INTRODUCTION
ECOLOCY AND DESIRE
Ecology is as much about desire as it is about need. While the ecology
movement of the sixties addressed the need for clean air and water for
survival, it also expressed a popular desire for an improved quality of life.
People took to the streets in the seventies to fight nuclear power; but many
also took to the land to build ecological communities hoping to enrich their
social relationship as well as their ties to the natural world. Ecology addresses
two demands, then—one quantitative, the other qualitative. Bom out of the
call for enough clean water, air, and land to survive, ecology is also the
demand for a particular quality of life worth living.
Ecoloqy AncI TIhe DIaIectIc Of NeecI AncI DesIre
As
political
protest
to
ecological
degradation -began
to
wane in
the
mid-eighties, an emphasis on quality of life issues held steady. Enthusiasm for
nature-based spirituality, as well as for natural foods and medicine, reflected a
continuing popular desire for health and meaning associated with ecology.
However, this emphasis on quality of life has taken on an individualistic tone
often expressed through personal changes in life-style and consumption habits.
If middle-class North Americans feel socially disempowered to ensure the
planet’s survival, they can at least command the buying power to ensure that
their individual lives will be ecologically pleasurable in the short term.
In turn, ecology has taken on a romantic dimension. For privileged
peoples within industrialized capitalist contexts, there is a tendency to desire a
‘pure’ or ‘innocent’ nature that is prior to or outside of society. Such ecological
discussion can range from a longing to protect an ideal ‘mother nature’, to a
yearning to return to a golden age that may have never existed. The growing
popularity of wilderness exploration hips on (he one hand reflects a genuine