Don Arcadio’s Story as a Source of Wisdom for Sustainable Development

Don Arcadio’s Story as a Source of Wisdom for Sustainable Development

                                                                                                Rainier A. Ibana

Don Arcadio

Don Arcadio owns most of the properties in his hometown.  But he wanted more land for himself and decided to buy the ancestral lands of the indigenous peoples of the adjacent town.  He then asked the leader of the tribe if he can acquire more properties from them.  The chief graciously offered as much land as Don Arcadio  can traverse for as long as he can come back within eight hours.  Don Arcadio then did not waste time and ran as fast as he could in order to cover as much ground as he can.  He ran and ran and did not even take his lunch.  He already reached the summit of a mountain when he realized that he only had thirty minutes left before he can go back to where he came from.  He then ran back as fast as he could until he ran out of breath, fell on his knees, and expired.[1]

Don Arcadio’s story epitomizes the human condition in the age of global warming when the apocalyptic tipping point of climate change is impending upon humanity as a result of our inability to recognize the limits to economic growth and development.  The expansionist mentality of the modern world can be traced back to the age of colonization when the seemingly unlimited frontiers of other lands and peoples finally reached its zenith during the age of industrialization when hydroflorocarbons and other greenhouse gasses were expelled unto the atmosphere and trapped the life-giving power of the sun’s rays by turning them into a solar oven that overheats the earth’s atmosphere, generates typhoons and droughts and threatens to submerge island nations into oblivion.

The anthropogenic origins of this impending catastrophe can be traced to the consumerist ethos of an acquisitive culture that wantonly extracts natural resources for industrial production on the one hand while dumping wastes on barren lands that emit combustible substances, such as methane into the atmosphere and leaches toxins into the ground water that we eventually drink to quench our thirst.  These toxic substances overextend the regenerative cycles of nature and pollute the soil, water, air and other basic stuff that constitute life by mixing them up with nature’s cycles that turn these once life-giving substances into chemical carcinogens that cause harm to humans, other organisms and the environment.  The most common cancers, such as that of the lungs and the skin, for example, are located in those parts of the body that are most exposed to the environment.

Not unlike Don Arcadio, modern human beings look at land as property that can be owned and exploited for human consumption.  The broader view, however, is that the land that we step on is only a parcel of the Earth, the planet that must endure and regenerate itself by adjusting its temperature and water levels to environmental conditions that earthlings would have to live with in order to survive.  We belong to the Earth, not only as the planet that sustains us, but as the dirt under our feet that sustains oxygen-producing organisms that enable our brains to think of noble thoughts about ourselves and the environment. 

Environmental problems have caused us to cooperate with one another because we have realized that the earth, water and air are common properties  that we must care for at the expense of our own self-destruction.  Those who share river systems like the Mekong and the Rhine realize that they cannot arbitrarily create dams or pollute the upper streams because neighboring countries would lodge complaints against them before the international public sphere.  The complaint of rapidly developing countries such as Brazil, China and India, moreover, is how they can achieve the quality of life of industrialized countries without exploiting the natural resources, such as rainforests that serve as the planets reservoir of oxygen.

There are no easy solutions to the problem of economic development today but we are required by the laws of nature to work closely on the ground, as it were, by not overextending the carrying capacity of the earth to sustain life to its fullness.  This means that we must be wary of technological innovations that merely extend linear production lines without questioning the amount of energies that are actually expended to produce these innovations.  Gadgets that supposedly reduce carbon emissions, for example, merely expand our levels of consumption and extend linear production lines that must extract metals and tax the financial resources of the buying public. 

Alternative renewable sources of energy to fossil fuels such as solar, tidal, geothermal and wind power must at least be considered and developed in order to sustain human development for the majority of our peoples who do aspire for dignified standards of living.  These alternative sources of energy require creative ways of thinking that will produce novel technologies that can work in harmony and not against the laws of nature.

