ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
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This individual desire is then ‘collectivized’ into the shared desire of most
Americans to distinguish themselves from those of less developed’ Third World
countries. Meanwhile, this social arrogance is predicated on a capitalistic idea
of ‘growth’, obscuring a true understanding of development as an incremental
process in which individuals and society may become qualitatively richer,
developing deeply textured capacities for empathy, interdependence, and
creativity.
Hence, the idea of ‘growth’, individual or social, is insufficient for
cultivating a full understanding of development. As we have seen, true organic
development is a process of differentiation and wholeness. In turn, this
development entails the act of becoming which is distinguishable from the
simple idea of growth. For instance, when a seed unfolds into a flower, the
seed does not merely ‘grow5 or become a bigger seed. If development were
simply growth or expansion, then there would be no flowers at all, just
gargantuan seeds swaying in the fields. Instead, something dramatic occurs
within the logic of the seed; something within the seed’s very structure allows
it to differentiate into a new, more elaborate form. The seed gradually gives
way to the flower not merely by expanding but by differentiating into an ever
more complex organism. This dialectical process of becoming moves from the
first thread-like root of the seedling to the upward rising of the stem through
the gradual maturation and emergence of the blossom itself. Through this
development, the seed is not destroyed; rather, it unfolds within the logical
progression of its own internal structure. In this way, we could say that there
was something distinctive about the seed’s structure which allowed it to
engage in this process of ‘becoming’, undergoing a series of phases in which it
was able to become ‘more of itself. We could say that the flower represents the
differentiated expression of the seed’s potential for becoming a flower.14
In contrast to this social ecological view of development, capitalist society
regards development as hierarchical, competitive and determined. Under the
rubric of liberal capitalism, to differentiate means to separate and surpass what
we were before, assuming a state of superiority over others. Such an approach
to development emerges within the deterministic models of development
proposed by thinkers such as Llegel or Marx. Whereas these thinkers
contributed immeasurably to the world of dialectics, offering an understanding
of the logical unfolding of symbolic and material reality respectively, their
dialectical approaches retained a determinism that must be transcended. Both
thinkers portrayed development as a series of necessary negations: a linear and
hierarchical process in which earlier phases of development are necessarily
overcome by ‘superior’ later phases. According to Hegel, whereas change is
made possible by the process of contradiction and negation, conflict and
opposition represent the only means by which development may occur; thus,