Violence Against Man and Nature Essay

Introduction

The discourse concerning the effects of the human activities on the environment is a relatively new one. The first concerns about the effects of the human civilization on the state of the planet were raised in 1960s-1970s. Before that point only a few people talked about the anthropogenic threats to nature and their voices were largely ignored. However, in the modern-day society with the effects of the human activity on the environment becoming more and more evident, the rhetoric is evolving. Nowadays, many activists and researchers started to link the negative effects industry has on the ecosystem to the suffering of the poor and socially insecure citizens in the underdeveloped and developing countries. This paper aims to explore those connections and how they are addressed by the modern activists.

Anthropocene and Capitalocene

The word “Anthropocene” first emerged in the ecology disputes of the 1970s. It was, as Paul Voosen eloquently put it “an argument wrapped in a word.”¹ The idea was to underline the point that humanity has become a force of nature in its own right powerful enough to shape the planet as a whole. The use of the geological terminology was meant to demonstrate the profoundness of that impact. The idea of the anthropogenic changes in the environment can be traced as far back as the 19^th century, but until recently it was no more than a point of curiosity for a limited number of people. The advent of the Anthropocene discourse marked the beginning of a new era in which the focus shifted from simple curiosity to the assessment of the problems and the search for solutions.

The researchers usually mark the British Industrial Revolution of the 1700s as the beginning of the Anthropocene era. During that era a huge paradigm shift took place. The exploitation of the fossil fuels started in earnest, and the limitations of the lack of energy were shattered. That accelerated the development of humanity and intensified all of our activities. Humans started to produce more, travel more, and consume more². It gave birth not only to the new technology but the new worldviews and the new society. The market economy was born. The Capitalism came into being. That is why some researchers gave this era the name “Capitalocene”. It notes the unbreakable link between the industrialization and capitalism. The Capitalocene rhetoric focuses on the capitalism as a primary driving force behind the anthropogenic changes in the environment. Instead of focusing on the effect of the technology it focuses on the effects of the societal structure adopted by the humanity. That approach is also important to the understanding of the modern-day ecological problems.

The concepts of “Anthropocene” and “Capitalocene” offer an important point of view for the purposes of analyzing the violence against nature and man. They underline the fact that human activity has a huge effect on the environment and can change it for better or for worse. Thus, it is possible to exercise violence against nature as much as it is possible to exercise violence against a fellow human being.

Modern Ecology Discourse

The anthropogenic change of the environment is the cornerstone of the modern disputes regarding the ecology. Despite some people still denying the idea, most of the activists and scientists agree that the Anthropocene is upon us. As such, most ecologists advocate the need to treat the nature with more care. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the humanity managed to use up most of the oil and gas on the planet. The emissions generated by the industry managed to tear an ozone layer hole above the Antarctic. All of these issues cause heightened attention to the ecology. Most of the activists aim to resolve those problems as well as many others plaguing the humanity.

However, those people overlook another important issue. The victims of the poor ecology rarely come into the spotlight of the discussion. The fundamental problem of the relationship between the humanity and the ecosystem of our planet is also rarely discussed. These two issues tie together since both show the exploitative approach of the modern capitalist society.

The Issues of Exploitation

The modern day human civilization is aimed to expand at any cost. Huge corporations seek new recourses and new market trying to achieve a competitive advantage³. Governments extract every speck of valuable materials from the ground seeking to strengthen themselves against the other states. That race for dominance defines the modern human society. And the term “Capitalocene” eloquently summarizes the adverse effect that race has on the environment.

The race for new resources and advantages affects the societies all across the world. The effects are often horrible and woefully underrepresented in the media. Underdeveloped communities constantly suffer from the issues caused by the drive to find new recourses. Their environments are endangered by relentless abuse, and they are subjected to the factors far outside their control, and sometimes even outside their understanding. The nuclear tests on the Marshall Isles are a prime example of a small island community paying a horrible price for the ambitions of the leading world power. The effects of the contamination are still experienced by the population with horribly deformed babies being born more than five decades after the tests themselves⁴. This example underlines the fact that any damage to the environment is also damage to the communities living in that environment.

Slow Violence

Another important question is why such violence goes completely unnoticed by a large part of the world population. The question is disturbingly simple – the gradual, slow violence is just not exciting enough. The humans react much more strongly to the sudden flashes of violence, single episodes affecting many people. That is way a plane crash is likely to be covered extensively by the media, while the fifteenth year of famine in the Central Africa is not. The famine will probably claim more lives, but it will do so quietly and in a distant corner of the world which is unnoticed by most denizens of the developed countries. The plane crash will claim fewer but will do so in a single instance and in a way which will bother the central mass media demographics. Politicians are also blind to those issues. Addressing some vague long-term goal does not give the vote you need to come ahead.

The lack of media and political attention to the ongoing stretches-out crises is explained by the same reasons as the uncontrolled exploitation of recourses. It is a race for profit and competitive advantage. The fact that people do not have the same emotional response to the long-term crises does not make them any less important. Even such global issues as global warming can be viewed as slow violence⁵. While the predicted effect of the global warming is overwhelming and all-encompassing, there are no obvious effects or spectacular catastrophes linked to the phenomenon. The global summits on climate change attract some public attention. But the general public interest in the issue is low and usually not intense enough for people to start personally addressing the problem. Thus, even the ecological problems of acknowledged global importance can fall into the category of slow, unnoticed violence. Addressing the issues of slow violence is essential to understanding the plight of the societies living under the burden of ongoing economic, social and ecological oppression.