Nature herself has inexorable laws that can be violated only at the expense of the violator since nature does have the capacity to regenerate and perhaps even extract revenge on those who do not abide by her laws.  Living along well-known fault lines and river banks that are prone to flooding are invitations to disasters that are merely waiting to happen.  So-called natural calamities could have been prevented if humans have not abused the carrying capacity of their mountains, rivers and air.  Not even God can prevent, short of performing miracles, nature’s wrath.  Those who drowned in Bocaue river, after all, were paying homage to their patron saint in an overcrowded boat.

Like Don Arcadio, acquisitive human beings inflict upon themselves the punishment that they deserve for not realizing the limitations of their bodies in relation to the infinity of their unquenchable desires.  The cardinal virtue of temperance require the ability to discern when the continuing performance of a pleasurable activity will already cause pain and therefore one must be willing to withdraw from it in order to save and protect the higher value of life itself.[2]

When it comes to measuring our aptitude for moral virtues, we must heed Aristotle’s advice that we must only demand the kind of exactitude that the subject matter will permit and when it comes to human dispositions we cannot spell out before hand the right thing to do at the right time under the right circumstances. 

The science of Biology, however, informs us that consumers, like ourselves, can only absorb ten percent of the units of energy that we have consumed and the rest are expelled into the environment in the form of heat.  If this is indeed the case for all biological beings, including humans, then levels of consumption must at least be lowered in order to relax the level of stress on the production lines that support our consumerist life-styles.  In the case of Don Arcadio, he should have been more circumspect of the amount of time required that will enable him to return to the Chieftain who astutely calculated his covetous disposition.

Figure 1: ecology’s ten percent law

Cited on July 13, 2010 from:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/xenology/images/20.1.gif

Consideration of ecology’s ten percent law, which could very serve as an analogy for the mountain that was Don Arcadio’s object of desire, will also require humans to live “closer to the ground,” as it were, taking note of their carbon footprints on their modes of transportation, electrical and communication technologies.  The more humans make use of their own physical energy in their daily affairs, the better it would even be for their own health since physical exercise also expels accumulated toxins while reducing the consumption levels of economic and ecological systems.

Such lifestyle adjustments will not only contribute to the mitigation of and adaptation to the disastrous effects of global warming such as heat waves and powerful typhoons; they could also produce a culture of ecological care and personal habits of judiciously using natural resources.  Ethics, after all, is not only cultivated by means of deliberate choices performed by judicious individual persons.  When imbibed by a whole people, ethical deliberation and behavior can produce a counter-culture: a “second nature, acquired not innate”[3] to the customs and traditions of human communities.

This social transformation will require the emergence of moral exemplars and dedicated leaders who will inspire human communities such as nations and other cultural circles.  The noble values of leaders and exemplars, once recognized by their followers, can have lasting effects on the promotion of social systems that are inspired and directed by moral decorum.[4]

Solicitude for the environment and the earth’s carrying capacity, therefore, will not only benefit other human and non-human beings alike but will also create the kind of persons that human beings ought to become.  “Nature,” as Holmes Rolston describes it, is not only “the womb of culture, but a womb that humans never entirely leave.”[5] Humans, after all, are not only the children of what is endearingly called “mother earth;” they are also the children of a universe that has become conscious and deliberate of its future direction through the kind of life that human beings will choose to live. The quality of life lived by humans will always be reflected, however, on the kind of surroundings, the earth, that human beings have made and pass on to the future.

In spite of human foibles, such as Don Arcadio’s, responsibility for the environment cannot be abdicated to anyone else.  Neither mindless beasts nor disembodied angels can tilt the tipping point that will reverse, stabilize or turn the tide against the natural laws that govern the avalanche of global warming.  If this potential global catastrophe indeed had anthropogenic origins, then its reversal and mitigation can also be achieved only through the altruistic life-giving efforts that can be carried out by the deliberate choices performed by no one else but human beings themselves. 

