Hobs, filozofija i svašta

U ovom tekstu smo do sada pratili liniju kritike evolucione psihologije koja je predstavljena u knjizi Avaj, jadni Darvin. Veoma raznovrstan profesionalni sastav autora knjige, od biologa različitih specijalnosti, sociologa, antropologa, psihologa, filozofa, do osnivača multidisciplinarnog postmodernističkog pokreta, otkriva opštedruštvenu potrebu za kritikom ovog istraživačkog programa. Ipak, mora se primetiti da mnogi elementi navedenih kritika ne dolaze iz ugla profesije, već političke ideologije, koja ujedinjuje sve autore zastupljene u ovom zborniku – levičarska intelektualna orijentacija. Iako sasvim legitimno i neophodno, ovakvo stanovište obeleženo je velikim nedostatkom naučno zasnovanih argumenata. Vreme je za kritiku kritičara!

Uporedna istorija prirodnih i društvenih nauka nedvosmisleno oslikava jake uticaje koje prirodnjačke paradigme imaju na razumevanje društva. Povezanost između prirodnjačkog i humanističkog aspekta saznavanja sveta je, međutim, refleksivna – cirkularna u pokušaju da se odgonetne u kojoj meri razumevanje prirodnih zakona oblikuje naše sagledavanje socijalnih kretanja, a koliko društvena ideologija utiče na formiranje temeljnih pretpostavki o prirodi. Prema Marksu i Engelsu, ideje i verovanja nisu primarni pokretači istorije: sve što pokreće čoveka mora proći kroz njegov um, ali um i idejni produkti nisu metafizički entiteti koji postoje van konteksta, već su zavisni od uslova u kojima nastaju. Dakle, svi umni konstrukti, a samim tim i nauka o prirodi, jesu kontingentni vladajućim društvenim normama i percepcijama. Koliko god je naučna metodologija ideološki nepristrasna, društvena stremljenja utiru put interpretaciji činjenica, usmeravaju naučne zaključke i, ukratko, oblikuju naše temeljne pretpostavke o svemu što nas okružuje. Intelektualni okvir u kom se konstituiše nauka utiče na izbor podataka koje ćemo prikupljati i na determinisanje pravaca razvoja svake naučne discipline.

U daljem tekstu, opisaćemo tesnu međuzavisnost između našeg razumevanja prirode, s jedne, i društvenih odnosa, s druge strane, koristeći primer višedimenzionalne percepcije različitosti između ljudi. Ljudska vrsta je specifična po tome što se u njoj preklapaju dva podjednako važna životna aspekta - čovek kao biološki i kao društveni organizam, sa svim karakteristikama kulture, svesti, morala, pitanja smisla, strepnji, emocija, koje se na različite načine mogu razumeti iz prirodnjačke i humanističke perspektive. Najčešći teološki odgovor na pitanje dualnosti čoveka podrazumeva natprirodno stvaranje ljudske duše gde se duhovnost nalazi van materije (biologije), a različitost između ljudi odražava svetost božje kreacije, kao, na primer, razlika između muškarca i žene – Adama i Eve. S druge strane, pokušaji materijalističkog objašnjenja ljudske dualnosti označeni su dubokim problemom redukcionističkog pristupa u kom se svaki kulturološki i socijalni aspekt pojedinca i čovečanstva sagledava kao manifestacija bioloških osobina naše vrste. Između dva ekstrema, dogmatski duhovnog i apsolutno prirodnjačkog, pronalazimo različita rešenja koja su obeležila ne samo društvene nauke, već i društvene ideologije uključene u oblikovanje socijalnih odnosa i brojne istorijske događaje. Dakle, pitanje “ljudske prirode” daleko je prevazišlo akademske okvire i odražava se na svakodnevni život od početaka civilizacije kakvu poznajemo. Kao biolog, prevashodno ću prikazati načine na koje je ova prirodno-naučna disciplina uticala na formiranje društvenih ideologija, a pre svega na socijalnu percepciju različitosti. Ipak, osvrnuću se i na situacije u kojima su politika i humanističke nauke (zlo)upotrebljavale biologiju u odbrani divljeg rasizma i nacionalizma i utemeljenju (kvazi)naučne diskriminacije zasnovane na pripadnosti određenoj socijalnoj grupi.

