Ecotopia: Challenge or Illusion? PDF

ECOTOPIA: CHALLENGE OR ILLUSION? San Francisco, June 19. Where is Ecotopia going in the future? After more than six weeks' intensive study of the country, I find it still hazardous to guess. There is no doubt, I have been forced to conclude, that the risky social experiments undertaken here have wor...

ECOTOPIA: CHALLENGE OR ILLUSION? San Francisco, June 19. Where is Ecotopia going in the future? After more than six weeks' intensive study of the country, I find it still hazardous to guess. There is no doubt, I have been forced to conclude, that the risky social experiments undertaken here have worked on a biological level. Ecotopian air and water are everywhere crystal clear. The land is well cared for and productive. Food is plentiful, wholesome, and recognizable. All life systems are operating on a stable-state basis, and can go on doing so indefinitely. The health and general well-being of the people are undeniable. While the extreme decentralization and emotional openness of the society seem alien to an American at first, they too have much to be said in their favor. In these respects, I believe, Ecotopia offers us a difficult challenge, and we have far to go to even approach their achievements. On the other hand, these benefits have been bought at a heavy cost. Not only is the Ecotopian industrial capacity and standard of consumption markedly below ours, to a degree that would never be tolerated by Americans generally, but the Ecotopian political system rests on assumptions that I can only conclude are dangerous in the extreme. In my earlier columns I described the city-states that have already, in effect, themselves seceded within Ecotopia. There is talk currently of formalizing the Spanish-speaking and Japanese communities of San Francisco---the latter, of course, an economically sinister development because of the threat of Japanese capital taking over. Jewish, American Indian, and other minorities all contain militants who desire a greater autonomy for their peoples. It is, admittedly, difficult for an American to criticize such trends when our own society, after the failure of the integrationist campaign of the sixties, has grown ever more segregated---though somewhat less unequal. However, it is still the American ideal that all men and women should obtain equal protection from the law and have equal Status as citizens of one great and powerful nation. The Ecotopian principle of secession denies this hope and this faith. While seemingly idealistic, it is in fact profoundly pessimistic. And the consequences seem clear. The way propounded by Ecotopian ideologues leads away from the former greatness of America, unified in spirit "from sea to shining sea," toward a balkanized continent---a welter of small, second-class nations, each with its own petty cultural differentiations. Instead of continuing the long march toward one world of peace and freedom, to which America has dedicated itself on the battlefields of Korea, Vietnam, and Brazil (not to mention our own Civil War), the Ecotopians propose only separatism, quietism, a reversion toward the two-bit principalities of medieval Europe, or perhaps even the tribalism of the jungle. Under Ecotopian ideas, the era of the great nation-states, with their promise of one ultimate world-state, would fade away. Despite our achievements of a worldwide communications network and jet travel, mankind would fly apart into small, culturally homogenous groupings. In the words of Yeats (an early 20th-century poet from Ireland---a very small and secessionist country) "The center cannot hold." Ecotopians argue that such separatism is desirable on ecological as well as cultural grounds---that a small regional society can exploit its "niche" in the world biosystem more subtly and richly and efficiently (and of course less destructively) than have the superpowers. This seems to me, however, a dubiously fetishistic decentralism. It assumes that the immensely concentrated resources of the superpowers are innately impossible to use wisely. I would be the last to deny that the huge administrative machines of our governments and international corporations must commit an occasional error, or miss an occasional opportunity. Nevertheless, to condemn them and eliminate them, in favor of small-scale innovations modeled on the Ecotopian experience, would seem to risk throwing the baby of civilization itself out with the polluted bathwater. If we wish to achieve better living conditions for ourselves and our descendants, surely the wiser utilization of the methods we know best is the only way to accomplish it.