Reexamining Environmentalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCfiv1xtoU
Last night I went to a viewing of the new documentary The Examined Life. The documentary is a series of 10 minute long interviews with contemporary philosophers and intellectuals. On the whole, I didn't find the views presented particularly new or fresh, though I did find the movie engaging. There was one philosopher whose views I found very new and interesting: Slavoj Zizek. I have posted a link to his interview here. Zizek's views directly oppose ecology and environmentalism, views that some of us hold very dearly and may perhaps view as unquestionable. I don't expect Zizek to convince anyone to give up their ecological concerns. However, I hold the value of questioning my values above my value of the environment. As such, I think Zizek provides an interesting new voice into the conversation. It is worth noting that Zizek is not some shmcuk off the street either--he is one of the most respected philosophers alive today. Though Zizek is notoriously subversive and we can't really know whether he believes anything he is saying, he presents a well-reasoned argument. Whether or not he actually holds the beliefs that he presents should not effect the strength of his argument. I think Zizek's ultimate point (besides the idea of questioning everything) is that we ought accept things that make us human and not try to repress ourselves. I think that Zizek sees ecology as a limit on humans that we impose unnecessarily. I'm not sure how far I would go in agreeing with the views Zizek presents, though I firmly believe that dogmatically attaching oneself to a doctrine is limiting, perhaps conservative, and a form of self-deception. That we may simultaneously argue against conservatism, dogmatism and self-deception while dogmatically attaching ourselves to environmentalism is contradictory.