    

[1] Retold and Translated by Rainier Ibana from Cristina Elizalde, “Ang Bunga ng Kasakiman” in Mga Kwentong Bayan, Ed. Victoria Valencia (Manila: Printshop Publications, 2004), pp. 26-28.

[2] Yves Simon, The Definition of Moral Virtue, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), p.

[3] Clarke, Norris W., S.J., “Living on the Edge: the Human Person as ‘Frontier Being’ and Microcosm,” International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. XXXVI, No. 2 Issue No. 42 (June 1996), p. 199.

[4] Max Scheler, “Leaders and Moral Exemplars” in Person and Self-Value Edited and Translated by Manfred Frings (Martinus Nijoff, 1987).

[5]  Rolston, Ibid., 64). 

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Being Medical: Between the Frontiers of the Natural and the Artificial

 Being Medical: Between the Frontiers of the Natural and the Artificial

                                                Rainier A. Ibana

                                                         Ateneo de Manila University

Introduction

               Please allow me to begin this presentation by thanking the organizers, Kumamoto University and UNESCO, for inviting me to be here this morning and to share my ideas on the question: “What is Medical?”  A philosophical understanding of being here now, moreover, requires not only my factual presence in this room at this time today but also my being present here in an active and progressive sense of being – acting in such a way that I can share whatever knowledge I may have  about the topic of our conference.

               Philosophers since the time of Parmenides, the Pre-socratic Philosopher of Elea, have wondered on the primordial question of being.  Even a positive understanding of the opposite of being, the notion of nothing which has been touted as an Asian way to negate the so-called western conception of being, must mean something, a no-thing or not a thing, in “deference” to a non-entity that grounds all other particular beings.  Heidegger, for example, expounded on this ontological “difference” between the ground of being and the other entities that exist in a particular way. 

The connection between the ground of being and other entities, however, has been debated since modern times as an abyss that cannot be bridged between finite beings, on the one hand, and the infinite plenitude that grounds all other beings, on the other hand.  Please allow me to propose, in an emboldened sort of way, that this so-called abyss can be bridged if we see the world from the perspective of the dynamic symbiosis of living beings.  From the perspective of a country like the Philippines where summer is eternal, even the seemingly inert and inorganic materials such as rocks and sands can be experienced, against the backdrop of the sun and the oceasns, as teeming with the processes of living.  It is therefore not surprising that we welcome foreigners who visit our shores with the greeting: “Mabuhay!” which means to celebrate being alive in an active and even joyful way.

The Act of Existence

               It is no wonder then that the first precept of natural law, according to one of my favourite philosophers, Thomas Aquinas, is to exist (ST I-II, q. 91 a 2, c.).  All other activities such as breathing, eating, procreating, reading a book, becoming friends with others, are derived from this initial act of existence.  We would not be able to experience anything at all if in the first place, we did not exist.

               The act of existence, however, must express itself through the finite entities that we experience in our daily lives. A being that does not express itself in a particular way, even if such expressions are made in a seemingly passive way such as listening or meditating, might as well not exist since we would not be able to even encounter, let alone know, its being.  Even diseases express themselves through symptoms exhibited by the patient.  A diagnosis cannot be completed if the client does not cooperate and withholds information from the doctor.  Even our sophisticated medical instruments are meant to receive information from the involuntary action or behaviour expressed by an illness.

               The art and science of healing, therefore, can be defined as an attempt to support the natural capacity of a being to express its particular form of existence.   These medical interventions can range from conservative methods of regeneration, such as rest and sleep, to invasive procedures, such as excision or organ transplantation, that intend to save the biological existence or life of the client.  

The Natural and the Artificial

The line between natural healing procedures and artificial interventions can be drawn at that point when external elements such as medication and operative procedures are introduced in order to support the client’s inherent capacity to heal himself or herself.

