POSTSCRIPT
On an Ecoloqy of EvERydAy LiFe
WMe ecological restoration is necessary, it alone is insufficient for reclaiming a
desirable quality of social life. Ecology must evaluate the social, political,
cultural—as well as the biological—dimensions of life, demanding the power
for citizens to be able to determine the nature of their relationships with each
other and with the rest of the natural world. An ecology of everyday life is a
social ecology that translates the desire for “nature” into a politicized desire for
direct democratic control through which citizens may create a society that is
whole, humane, and meaningful.
We must cease to portray “nature” as a distant, pure, abstract thing
removed from the everyday lives of people living in urban and degraded rural
environments. It is time for “nature” to be brought down to earth, to become the
very stuff of our lives: the crowded street in our neighbourhood, the water with
which we wash our clothes, both sky scraper and smoke-stack, as well as the
plants, animals, and other creatures with whom we share this planet.
To fulfil its revolutionary potential, ecology must become the desire to
infuse the objects, relationships, and practices of everyday life with the same
quality of integrity, beauty, and meaning that people in industrial capitalist
contexts commonly reserve for “nature.” It means recasting many of the values
often associated with nature within social terms, seizing the power to create
new institutions that encourage, rather than obstruct, the expression of a
rational social desire for a cooperative, healthful, and creative society. The idea
of nature can no longer be the “country home” of our desires, that place we
run to in our dreams, longing for escape from the pain and confusion of life in
the era of global capital. We must relocate the idea of nature within society
itself, transforming society into a ground in which we may build, collectively, a
new practice of both nature and community.