„Primitivna društva nemaju državu zato što je država kod njih nemoguća“, a ne zato što ljudi u njima nisu svesni te opcije, ponavlja uporno Pjer Klastr (Pierre Clastres, Društvo protiv države).

„Ona neprestano razdvajaju vlast od svake institucije vlasti.“ (Govor kao obaveza)

Da je bila reč samo o blaženom neznanju, na te kulture bismo danas verovatno gledali kao na zanimljive sociološki kuriozitete, koji odbrojavaju svoje poslednje dane. Ovako, njihov primer ne prestaje da zapanjuje. Nije reč o tome da te kulture nemaju državu, odnosno da u njima nema vlasti odvojene od zajednice, već o nečemu što imaju: celoj sferi društvenih običaja i praksi koji sprečavaju odnose bazirane na moći i nejednakosti. Za naš um, naviknut na hijerarhiju i potčinjavanje, to predstavlja skoro nerešiv rebus.

Iako pitanje nastanka države i dalje ostaje bez pravog odgovora, još uvek možemo, kako to kaže Klastr, da posmatramo uslove koji sprečavaju njen nastanak. Primitivne kulture pružaju nam upravo tu mogućnost:

„Nema sumnje da će nam samo pažljivo istraživanje funkcionisanja primitivnih društava omogućiti da rasvetlimo to pitanje. A ta svetlost, usmerena na trenutak rođenja države, možda će nam pomoći da sagledamo i mogućnost (ostvarljivu ili ne) njene konačne smrti.“ (Vlast u primitivnom društvu)

Hubert de Montmirail wrote:
a danas su svi porezi i dažbine debelo preko 20%, verovatno negde oko 70% ako se sve sabere

The story we have been telling ourselves about our origins is wrong, and perpetuates the idea of inevitable social inequality. David Graeber and David Wengrow ask why the myth of 'agricultural revolution' remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors.

1. In the beginning was the word

For centuries, we have been telling ourselves a simple story about the origins of social inequality. For most of their history, humans lived in tiny egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers. Then came farming, which brought with it private property, and then the rise of cities which meant the emergence of civilization properly speaking. Civilization meant many bad things (wars, taxes, bureaucracy, patriarchy, slavery…) but also made possible written literature, science, philosophy, and most other great human achievements.

Almost everyone knows this story in its broadest outlines. Since at least the days of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it has framed what we think the overall shape and direction of human history to be. This is important because the narrative also defines our sense of political possibility. Most see civilization, hence inequality, as a tragic necessity. Some dream of returning to a past utopia, of finding an industrial equivalent to ‘primitive communism’, or even, in extreme cases, of destroying everything, and going back to being foragers again. But no one challenges the basic structure of the story.

There is a fundamental problem with this narrative.

It isn’t true.

Overwhelming evidence from archaeology, anthropology, and kindred disciplines is beginning to give us a fairly clear idea of what the last 40,000 years of human history really looked like, and in almost no way does it resemble the conventional narrative. Our species did not, in fact, spend most of its history in tiny bands; agriculture did not mark an irreversible threshold in social evolution; the first cities were often robustly egalitarian. Still, even as researchers have gradually come to a consensus on such questions, they remain strangely reluctant to announce their findings to the public­ – or even scholars in other disciplines – let alone reflect on the larger political implications. As a result, those writers who are reflecting on the ‘big questions’ of human history – Jared Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Ian Morris, and others – still take Rousseau’s question (‘what is the origin of social inequality?’) as their starting point, and assume the larger story will begin with some kind of fall from primordial innocence.

