Ecology as ideology

It's really the implicit premise of ecology that the existing world is the best possible world, in the sense of it's a balanced world that is disturbed through human hubris. So why do I find this problematic? Because I think that this notion of nature - nature as a harmonious, organic, balanced, reproducing almost living organism which is then disturbed, perturbed, derailed through human hubris, technological exploitation and so on is, I think, a secular version of the religious story of the Fall. And the answer should be not that there is no Fall, that we are part of nature, but on the contrary, that there is no nature. Nature is not a balanced totality which then we humans disturb. Nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes.

- Slavoj Zizek in The Examined Life, dir. Astra Taylor

It is difficult to hear this bit of thinking from Zizek and not immediately jump to its refutation (this is not true because...) or a Plan For Action (if this is true, we should do...). However, I think it may be worth taking time to unpack "nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes," especially the "unimaginable" and "catastrophes" part.

Unimaginable

Zizek elsewhere has noted that there are two kinds of events that we are incapable of imagining. He borrows some terminology either from Freud or Rumsfeld. I shall inject a third frame/metaphor, that of sight and distance, just because.

There are "unknown unknowns" (Rumsfeld) or "trauma" (Freud) - as I understand it, things that we cannot possibly imagine because they are too far outside our field of vision and are in fact blocked from our vision. It is the nature of the geography of our thought that render them unknowable. They are beyond the horizon.

There are also "unknown knowns" (Rumsfeld) or "the unconscious" (Freud), things that we adhere to or know that we cannot see, that are right in front of our nose, or perhaps even behind our noses. Unlike the unknown unknowns, which are geographically hidden from us, these things are unseeable because of our particular physiology. It is theoretically possible that with a corrective step (a pair of glasses, or therapy) we might be able to see them.

So I think it's worth noting, when Zizek says that the catastrophes of nature (or Nature?) are "unimaginable," he may mean both that they are unforeseeable and/or that they are completely foreseeable, if only we had the right attitude or orientation.

Catastrophes

There is something about the word "catastrophe" which is both terrible and wonderful. It is very much focused on results and not on causes. By which I mean that a "catastrophe" is something huge and possibly irremediable that happens to people, and fundamentally contradicts our values, disrupts our way of life, and ruins our institutions. However, there is nothing in the word "catastrophe" which suggests its source, which is left deliciously ambiguous (unlike say "massive fuck up" or "act of God" or "horrible accident" or "unspeakable evil" - which convey both the scope of an event's effects and define its source).

After all, "nature" is constructed by us, and is not fully outside us. It is fitting that it be a series of "catastrophes" which could be read as coming spontaneously through no fault of our own, or advertable, our responsibility to prevent, or at least prepare to mitigate.