Interconnected Violence

In the modern world, it is obvious that the issues of environment are deeply entwined with the issues of violence against human societies. The example of the Marshall Isles is an extreme one. In many cases, the violence is much harder to notice or identify. The Chinese abandoned factory facilities house the remnants of abandoned communities still living among the desolation. The movies showing these lands present the scenery of complete decay. The people are famished. They appear degraded and almost animalistic. They are the victims of the complex violence which destroyed the environment and then left their societies to fend for themselves⁶. The forests of South America are destroyed to fuel the production of the developed countries leaving the forest communities deprived of their natural source of recourses. Most of the Africans live in harsh environments and experience even more hardships, as warlords use imported weapons to fight over the natural riches of the continent. Thus, Africans are tortured by the ambitions of their own leaders and western weapon dealers.

All these acts of violence go on and on, day after day. The issues remain unnoticed by the developed countries. For the reason mentioned above, most of the First World demographics only care about the environment when the problem is instantly relatable. The victims of radiation might be much more horrifying than your local garbage dump, but you have never seen them. They are, in fact, half-way across the world from you. They can hardly be blamed for this near-sighted approach since the complexity of those issues is not properly explained to the general audience. So the activism in the developed countries remains limited, and the plight of those experiencing the complex ecological violence remains unheard.

Is There a Solution?

The theory of Capitalocene relates the ecological violence to the very nature of the capitalism⁷. That view seems hard to argue with for anybody who knows the basics of market economy and understands how it is driven by competition. However, simply explaining the problem does not mean solving it.

Since the capitalism seems to be the root of the problem, getting rid of it should be the solution. However, the practice of socialist states proves that not to be the case. In theory, the Marxist and socialist ideologies promote harmony between man and nature. The shared production instruments and shared property are supposed to ensure that there is no wild race for any market advantage. The focus should be on a balanced relationship between man and nature, city and countryside. Charles Fourier, a French socialist, created an image of a true utopia based on those ideals where the production is not driven by the constant race to earn and consume. In his image of the world, everybody works for the necessities of survival and harmonic coexistence with nature. The practice of the socialist states showed that utopia is not attainable. The USSR abused political prisoners in a crazed drive to maintain the planned development. China used and discarded whole societies in the industrial belt. There was no harmony to be seen, only the constantly growing demands of the planned economy.

If the ideals of Marxism and socialism proved to be unattainable what is the way to stop the ecological violence. That question appears to have no clear answer. The world is rooted in capitalism. Every advanced economy is forced into the global market and the capitalist struggle for efficiency. So changing the societal paradigm is virtually impossible. The only evident course of action is to try and attract more attention to the problems of slow ecological violence. Advocating for the needs of the people in another hemisphere is difficult but necessary. Similar issues can affect any community in the world. And every time media and politicians close their eyes to such calamities, it becomes even easier for them to ignore them in the future. Ecological violence should be brought to the public attention regularly. It is the only way to ensure that the search for solutions continues and may one day succeed.

Conclusion

In the modern day, humanity is a force of nature changing the world. It can be destructive or creative. It can maintain or disrupt the natural balance. Ever since the beginning of the Anthropocene, the humanity has been exploiting and consuming all of the resources it could reach. However, in the 1970s, it became evident how destructive the humanity is to nature. The catastrophic results of the anthropogenic changes in the natural order drew the eye of the public and gave birth to the widespread ecological activism. This issue remains the crux of the ecological discourse to this day. Such focus overshadows another set of problems which is no less complicated or important. The human victims of the gradual anthropogenic corruption of the environment are rarely noted. They are ignored in favor of other issues. However, the ecological violence is a problem that anybody can face. Ultimately the modern economies will stop before nothing in the race for competitive advantage. Thus, understanding the complex entwined violence against man and nature is important for everybody. Making sure those issues are not ignored is beneficial for the entire humanity. After all, nobody knows when they will start to choke on the air they have been breathing their whole lives.

Bibliography

Moore, Jason M. “The Capitalocene”. Jason W. Moore Blog. 2014. Web.

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Steffen, Will, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill. “The Anthropocene: Conceptual And Historical Perspectives”. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842-867.

Wang, Ban. “Of Humans And Nature In Documentary: The Logic Of Capital In West Of The Tracks And Blind Shaft”. Chinese Ecocinema (2011): 156-169.

Footnotes

1. Jason M. Moore, “The Capitalocene,” Jason W. Moore Blog, 2014. Web.
2. Will Steffen, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Conceptual And Historical Perspectives”, Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842-867.
3. Ban Wang, “Of Humans And Nature In Documentary: The Logic Of Capital In West Of The Tracks And Blind Shaft”, Chinese Ecocinema (2011): 156-169.
4. Rob Nixon. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. (Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 8.
5. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, p. 5.
6. “Of Humans And Nature In Documentary: The Logic Of Capital In West Of The Tracks And Blind Shaft “.
7. “The Capitalocene”.