               The success of medical interventions ultimately depends on the natural capacity of the client to receive the external mechanisms that are intended to support its life.  Self-medication, for example, is not advisable because of the possibility of over-dosage or unintended consequences that can produce harmful side-effects.  Medical practitioners, as experts in their fields of endeavour are supposed to determine the mode and measure of external interventions that can help the healing process.  But this again presupposes that the physical constitution of the human body must always already have the inherent capacity to receive or even reject the introduced intervention if the prescription or medical procedure is to become successful. 

               Nature, therefore, defines the way existence is expressed through particular forms of being while artificiality refers to the external support made by medical practitioners as a means of sustaining and enhancing the various expressions of being: plant pathologists diagnose and cure plant diseases, veterinarians study and heal the physical pains suffered by animals while medical doctors estimate the quality of human life attainable by their clients with respect to the mental functions that can still be sustained by medical interventions.

               This distinction between the natural and the artificial can have implications on medical practice that range from personal and social issues such the debate between natural and artificial family planning methods, the use of technological innovations that extend the natural power of the human body, psycho therapy, and the decisions required by end-of-life situations.

Medical Applications

               The main argument of natural family planning methods hinges on the conviction that life is a continuous process that begins from the moment of conception until death and that the stages of human development cannot be simply divided up into temporal slices, the way David Hume and other sceptics tried to do.  The whole created world, for those who believe in the sanctity of life, is intimately interconnected and every being ultimately derives its existential dignity from the pure act of existence that shared its own act of existence by making other beings be. 

               Artificial family planning methods that range from contraception to abortificients, on the other hand, presume that the dignity of the human being can be defined only at particular moments of the process of physiological development such as the emergence of the nervous system or the transient awareness of feelings.  As one Church document puts it, life cannot be divided up into segments of time, such as the fourteenth day when the embryonic cell has not divided itself into various parts to produce the different organs of the human body (Manila Standard, Aug 18, 2000).      

               Sexual union, it is further argued, is a process of participation in the act of existence and that those who make use of artificial contraception merely extract the pleasure of self-expression from the possibility of participating in the momentous event of co-creation (LR).  The human body, therefore, is conceived as the incarnation of a more profound spiritual dimension that derives its dignity from the umbilical chord of the pure act of existence.

               Technological innovations that extend the power of the human body are made possible by the transcendental power of the human mind that reflexively turns into itself in order to abstract ideas and concepts from the particular contingencies of the material world.  That we are able to conceive of words and sentences that point to realities that are valid not only here and now but can be relied upon as self-evident when we deal with other similar instances in the future and in the past refers back to an intellectual activity that can be performed only by actors that can transcend the particularity of contingent experiences.

               The power of words to heal or hurt the human body has been demonstrated by Jürgen Habermas in his seminal work on Knowledge and Human Interests where he showed how the psychotherapists’ “Socratic reservation” (KHI) from interfering with the emergence of the client’s self-awareness through speech-acts can help the latter in overcoming the psychological and social distortions that block self-understanding and emancipated decision making on the affairs of everyday life.  

               Habermas contends that contemporary philosophers, like psychotherapists, must act as facilitators of communicative competencies so that conflicts that arise from the particularity and plurality of specialized discourses can be reconciled by referring them back to the affairs of everyday life.  Habermas’ proposal is not really new to the phenomenological tradition where philosophers have demanded that we “return to the things themselves” (Husserl) or “to unconceal being (aletheia)” (Heidegger).  The only difference that Habermas tries to make is to reveal the validity of our claims through communicative acts.

               Specialists in the medical profession are therefore compelled to explain their theories and practices in terms of linguistic utterances that can be confirmed or falsified and validated by everyone else.  The democratic impulse that derives its power from the intelligibility of life and the capacity of human minds to comprehend the world at large can very well be extended to the medical profession as it deals with the most intimate and privatized dimensions of the human body.

