeld

"The arrogance of humanism" by David Ehrenfeld isn't a stringent philosophical book (which I assumed), but rather a personal statement by the author himself - and perhaps his wife Joan. The book feels meandering and disjointed.

Ehrenfeld writes from an ostensibly Jewish-Christian perspective, and frequently quotes rather unusual sources, such as "Lord of the Rings" or "The Silmarillion". He also has a crush on George Orwell, whom he regards as one of the few humanists who understood the problems of his own philosophy. To the author, "humanism" is essentially a religion, which replaces the belief in God, Nature or the supernatural with belief in Man, or rather the ability of humans to become more or less omnipotent (and, by implication, god-like).

Ehrenfeld believes that *control* is at the basis of the humanist project: control over nature, society and ultimately over humans themselves. In the opinion of the author, such control is impossible. The very complexity of the technological-administrative apparatus exercising the control will make the system break down. He discusses various absurd examples of the belief in complete social engineering, including a book which "discovered" that Black slaves in the antebellum South were really well off, a bizarre study attempting to predict (to the day, no less) when riots will break out in British prisons, and the dream of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps inevitably, many examples of this Zeitgeist are mined from science fiction literature, including Skinner's utopian novel "Walden Two" and Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" (Seldon's psychohistory). Other examples are perhaps outdated, such as the claim that MBD is a fraud.

The main chapters deal with environmental destruction, which the author (a biology professor) believes is connected to humanism. He is especially critical of the modern conservation movement, which attempts to save animals, plants or wilderness areas with the argument that they are somehow economically valuable. The author believes that nature should be left alone, since it exists for its own sake, rather than for human benefit. There are species that probably don't have any particular value to man whatsoever: "An example of such a non-resource is an endangered amphibian species, the Houston toad, Bufo houstonensis. This lacklustre little animal has no demonstrated or even conjectured resource value to man; other races of toad will partly replace it when it is gone, and its passing is not expected to make an impression on the Umwelt of the city of Houston or its suburbs".

Ehrenfeld is extremely negative even to "clean energy" and other forms of environmental-friendly high tech. The author believes that clean energy will be put to the usual, destructive uses and simply speed up the process of environmental destruction and high-tech madness. Nor is he very optimistic about space colonies: surely such complex systems will sooner or later suffer a break down, killing everybody onboard? And why do we want to move out to outer space, anyway? Because Earth have turned uninhabitable, perhaps...?

Needless to say, Ehrenfeld is pessimistic, bordering on misanthropic, and believes that the best we can hope for (short of a supernatural intervention) is a great depression which destroys most of the global financial and technological systems, throwing humanity back to a time of local self-reliance. Humanism isn't going to mend its ways voluntarily. Ehrenfeld makes a comparison to Frodo in "Lord of the Rings", who couldn't destroy the ring of power. It was inadvertently destroyed by Gollum, who was really under its spell. In the same way, humanism will be broken only by one of its products.

"The arrogance of humanism" isn't the most graceful book around, and you probably heard most of it before, if you are versed in deep ecological literature. The most disturbing aspect of the book is its explicit misanthropy. The supernatural intervention (sic) or world depression craved by the author would lead to a *massive* die-off. Small wonder Ehrenfeld isn't a humanist!

I'm not sure how to rate a book I'm very ambivalent towards, but it does give us an insight into the Umwelt of Ehrenfeld...