THE JOY OF LIFE
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distinguishes the two. Whereas Rdch was looking for an energetic unity
between the desire of all life forms, we need to examine the developmental
'unity in diversity* in which desire itself is engaged in a developmental
evolutionary process, moving from moments of organic latency to sodal and
self-consdous actualization.
To reduce the sodal desire for assodation, for example, to the ecological
desire for mutualism, would be to erase the cultural, sodal, political, and
economic forces that both shape and constrain human associations at any
given moment in history. The fact is, the desire to join a worker’s collective is
not redudble to the mutualism of 'worker bees’ that are attracted to a particular
hive. Whereas the behavior of worker bees is primarily guided by biological
instinct,
the
behavior
of
human
workers
is
primarily
shaped
by
self-consdousness and by the sodal institutions that historically shape notions
of work, freedom, and resistance that are fundamental to human history in the
modem and post-modem period.
Rrst AncI SeconcI Nature: A Way To TAlk AbouT EvoluTioNARy DiffERENCE
AncI CoNTiNuiTy
So far we have discussed the dimensions of the eco-erotic, noting both the
evolutionary continuities and discontinuities between the eco- and sodo-erotic.
In order to further flesh out this discussion, we need to be able to distinguish
the eco-erotic from the sodo-erotic to demonstrate the differences between the
two. Yet if we appeal to conventional categories, we might just assign the eco-
and sodo-erotic to the categories of sodety and nature to highlight their
differences. We need, then, a way to understand the relationship between
ideas of nature and sodety that will allow us to appreciate the 'evolutionary
difference’ between the sodal and natural worlds.
Sodal ecology differentiates between categories of 'nature’ and 'sodety’
revealing a developmental continuum between the sodal and natural worlds.
Referring to two distinct yet continuous phases in natural history, first and
second nature, it illustrates how the latter is derived developmentally from the
former. Quite simply, first nature represents all processes and products of
natural evolution that emerged from the beginning of the earth’s formation
through to the gradual appearance of human sodety. In turn, second nature
represents humanity, human consciousness, and human practices including the
formation
of diverse
cultures,
the
creation
of institutionalized
human
communities, the creation of an effective human technics, the development of
a richly symbolic language, and a carefully managed source of nutriment.11 For
example, whereas a tree may represent first nature, a table constructed from
that tree represents second nature. In this way, the two categories are not
necessarily discrete. With the emergence of second nature, (lie two ‘phases’ of