               Even end-of-life decision making are intended to save and extend life as far as possible.   Organ donation, for as long as it does not cause the death of the donor and the organ is compatible with the recipient, for example, can become an act of generosity that extends the quality of life of another human being even after the death of the donor. (MMC, 88)

Conclusion: Medical practitioners as mediators between the natural and the artificial worlds

If the first precept of natural law governs self-preservation and the extension of life as far as possible, the second precept expounds on the diffusion of the act of existence by sharing the various modes of being with others:  Plants expel oxygen and produce flowers and fruits for our consumption and appreciation, animals take care of their offspring or are consumed by other animals, human beings share their knowledge with others through their speech acts and other educational endeavours.  The inherent natures of different forms of beings are actually fulfilled by sharing their very being with others.

Medical practitioners, therefore, are in a distinguished position of serving as mediators that bridge the gap between the natural desire of human beings to extend their lives as far as they can, on the one hand, and the frailties and vulnerabilities of embodied existence, on the other hand.  The artificial interventions made possible by advances in the development of science and technology  are produced by the human mind in order to extend the lifespan and improve the quality of life itself.   

               One of the most profound paradoxes of life, therefore, is that it is lived most profusely when given away in the same manner that seeds must be buried to the ground in order to grow and bear fruits (PBE, 62).  The products of human intelligence, like medical knowledge, must be applied and shared if wisdom is to be attained by its practitioner.   Such acts of self-giving is a dictum of nature that can be characterized by nothing else but an ontological love, the diffusiveness of the inherent goodness of being for the sake of others. 

It is perhaps appropriate that we momentarily pause at this point of our reflections and open the floor for discussion on this session which is aptly entitled “The spirit of medicine and love.”

    

13 December 2009

Kumamoto University

Citations:

KHI: Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests

               (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1972)

LR: Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (1982)

MMC: Making Life Beautiful: A Bioethics Manual of the

               Makati Medical Center (Makati: Salesiana

               Books, 2008).

PBE: Norris Clarke, Person, Being and Ecology (Quezon

               City: Ateneo Office of Research and

               Publications, 1996)

ST: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

analysis of end of life case studies at the Makati Medical Center

A Do Not Resuscitate order is a hospital form duly signed by the patient’s next of kin authorizing the withholding of all life-saving measures in the enventuality of a cardio-pulmonary arrest.  It is a decision that is almost taboo in Philippine society.  No Filipino would want to be blamed for not having tried everything possible for a loved one.  Even a poor Filipino family would risk indebtedness just to be able to finance all the medical attention which a family member may need.  Thus to call it quits is deemed immoral.  More often than not a Filipino family would only sign an DNR order upon receiving assurance from a priest or minister that it would be perfectly all right and that there would be no sin involved.

Anna C. Lily-Quibilan, MD and Luis F. Rivera “Case 8: Department of Pediatrics” (p. 67)

It has been said that the measure of love is to love without measure. The Filipino parent is proverbial on this – to the point many times of defending his/her child even when this child is clearly at fault.  This attitude translates also into medical terms.  The ardent plea of a desperate parent urging the physician to do everything possible to save his/her child is so commonplace that it becomes more the rule than the exception.

        At the same time, however, the Filipino exhibits much trust in the mysterious and oftentimes incomprehensible ways of God.  Thus the Filipino parent is also capable of showing resignation to the Divine Will.  It is in making Filipino parents realize that the Divine Will regarding their child that medical professionals can be of great help.  The death of a child is nobody’s fault.  It is just part of the harsh realities of life.  God has his own reasons for allowing such things to happen.  And to the believer these reasons are always better than whatever the human heart may desire.  In the Filipino context strengthening a person’s faith in God is the great contribution of the medical professional to humanity Ginah Eliza M. Ramos, MD and Czarina Atupan-Calderon, MD “Case 14: Department of Pediatrics” (p. 99)

n Rene T. Lagaya, Editor, Making Life Beautiful: A Bioethics Manual of Makati Medical Center (Makati City: Don Bosco Press, 2008)

Analysis for Kumamoto University:

Three level structure analysis of end of life care as described in two case studies in the bioethics manual of the Makati Medical Center, Makati City, Philippines

                                                                                                                Rainier A. Ibana, Philippines

A Three level structural analysis

In the two cases cited above, the general rule is to save the life of the client: not to sign the Do Not Resuscitate Order and the ardent plea of desperate parents to save the life of their child.  The principle at work is for family members to try everything, even at the risk of indebtedness or defending the child even if he or she is at fault, to provide the best possible health care for its members.  The general theory employed, moreover, is to follow the Divine Will.  Medical practitioners claim that  “Strengthening a person’s faith in God is the great contribution of the medical professional to humanity.”

