24.10., 2020 for Triglav Circle（Memorandum）
Interdependencies with Nature
Noriko Hashimoto
- Symptoms of crisis from Nature against human beings, World Citizen
A number of devastating disasters occurred in Japan between 2017 and today. The media said that such disasters were beyond our imagination and our scientific assumptions. They included heavy rains, a wide range of floods, a large typhoon, an earthquake, and landslides, etc. All these disasters came from global warming. And global warming comes from human economic activities with CO2 emissions. It is because there are interdependencies around the globe, between sea and land, ocean and air currents, and so on. In the 20th century, we pushed technological innovation to conquer nature, but it only partly succeeded – and was actually almost in vain. We must recognize that human beings are a part of nature and, at the same time, creatures living in nature. So, we must re-think our attitude towards nature. As citizens of the world, human beings must have a keen sensibility to find new virtue, “living together on the same globe.”
- Triple Structure of our Circumstance
Nowadays our circumstance has a triple structure: 1) nature (including cosmic space), 2) technological conjuncture, and 3) traditional and historical culture. In this circumstance, where and what is “subjectivity?” “Subjectivity” is the mutual cross-point of these three circumstances: “subjectivity” is a topos (core or place) of the relationship itself; the relationship to nature, to technological conjuncture and to culture. It is because “subjectivity” is the core of dynamic movements of human action, and “intentionality” is automatically active in these three dynamic relationships. So intentionality to nature, to technological conjuncture and to culture is active according to subjective interests. The “subject” is ontic existence in a hypothesis of these dynamic movements. I would like to stress the interdependence with nature in Japanese thought. (ex.The Book of Tea)
- Characteristic feature of the 20th Century: Technological abstraction
What is the aim of technological conjuncture or cohesion? It is diminishing the time-process for getting economical effectiveness. We made technological innovations for convenient life. But the essential core of human beings is “temporality”. Unfortunately one of the important virtues today is “punctuality”. It showed that human beings had to work like a part of machinery; “Modern Times” had already showed that. Gabriel Marcel said that “dehumanization” occurred (“sous-humaine”).
- Human Interdependence with Nature
Imamichi indicates, “humans are creating various machines that have structures totally inconceivable in nature and are trying to bring nature under their complete control. Human beings not only occupy the dominant position in nature but are also overpowering it and interposing machinery between nature and themselves.” We try to conquer nature by machines. But it is impossible. Through machinery, “dehumanization through detemporalization” occurred. On the contrary, nature is something that “awaits maturation,” waits for the time to be ripe. Technology is “rushing about” or always “in motion,” while nature is “waiting.”
Nature, according to Imamichi, is the teacher of “waiting and enduring;” it is not enough to look at nature by looking after nature because “human beings are in essence a part of nature.” So, by making our inner selves truly calm, the meaning of waiting can be understood. “Stressing temporality means emulating nature’s waiting stance. This fosters the patience to wait the unfolding of time (zeitigen), as well as an awareness of waiting.”
- Eco-ethica is “an ethic that learns from nature”.
Concerning human existence, “the individual is a being of dignity with great value;” but thinking about the next generation of human beings is at the same time waiting for another existence, “an other-waiting (inter-reliant) creature.” So “in Eco-ethica, individualism lies in the virtue of valuing others as much as oneself”.
- The cosmopolitan ideal for the citizen of the world（Peter Kemp）
If we were to give a definition of the citizen of the world, we could say that he or she is a person who understands himself or herself as a citizen of two societies: the national society into which he or she is born and accepted and the universal society to which he or she belongs simply by virtue of belonging to humanity. However, this only makes sense, if we assume that there are duties to being a citizen of the world, just as there are duties to being a citizen of a state. In both, rights are inseparable from duties. Moreover, world citizenship only makes sense if it is in some way or other superior to state citizenship.