Simply framing the question this way means making a series of assumptions, that 1. there is a thing called ‘inequality,’ 2. that it is a problem, and 3. that there was a time it did not exist. Since the financial crash of 2008, of course, and the upheavals that followed, the ‘problem of social inequality’ has been at the centre of political debate. There seems to be a consensus, among the intellectual and political classes, that levels of social inequality have spiralled out of control, and that most of the world’s problems result from this, in one way or another. Pointing this out is seen as a challenge to global power structures, but compare this to the way similar issues might have been discussed a generation earlier. Unlike terms such as ‘capital’ or ‘class power’, the word ‘equality’ is practically designed to lead to half-measures and compromise. One can imagine overthrowing capitalism or breaking the power of the state, but it’s very difficult to imagine eliminating ‘inequality’. In fact, it’s not obvious what doing so would even mean, since people are not all the same and nobody would particularly want them to be.

‘Inequality’ is a way of framing social problems appropriate to technocratic reformers, the kind of people who assume from the outset that any real vision of social transformation has long since been taken off the political table. It allows one to tinker with the numbers, argue about Gini coefficients and thresholds of dysfunction, readjust tax regimes or social welfare mechanisms, even shock the public with figures showing just how bad things have become (‘can you imagine? 0.1% of the world’s population controls over 50% of the wealth!’), all without addressing any of the factors that people actually object to about such ‘unequal’ social arrangements: for instance, that some manage to turn their wealth into power over others; or that other people end up being told their needs are not important, and their lives have no intrinsic worth. The latter, we are supposed to believe, is just the inevitable effect of inequality, and inequality, the inevitable result of living in any large, complex, urban, technologically sophisticated society. That is the real political message conveyed by endless invocations of an imaginary age of innocence, before the invention of inequality: that if we want to get rid of such problems entirely, we’d have to somehow get rid of 99.9% of the Earth’s population and go back to being tiny bands of foragers again. Otherwise, the best we can hope for is to adjust the size of the boot that will be stomping on our faces, forever, or perhaps to wrangle a bit more wiggle room in which some of us can at least temporarily duck out of its way.

Mainstream social science now seems mobilized to reinforce this sense of hopelessness. Almost on a monthly basis we are confronted with publications trying to project the current obsession with property distribution back into the Stone Age, setting us on a false quest for ‘egalitarian societies’ defined in such a way that they could not possibly exist outside some tiny band of foragers (and possibly, not even then). What we’re going to do in this essay, then, is two things. First, we will spend a bit of time picking through what passes for informed opinion on such matters, to reveal how the game is played, how even the most apparently sophisticated contemporary scholars end up reproducing conventional wisdom as it stood in France or Scotland in, say, 1760. Then we will attempt to lay down the initial foundations of an entirely different narrative. This is mostly ground-clearing work. The questions we are dealing with are so enormous, and the issues so important, that it will take years of research and debate to even begin understanding the full implications. But on one thing we insist. Abandoning the story of a fall from primordial innocence does not mean abandoning dreams of human emancipation – that is, of a society where no one can turn their rights in property into a means of enslaving others, and where no one can be told their lives and needs don’t matter. To the contrary. Human history becomes a far more interesting place, containing many more hopeful moments than we’ve been led to imagine, once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there.

According to Marcuse,

nonliberatory desublimation facilitates “happy consciousness,”

Hegel’s term for resolving the conflict between desire and social

requirements by aligning one’s consciousness with the regime.

Marcuse draws on Freud and Marx to radicalize Hegel’s formu-

lation: in ordinary cultures of domination, he argues, “unhappy

consciousness” is the effect of conscience— superegoic condem-

nation of “evil” urges in both self and society. 58 Conscience is

thus at once an element in the superego’s arsenal for internal

restraint and a source of moral judgment about society. As re-

pressive desublimation offers a reprieve from this strict censor-

ship and gives rise to “happy consciousness” (a less divided self

because a less conscientiously repressed one), conscience is the

first casualty. Importantly, conscience relaxes not just in relation

to the subject’s own conduct but in relation to social wrongs and

ills— which are no longer registered as such. In other words, less

repression in this context leads to a less demanding superego,
which means less conscience, which, in an individualistic, un-
emancipated society, means less ethical- political concern across
the board. In Marcuse’s words, “Loss of conscience due to the
satisfactory liberties granted by an unfree society makes for a
happy consciousness which facilitates acceptance of the misdeeds
of this society. [This loss of conscience] is the token of declining
autonomy and comprehension.” 59