Mediation of Moral reasoning by the values of the family and religion

                Moral reasoning in these cases is mediated by the cultural values of the family and religion.  Even the medical professional does not talk about scientific or moral grounds for their actions but elevates their discourse with clients to the mysteries of the Divine Will.  The family member will sign a Do not Resuscitate Order only upon receiving assurance from the authority of the priest or minister that it is all right and that a sin will not be committed.

                This concern for the family and religion does not seem to make room for scientific rationality and moral reasoning.  Too often, the cause of death is made post-mortem and not as a deliberative discourse in the attempt to save life. The medical practitioner does not explain why a Do not Resuscitate Order is necessary nor why the child no longer has a chance to survive.  The “oftentimes incomprehensible ways of God” is implored instead of producing arguments and discourse.  No one wants to take responsibility for the death of a family member: both the relatives and the medical professionals wash their hands from making decisions by elevating the problem at hand to God’s will.

                In scholastic terminology, these types of arguments are immediately referred to the First Cause, and not mediated by the secondary causes of the laws of nature.  This shows a lacuna in the understanding and appreciation of the natural and moral sciences.  Medical professionals could have made it as their vocation to provide scientific explanations to their clients instead of relegating the experience of death to “the harsh realities of life.”  These harsh realities could have been explained by means of scientific causes that could ease the burden of those who do not want to become mere passive victims of a God who “has his own reasons for allowing such things to happen.”

                The modern enlightenment project has not yet been realized in Philippine society.  Our attempts to modernize, during the failed Philippine revolution of 1896 against medieval Christianity, has not yet come to pass as people’s mindsets are still narrowed down by the interests of the family at the expense of the nation and humanity and human rationality has not yet replaced the inscrutable will of God.

The seeds of consequentialism and Universality

 Consequentialism, however, can already be discerned in these cases as both family members and medical professionals are afraid of taking responsibility for their acts.  But the rule that actions do have consequences is implicit in the family members’ refusal to sign the Do not Resuscitate Order and the medical practitioners’ attempt to elevate the death of the client, a natural consequence of the limitations of the current state of the medical sciences and technologies,  as a matter of faith in God.

The principle of Universality, in the modern sense of the word, could have been applied beyond the members of the family by initiating a discourse by the medical professionals on the natural causes of death and the limitations imposed by science and technology.  Death, therefore, is a fate for all human beings that must be confronted as a consequence of being embodied in matter, even if one believes in  the possibility of a spiritual world beyond the human body.

Life after death

Discussions on end of life care naturally lead to the expectations of and belief in life after death.  The human person’s search for meaning beyond the discontinuities of bodily existence requires for something or someone to hope for if one is not to die in vain.  This is perhaps the reason why the memory that one leaves behind in the family and the anticipation for a life beyond death offered by religious traditions are of outmost importance to the extent that they overshadow scientific and moral reasoning.  The emotional experience of loss and the fragility of biological existence can only be compensated for by something or someone who is greater than or beyond one’s life and death. 

Reflections on Technology and Society

Philosophical Reflections on Technology and Society

Rainier A. Ibana

Ateneo de Manila University        

Introduction:

Philosophical reflections on technology and society would necessarily entail a discussion on the role of human beings who are both the masters and slaves of social and technological systems.  While technologies and societies were initially constructed in order to extend the power and scope of human actions and interactions with the environment and their fellow human beings, they have also become dominant features of human life to the extent that humans have become inescapably entangled in its complexities.

