The Neoliberal Colonization on Nature and Our Deep Ecological Selves

Kurt Love, Ph.D. Central Connecticut State University

!National Association of Multicultural Educators

Annual Meeting, November 5-9, 2014 Tucson, Arizona

The Map of Diversity

• The “map” of diversity has routinely deselected relationships with nature.

• The privileged discourse in diversity studies is anthropocentric and has created an academic blindspot.

Privileging Humans & Omitting Nature

• Racism, sexism (by extension, heterosexism), Capitalism, classism, Neoliberalism, religionism, globalization, and colonization can all be traced to a particular version of discrimination that favors humans as distant from nature (usually through technology, wealth and often reinforced militarily)

• White, European, Christian, wealthy people in positions of domination have relied heavily on a narrative that treats them as God’s people who are right, fully human, have the moral doctrine (rationale), and governmental structure to rule others who are indigenous, poor (or outside of a capitalistic structure), not Christian.

• The first and most important step is to see one self as being removed from nature in order to be part of today’s privileged, dominant group.

Neoliberalism’s Roots• Neoliberalism, the favoring of “free market” ideology in business and non-business contexts, is borne

out of a desire to accumulate wealth.

• Wealth comes from capitalism, which depends on consumerism

• Capitalism and consumerism are fundamentally against close relationships with nature and have long-standing practices of exploitation with those who are close to nature.

• The global colonizers, Europeans, created racism out of desires to control, colonize, and capitalize from those who were initially closer to nature (subhuman)

• Europeans viewed themselves as superior primarily because they became more technological (militarily, agriculturally, and through the mining of the earth), or created themselves and their self images as being increasingly distant from the earth and more able to control the earth.

• Controlling the earth also meant controlling people of the earth. People who were not as technologically developed did not have the designator of being fully human.

• People who were not fully human could be destroyed, manipulated, and exploited.

• People of indigenous societies, women in general, and poor people were all seen as being closer to the earth and were therefore routinely dominated.

European Colonizers & American Indians

Clash of two peoples with two different “ecological selves”!

European Colonizers: Nature for profit, land ownership, enclosure, capitalist mindset/values!

American Indians: Nurturance, reciprocity, sustainable mindset/values!

Genocide: From up to 18 million in 1490’s to 190,000 in 1890, up to 200 million Indians died in the Americas!

Land Domination

European Colonizers & West Africans

Clash of two peoples with two different “ecological selves”!

European Colonizers: Nature for profit, land ownership, enclosure, capitalist mindset/values!

West Africans: Nurturance, reciprocity, sustainable mindset/values!

Slavery: About 12 million captured and shipped to the Americas, 645,000 brought to the U.S., nearly 4 million slaves in the 1860 census!

Domination for profit via capitalism

Shift Away From Valuing Nature

Joseph Campbell stated that we can see the movements of a society based on the highest buildings in an area.

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Gods and Goddesses

communicate through the

actions of nature in the forests

Gods and Goddesses

communicate through the

actions of nature and in growth/

harvest of crops

God (no Goddess) & salvation are found only

through Jesus. The Devil resides

in nature.

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Government provides policies of morality

aimed solely at rights of humans

Transcontinental corporations heavily influence governments and national policies

through trade agreements creating the greatest negative impact on the global

environment

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS & SPIRITUALITIES

Pre-date Christianity

Pre-date Islam

Pre-date Judaism

Earth-based spiritualities

Found in all parts of the world

CREATING PATRIARCHY

Women are closer to nature than men;#Nature is wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Therefore...

Women are wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Adam & Eve

REALISM & PATRIARCHY

Women are closer to nature than men;#Nature is wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Therefore...

Women are wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Aristotle and Phyllis (Alexander the Great’s Wife)

"If thus it happened to me, an old man most wise, that I was deceived by a woman, you can see that I taught you well, that it could happen to you, a young man." - Aristotle

Christians & Earth-Based Spiritualities

Movement out of nature and into “Human” as separate from nature!