That desublimation lessens the force of conscience makes
intuitive sense, but why does Marcuse associate this with the
subject’s declining autonomy and intellectual comprehension?
His complex point here differs from Freud’s argument, in Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, that conscience is reduced
when the subject effectively transfers it to an idealized leader
or authority. For Marcuse, autonomy declines when compre-
hension declines (this is the cognitivist, if not the rationalist,
in him), and comprehension declines when it is not required
for survival and when the unemancipated subject is steeped in
capitalist commodity pleasures and stimuli. Put the other way
around, instinctual repression takes work, including the work
of the intellect. 60 Therefore, as late capitalist desublimation re-
laxes demands against the instincts but does not free the subject
for self- direction, demands for intellection are substantially re-
laxed. 61 Free, stupid, manipulable, absorbed by if not addicted
to trivial stimuli and gratifications, the subject of repressive de-
sublimation in advanced capitalist society is not just libidinally
unbound, released to enjoy more pleasure, but released from
more general expectations of social conscience and social com-
prehension.This release is amplified by the neoliberal assault on
the social and the depression of conscience fostered by nihilism.

...

Marcuse’s account of repressive desublimation in “advanced
capitalism” adds another aspect to the formation. Unlike the con-
servative, authority- oriented subject guided by conscience and
closely identified with the rectitude of church and state, the re-
actionary subject of repressive desublimation is largely indif-
ferent to ethics or justice. Malleable and manipulable, depleted
of autonomy, moral self- restraint, and social comprehension,
this subject is pleasure- mongering, aggressive, and perversely
attached to the destructiveness and domination of its milieu.
Radically disinhibited but without intellection or moral com-
pass in regard to itself or to others, this subject’s experience of
thinned or ruptured, subjectively felt social ties and obligations is
affirmed by neoliberal culture itself. Its disinhibition is contoured
as aggression by that culture, by its wounds and their imagined
source, and by the desublimations incited or invited by nihilism.

Behold the aggrieved, reactive creature fashioned by neolib-
eral reason and its effects, who embraces freedom without the
social contract, authority without democratic legitimacy, and
vengeance without values or futurity! Far from the calculating,
entrepreneurial, moral, and disciplined being imagined by Hayek
and his intellectual kin, this one is angry, amoral, and impetuous,
spurred by unavowed humiliation and thirst for revenge. The
intensity of this energy is tremendous on its own, and easily ex-
ploited by plutocrats, right- wing politicians, and tabloid media
moguls intent on whipping it up and keeping it stupid. It does not
need to be addressed by policy that might produce its concrete
betterment because it seeks mainly psychic anointment of its
wounds. For this same reason it cannot be easily pacified— it is
fueled mainly by rancor and nihilistic despair. It cannot be ap-
pealed to by reason, facts, or sustained argument because it does
not want to know, and it is unmotivated by consistency or depth
in its values or by belief in truth. Its conscience is weak, while
its sense of victimization and persecution runs high. It cannot
be wooed by a viable alternative future, where it sees no place
for itself, no prospect for restoring its lost supremacy. The free-
dom it champions has gained credence as the needs, urges, and
values of the private have become legitimate forms of public life
and public expression. Having nothing to lose, its nihilism does
not simply negate but is festive and even apocalyptic, willing
to take Britain over a cliff, deny climate change, support mani-
festly undemocratic powers, or put an unstable know- nothing
in the most powerful position on earth, because it has nothing
else. It probably cannot be reached or transformed yet also has
no endgame. But what to do with it? And might we also need to
examine the ways these logics and energies organize aspects of
left responses to contemporary predicaments?

Pokušavam da razlučim početak ovoga. Mislim, zvuči mi smisleno i pametno... 

