Week 9_3/19/16_Becoming More Artificial

            In the video titled “Slavoj Žižek on Examined Life,” Žižek argues that even though we know that nature is being destroyed, we don’t do anything about it because we are unable to imagine nature being destroyed (8:23). Therefore, we act as if we don’t know nature will be destroyed (7:37), even if we do. His solution to this problem is to not strengthen our roots in nature and learn to appreciate it, but to cut ourselves off altogether from nature and become even more artificial and technological (8:46). This would mean we would not treat the world as a beautiful nature that we are a part of, but as masses of technical terms and formulas that make up a singular existence. As a result, we would act based on logic, and the most logical thing to do would be to take more care of nature and make sure we don’t destroy it because doing so would be at our disadvantage. I find this very radical proposition not practical enough to carry out because I do not believe we are capable of such act, but theoretically, there are solid reasonings behind his words.

 Doing as Žižek suggested would mean we would have to act as if we have no feelings towards nature at all. We cannot be completely logical because we have emotions. However, according to Žižek, this is part of our problem. He claims that we think that nature we have today is the best possible one, one that is balanced and reproductive, but are disturbed by humans (2:53). However, nature, in fact, is a series of unimaginable catastrophes that we profit from (3:57). Therefore, it is illogical to think that we must appreciate nature and leave it as it is. Instead, there is no nature and so we can’t act based on what we think is best for it.

This notion of thought leads to what Žižek claims to be our course of actions. We are only able to see what is right in front of us, and therefore are not able be concerned by what we know is happening in the world such as global warming and other ecological catastrophes. Even after confronting them, our feelings towards those ecological catastrophes will not last because we come back to our comfortable lives where there are no catastrophes. Moreover, if we truly love nature, we will ignore all the ugly parts of it that causes catastrophes, just like how we love our loved one (9:52). That is why feelings towards nature must be cut off. If we become more artificial and technical, we will clearly see that the ecological problems must be solved for our benefit. This is how ideology relates to ecology. How we perceive nature plays a crucial role in how we treat it. Žižek suggests that we must treat it as nothing more than formulas.

All in all, even though I don’t think this approach to ecology can ever be possible, I believe the logic and theory behind it makes sense. It is easy to think our love for nature makes us take better care of it, but it may be the very thing that destroys it. As a person that likes to act based on logic, I find this idea intriguing and although it can’t fix all of our problem, if we do indeed get rid of love of nature and be able to condemn it as a series of catastrophic instances, we may be more eager to fix it instead of leaving it alone.