Konrad Lorenz and the (ecologist) notion of the limit

Konrad Lorenz and the (ecologist) notion of the limit

Sandro Marano 

Source: https://www.barbadillo.it/110279-konrad-lorenz-e-la-nozione-ecologista-del-limite/

Modern man, breaking the great balance between man and nature achieved in medieval centuries, has claimed to be free of all limits and thanks to machines and industrial civilisation has believed he can produce and consume without limits

The great discovery, or rather, the great rediscovery of the philosophies of ecology is the notion of limit. There is a very simple law enunciated in plain language by Konrad Lorenz, according to which there can be no infinite growth in a finite world, on pain of catastrophe. And of course, the concept also applies to abnormal population growth, which can make the processes of degradation chronic and dramatic, with all due respect for the dignity of the individual.

Man lives in an inexorably limited territory, planet Earth, with its 51 billion hectares, two thirds of which are submerged. Modern man, breaking the great balance between man and nature achieved in the medieval centuries, has claimed to be free of all limits and, thanks to machines and industrial civilisation, has believed he can produce and consume without limits, regardless of the finite nature of natural resources. The alarms sounded by scientists in the 1970s, which saw the blossoming of environmentalist movements and ecological thinking, have been ignored.

Certainly, as Serge Latouche notes, limits are both arbitrary and necessary: "we are prisoners of a small planet whose exceptional situation in the cosmos has allowed our appearance. On the other hand, our intelligence, no less exceptional, allows us to adapt to a great variety of situations, but does not authorise us to do everything or to know everything'.

The limit is inscribed in Nature and in the human condition. Many of the ancient myths warned us not to cross them. In the Old Testament, the challenge to heaven brought about by the construction of the tower of Babel ends with the confusion of languages. And, among the many myths of classical Greece that we could mention, let us recall the myth of Phaeton, son of Apollo, who was struck down by a thunderbolt from Zeus for driving the chariot of the sun too close to the earth, devastating Libya, which then became a desert. An echo of this myth can be found in Canto IV of Dante's Purgatory, where it says: 'the road that Phaetòn did not know how to travel'.

The absence of limits, the demographic and consumerist explosion, the systematic plundering of resources, sooner or later backfires, is paid for by the acceleration of climate change, by growing hydro-geological disruption, droughts and floods, new pandemics, uncontrolled migration flows, the deleterious effects of pollution, growing disorder and despair, and the "burning failure of the promise of happiness" (Serge Latouche).  

Globalisation, which is the last stage of capitalism in that it "allows you to invest and disinvest wherever you want and whenever you want, in defiance of mankind and the biosphere", subjugates the political sphere to the economic one, effectively erases frontiers, boundaries, and nation states themselves, which nevertheless continue to subsist as machines at the service of a worldwide plutocratic oligarchy.

On the other hand, as the degrowth theorist recognises, 'borders, however arbitrary they may be (and it is to be hoped that they are as few as possible), are indispensable for regaining the identity necessary for exchange with the other. Contrary to what the globalist thesis claims, there is no democracy without the capacity of the body of citizens, at all levels, to give themselves limits'.

Marcello Veneziani writes, not wrongly: 'In reality, limits define and guarantee reality, boundaries are like facial features that give a physiognomy to what is dear to us, an unmistakable identity.

Since their appearance on Earth, all human groups have lived within territories circumscribed by boundaries. Human settlements depended closely on natural elements such as springs, rivers, hills, seas. It is no coincidence that the great civilisations that have followed one another in history, the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Roman civilisations developed along rivers. The very walls that enclosed the cities represented a sacred space, overstepping which in arms, as the myth of the foundation of Rome teaches us, could cost dearly. With industrial civilisation, everything changes, natural factors are ignored, construction takes place everywhere and everywhere, forests and fertile countryside are destroyed, the soil is consumed as if it were inexhaustible. The cities themselves are transformed into megalopolises, where all contact with natural elements is banished.

Faced with the disruptive and harmful action of turbo-capitalism, ecologists, in particular the Americans Kirkpatrick Sale, Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry have developed the notion of a bioregion, i.e. regions where water, humans, animals and forests form a unified and harmonious geopolitical whole. Geography and geology, ecology, history and politics are closely intertwined, writing the earth's graphies together. And what are bioregions if not small homelands?

"The homeland does not decline with globalisation, because the homeland is your country, the nature that speaks to you in your own language, the history that tells you your own memory, the life from which you descend and which descends from you. Even if you live in a world without borders, and you move or relocate, that place remains special' (Marcello Veneziani).

Albert Camus wrote in 1954 in one of the most significant essays in The Summer, after comparing Greek thought with modern thought: 'we lack that pride of man which is fidelity to one's own limits, a clairvoyant love of one's own condition'.

Is catastrophe, then, inescapable? Will ecologists succeed in making the common man and politics regain this pride? To prevent capitalism from continuing to devastate the world? To restore, as Alain de Benoist hopes, a friendly coexistence between man and Nature?