Ako ikad namjeravate otupiti
čula mladog čovjeka i onesposobiti njegov mozak za bilo koju
vrstu misli, onda ne možete uraditi ništa bolje nego naložiti mu
čitanje Hegela. Jer ova čudovišna gomilanja riječi koja poništava­
ju i proturječe jedno drugom, primoravaju duh na samomučenje u
uzaludnim pokušajima da misli bilo šta što je u vezi s njima dok
se, konačno, ne sruši od jednostavne iscrpljenosti. Tako će bilo
koja sposobnost mišljenja biti tako temeljno uništena da će mlad
čovjek, konačno, prazno i šuplje brbljanje uzeti za stvarno
mišljenje. Čuvar koji se plaši da njegov štićenik može postati
suviše inteligentan za njegove spletke može spriječiti ovu
nesreću nevino sugerirajući čitanje Hegela

Gaia and Chthonia

I.

In classical Greek, the earth has two names, corresponding to two distinct if not opposing realities: ge (or gaia) and chthon. Contrary to a popular theory today, humans do not inhabit gaia alone, but have first and foremost to do with chthon, which in some mythical narratives takes the form of a goddess, whose name is Chthonìe, Ctonia. Thus the theology of Ferecides of Syrus lists three gods at the beginning: Zeus, Chronos and Chthonia and adds that 'Chthonia was given the name Ge after Zeus gave her the earth (gen) as a gift'. Even if the identity of the goddess remains undefined, Ge is here compared to her an accessory figure, almost an additional name of Chtonijah. It is no less significant that in Homer men are defined with the adjective epichtonioi (ctonii, standing on chthon), while the adjective epigaios or epigeios refers only to plants and animals.

The fact is that chton and ge name two geologically antithetical aspects of the earth: chton is the outer face of the underworld, the earth from the surface down, ge is the earth from the surface up, the face that the earth turns towards the sky. Corresponding to this stratigraphic diversity is the dissimilarity of practices and functions: chthon cannot be cultivated or nourished, it escapes the opposition city/country and is not a good that can be possessed; ge, on the other hand, as the eponymous Homeric hymn emphatically recalls, "nourishes all that is chthon above" (epi chthoni) and produces the crops and goods that enrich men: for those whom ge honours with his benevolence, "the life-giving furrows of the serfs are laden with fruit, in the fields the cattle thrive and the house is filled with riches, and they rule with just laws the cities with beautiful women" (v. 9-11 ).

The theogony of Pherecides contains the oldest evidence of the relationship between Ge and Chthon, between Gaia and Chthonia. A fragment preserved by Clement Alexandrinus, defines the nature of their bond by specifying that Zeus is united in marriage with Chthonìe, and, when, according to the nuptial rite of the anakalypteria, the bride removes her veil and appears naked to the groom, Zeus covers her with "a large and beautiful mantle", in which "he has embroidered with various colours Ge and Ogeno (Ocean)". Chthon, the underworld, is therefore something abyssal, which cannot show itself in its nakedness and the robe with which the god covers it is none other than Gaia, the supernal earth. A passage from Porphyry's Antro of the Nymphs informs us that Ferecides characterised the chthonic dimension as depth, "speaking of recesses (mychous), of ditches (bothrous), of caverns (antra)", conceived as the doors (thyras, pylas) that souls pass through in birth and death. The earth is a double reality: Chthonia is the formless and hidden bottom that Gaia covers with her variegated embroidery of hills, flowering countryside, villages, woods and flocks.

In Hesiod's Theogony, too, the earth has two faces. Gaia, the 'firm base of all things', is the first creature of Chaos, but the chthonic element is evoked immediately afterwards and, as in Pherecides, defined by the term mychos: 'the dark Tartarus deep within the earth of broad ways (mychoi chthonos eyryodeies)'. Where the stratigraphic difference between the two aspects of the earth appears most clearly is in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Already at the beginning, when the poet describes the scene of Persephone's abduction while she is gathering flowers, Gaia is evoked twice, in both cases as the flowery surface that the earth turns towards the sky: "the roses, crocuses, beautiful violets in a tender meadow and the irises, hyacinths and daffodils that Gaia makes grow according to the will of the god" ... "at the scent of the flower all heaven above and earth smiled". But at that very instant, "chthon from the vast paths opened (chane) into the plain of Nisio and out (orousen) with his immortal horses came the lord of many guests". That this is a movement from below to the surface is underlined by the verb ornymi, which means "to rise, to rise", as if from the chthonic depths of the earth the god emerged on Gaia, the face of the earth that looks towards the sky. Later, when Persephone herself tells Demeter of her abduction, the movement is reversed and it is Gaia (gaia d'enerthe koresen) who opens, so that "the lord of many guests" can drag her underground in his golden chariot (vv.429-31). It is as if the earth had two doors or openings, one that opens from the depths towards Gaea and one that leads from Gaea into the abyss of Chthonia.

