The postmodern environment

Abstract

The significance of nature changed with the advent of modern science. What had been a term of moral import became an object of studied conquest. “The environment” is that part of nature not appropriated by science, which makes possible man’s conquest of the rest. Science encourageshuman beings to distrust their ordinary experience of nature. Because nature is volatilized by science, modern citizens require science and the media to inform them of the condition ofnature. Naturecan no longer be preserved just through the cultivation of one’s land. But theloss of belief in modern ideals has given way to the fragmentation of postmodernity. Modern democracy, which encouragesthat fragmentation, inclines men to defer to the “immense beings”of government and nature. We passoff to government and the market the task of preserving nature. Protection of the environment has noexplanation outside our free arrangement of the signs of our world–as an object of changingconsumer fashion or a sign of one’s social status. We want the benefits of liberty and technology with the assurance that we do nature no harm, and take from nature noguidance.We distance ourselves from the control of nature and from restrictions on that control. The market and the law assume the ecological burdens we refuse to meet and hide from us the manipulation of nature that always frightens usup close.