Nature is where Satan resides !

Technology is Godly & righteous!

Christian missionaries with indigenous peoples globally, views on nudity!

Killing of at least tens of thousands of “witches” from 1400s-1600s!

Continued persecution of paganism, neopaganism, and Wicca

MAINTAINING PATRIARCHY

A mass killing of women during the “Burning Times” in Europe & the US

Removal of a religion where women are spiritual leaders and the central spirit is seen as feminine. !Origin story: Goddess comes into her own, splits her self to have a male half who governs the physical plane (physical universe), and we are all aspects of the Goddess with the support of the God.

Science as a Product of Sociocultural Values

Galileo Galilei“The Universe is a clock”

Johannes Kepler

“The Universe is a machine”

Francis Bacon“For you have but to follow and as it were hound nature in her

wanderings...Neither ought a man to make

scruple of entering and penetrating into these

holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is

his whole object”

Thomas Hobbes“Nature is dead, stupid

matter”

René Descartes“We can be the masters

and possessors of nature”

Aloha & Haole

Aloha & Haole

Aloha #“Together, we breathe the sacred breath”#

A consciousness that we are inescapably interwoven with each other and the earth. #What we do to each other and the earth, we do to ourselves.

Aloha & Haole

Haole #“One who is without sacred breath”#

A consciousness that does not include an awareness that we are inescapably interwoven with each other and the earth. #

A consciousness only of self and an ignorance of one’s energetic and spiritual impact. Often comes with little or no understanding of spirituality or the purpose of one’s soul (soul loss).

Hubris and IdeologyRoot metaphors:Words that carry forward cultural value systems; these are often mystified#

Hubris:Bowers argued that we often use root metaphors in our language that ultimately express hubris, ideology, and have long-term negative consequences both culturally and ecologically#

Examples:#

Individualism#

Progress#

Technology#

Savage#

The Corporation

Is “Progress” Ecologically Sustainable?

Progress #

Technology#

Individuality/Isolation#

Capitalism#

Competition#

Movement away from nature#

Sustainability#

Cooperation#

Reciprocity#

Nurturance#

Interconnectedness with each other and with nature

“Progress” as typically defined in the first world nations is the opposite of “sustainability”

“Progress” Creates Oppression

We are currently at the stage of global peak oil, and the next 30-40 years will very likely be focused on rapidly decreasing supplies and is connected to a current energy crisis (Zittel, 2007).

Access to freshwater is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for peoples in third world countries where freshwater sources are polluted or privatized (Shiva, 2005; Vorosmarty, Green, Salisbury & Lammers, 2000).

Global warming is creating increasingly unstable and unpredictable conditions in local and global contexts with experts predicting numbers of environmental refugees in the hundreds of millions (Bhandari, 2009).

Half the world’s population lives on $2.50 per day or less, and 80% of the world lives on $10 per day or less (Shah, 2010).

Children in cities have higher rates of asthma than children in surrounding suburbs (Kozol, 2005)

Ecojustice Purposes of School

Sustainability #

Environmental#

Social#

Economic

Sustainability - EnvironmentalThe Earth has the ability on global local scales to replenish itself within a human generation (25 years)#

Human/Nature connection critically analyzed

Sustainability - Social

Working towards peace (non-violent conflict resolution)#

Solidarity - Affirmation - Critique of Power#

Health & Wellness

Sustainability - Economy

Strong local economies and responsible global commerce#

Reintegration of the cultural commons

A Vision

A Diversity Without Sustainability

Diversity studies cannot be truly sustainable without ecological identities as an integral part of the discourse.#

Currently, diversity studies favor Western, industrial culture as an endpoint for social justice. Students of color who have more access and success within the current structures of schools are used as a point for social justice.#

Our schools are cultural vehicles forming all children to become docile workers in a capitalistic, consumeristic structure that ultimately creates a global monoculture that is unsustainable.

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