In reality, it is not a question of two doors, but of a single threshold, which belongs entirely to chthon. The verb that the hymn refers to Gaia is not chaino, to open wide, but choreo, which simply means 'to make room'. Gaia does not open, but makes room for Proserpine's transit; the very idea of a passage between high and low, of a depth (profundus: altus et fundus) is intimately chthonic and, as the Sibyl reminds Aeneas, the door of Dite is first of all turned towards the underworld (facilis descensus Avernus...). The Latin term corresponding to chthon is not tellus, which designates a horizontal extension, but humus, which implies a downward direction (cf. humare, to bury), and it is significant that the name for man was taken from it (hominem appellari quia sit humo natus). That man is 'human', i.e. terrestrial, in the classical world does not imply a connection with Gaia, with the surface of the earth looking up to the sky, but primarily an intimate connection with the chthonic sphere of depth.

That chthon evokes the idea of an opening and a passage is evident in the adjective that in Homer and Hesiod constantly accompanies the term: eyryodeia, which can be translated "by the broad way" only if we do not forget that odos implies the idea of transit towards a destination, in this case the world of the dead, a journey that everyone is destined to make (it is possible that Virgil, writing facilis descensus, remembered the Homeric formula).

In Rome, a circular opening called the mundus, which according to legend was dug by Romulus when the city was founded, put the world of the living in communication with the chthonic world of the dead. The opening, closed by a stone called manalis lapis, was opened three times a year, and on those days, when mundus patet, the world is said to be open and "the occult and hidden things of the religion of the hands were brought to light and revealed", almost all public activities were suspended. In an exemplary article, Vendryes showed that the original meaning of our term 'world' is not, as was always claimed, a translation of the Greek kosmos, but derives precisely from the circular threshold that opened up the 'world' of the dead. The ancient city is founded on the 'world' because people dwell in the opening that unites the heavenly and the subterranean earth, the world of the living and the world of the dead, the present and the past, and it is through the relationship between these two worlds that it becomes possible for them to direct their actions and find inspiration for the future.

Not only is man linked in his very name to the Chthonic sphere, but also his world and the very horizon of his existence border on the recesses of Chthonia. Man is, in the literal sense of the term, a being of the deep.

II.

A chthonic culture par excellence is the Etruscan culture. Whoever is dismayed by the necropolis scattered in the countryside of Tuscia immediately perceives that the Etruscans lived in Chthonia and not in Gaia, not only because what remains of them is essentially what had to do with the dead, but also and above all because the sites they have chosen for their dwellings - to call them cities is perhaps improper - although apparently located on the surface of Gaia, are in fact epichthonioi, they are at home in the vertical depths of Chthon. Hence their taste for caverns and recesses carved out of stone, hence their preference for high ravines and gorges, the steep walls of peperino stone plunging towards a river or stream. Those who have suddenly found themselves in front of Cava Buia near Blera or in the streets dug into the rock at S. Giuliano know that they are no longer on the surface of Gaia, but certainly ad portam inferi, in one of the passages that penetrate the slopes of Ctonia.

This unmistakably subterranean character of Etruscan places, if compared to other parts of Italy, can also be expressed by saying that what we have before our eyes is not really a landscape. The affable, usual landscape that serenely embraces the eye and borders on the horizon belongs to Gaia: in the chthonic verticality every landscape dilutes, every horizon disappears and leaves its place to the brutal and unseen face of nature. And here, in the rebellious ditches and gullies, we would not know what to do with the landscape, the country is more tenacious and inflexible than any landscape pietas - at the gate of Dis, the god has become so close and tetragonal that he no longer demands religion.

It is because of this unwavering chthonic dedication that the Etruscans built and watched over the dwellings of their dead with such assiduous care, and not, as one might think, the other way round.They did not love death more than life, but for them life was inseparable from the depths of Chthonia; they could only inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate the countryside if they never forgot their true, vertical home. That is why, in the tombs hollowed out in the rock or in the mounds, we do not only deal with the dead, we do not only imagine the bodies lying on the empty sargophagi, but we also perceive the movements, the gestures and the desires of the living who built them. That life is all the more lovable the more tenderly it holds the memory of Chthonia within it, that it is possible to build a civilisation without ever excluding the sphere of the dead, that there is an intense community and uninterrupted continuity between the present and the past and between the living and the dead - this is the legacy that this people has passed on to humanity.

III.

In 1979, James E. Lovelock, a British chemist who had been actively involved in NASA's space exploration programmes, published Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth. At the heart of the book is a hypothesis that an article he had written with Lynn Margulis five years earlier in the journal Tellus had anticipated in these terms: 'the collection of living organisms that make up the biosphere may act as a single entity to regulate its chemical composition, surface pH, and perhaps even climate. We call the Gaia hypothesis the conception of the biosphere as an active system of control and adaptation, capable of maintaining the earth in homeostasis'. The choice of the term Gaia, which was suggested to Lovelock by William Golding - a writer who had masterfully described humanity's perverse vocation in his novel Lord of the Flies - is certainly not accidental: as the article points out, the authors identified the limits of life in the atmosphere and were "only to a lesser extent concerned with the inner limits constituted by the interface between the inner parts of the earth, not subject to the influence of surface processes" (p. 4). No less significant, however, is a fact that the authors do not seem - at least at the time - to consider, namely that the devastation and pollution of Gaia reached their highest level precisely when the inhabitants of Gaia decided to draw the energy needed for their new and growing needs from the depths of Chthonia, in the form of that fossil residue of millions of living beings who lived in the remote past that we call oil.

By all evidence, the identification of the limits of the biosphere with the surface of the earth and the atmosphere cannot be maintained: the biosphere cannot exist without exchange and 'interface' with the chthonic tanatosphere, Gaia and Chthonia, the living and the dead must be thought of together.

What has happened in modernity is, in fact, that men have forgotten and removed their relationship with the chthonic sphere, they no longer inhabit Chthon, but only Gaia. But the more they removed the sphere of death from their lives, the more their existence became unlivable; the more they lost all familiarity with the depths of Chthonia, reduced like everything else to an object of exploitation, the more the lovely surface of Gaia was progressively poisoned and destroyed. And what we have before our eyes today is the extreme drift of this removal of death: in order to save their lives from a supposedly confusing threat, men give up everything that makes their lives worth living. And in the end Gaia, the land without depth, which has lost all memory of the subterranean abode of the dead, is now entirely at the mercy of fear and death. This fear can only be cured by those who recover the memory of their dual abode, who remember that human is only that life in which Gaia and Chthonia remain inseparable and united. 

28 dicembre 2020
Giorgio Agamben

Kao i u prethodnim knjigama inzistirao sam na tezi da je takozvana postkomunistička tranzicija ideološka zamka u koju je kapitalistički Zapad, pobjednik Hladnoga rata, uhvatio bivša socijalistička društva osiguravajući sebi apsolutnu dominaciju i neograničenu kontrolu nad njima. Uspio im je nametnuti jedan cilj bez alternative, cilj slijepog dostizanja Zapada. Sva njihova budućnost time se svela na ponavljanje nečije tuđe prošlosti. Štoviše, postsocijalistička društva stavljena su pod neku vrstu zapadnog tutorstva, poput nekakvih maloljetnika povijesti nezrelih za upravljanje vlastitom sudbinom. To je bila cijena integracije u globalni kapitalizam u kojem je mnogima od tih društava suđeno da nikada ne dostignu prosperitet i moć svojih gazda i profitera.