Information and Communication Technologies

Information and communication technologies, for example, have demonstrated their revolutionary potentials in expanding the scope of the human being’s freedom and rationality since the advent of the French revolution which was mediated by the printing press and likewise vividly depicted by the current uprisings in the Arab world which were engendered  by the internet and mobilized through cellular phones.  Our own people power uprisings in the Philippines have proven the power of information technologies in amplifying the nuances of social issues and its efficiency in mobilizing throngs of people around shared interests.

          The power of communication and information technologies are further reinforced by their self-validating logic which makes repression impossible because such attempts to curtail communicative acts can all the more inflame the passion of its agitated actors and turn the repression into an object of discourse.  Radio and Television programs can show such repressions instantaneously from any part of the world.

It is therefore to the advantage of those who advocate for common goods such as decent housing and clean water that their adversaries cannot step out of the circle of communicative discourse because doing so would spell the triumph of the latter's interlocutors by default.  Those who attempt to manage and cut off communicative discourse do so at their own expense by becoming the conversation piece among informal forms of communication such as humour and rumor.

          The compelling requirements of participation in communicative reason, however, has actually caused the lives and health of our young people today who have become addicted to gaming programs in internet cafes at the expense of their physical emotional well-being.  We are witnessing today the devolution of the human race from its upright position to that of haunch backs whose fingers and hands are dangled and poised to tap on computer terminals.  There is even a popular u-tube story that depicts a boyfriend who holds and caresses his beloved’s hand on the dinner table as if he were manipulating and tapping a computer mouse.

         

Technological innovations

          Although technologies are meant to harness the power of the natural environment to serve human ends, the limitations of technological innovations can be delineated when human survival is already at stake as in the case of the anthropogenic contributions to global warming and climate change.  Pollutants are particularly suspect of exceeding their limits to growth because they do not only threaten the life of human beings but also other fellow earthlings who have every right to exist within our shared environment.  One could very well ask whether the over production and consumption of information and communication technologies are significantly contributing to the human being’s higher consumption of energy from the environment.

          The fast-paced introduction of new products lines that harness the natural world beyond its carrying capacity while emitting wastes at the end of production systems at the expense of the cyclical patterns of nature’s capacity for regeneration serves as a warning to the limits of technological innovation.  The sciences are telling us that there are intrinsic natural laws that must be considered in our efforts to harness the powers of nature.

When applied to food pyramids, for example, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that every time energy is transferred from one consumption level to the next, only ten percent is absorbed by the higher level of consumption while the rest of the energies obtained from the lower levels of production escapes to the environment in the form of heat. 

Higher levels of technological innovations, even those well-meaning ones such as nuclear reactors, actually consume more energy to maintain than the amount of energy level that they wish to contain.

The mitigation of over consumption, moreover, requires not only a re-evaluation of our production and institutional systems but a reflection on the consumption and carbon footprint patterns of individual human beings as they go about with the affairs of everyday life.  The current situation of our world requires that we should be at least become prudent, if not seriously cautious, about the impact of the decisions that we make in relation to the natural world.

Social systems:

          Our shared responsibilities towards the environment, moreover, are differentiated by our positions within the social system.  The technological divide between those who have access to advanced telecommunication technologies and those who do not is already well known.  We must pay more attention, however, not only to the question of access to technologies since cheaper gadgets are now readily available to most of our population; we must rather be also circumspect about the relative effect of new technologies on the environment.  The higher the technology ascends the ladder of the food pyramid, the larger its predatory field of consumption in the natural world, let alone the fast pace of technological obsolencense that are discarded as almost annual innovations are introduced to the market..

          The distribution of energy consumption among our population also mirrors the structure of our social system.   The Bicol region, for example, does support the voracious energy consumption of the people of Metro-Manila from the geothermal energy of Mt. Mayon whose transmission, system loss, and distribution costs are reflected in our monthly electric bills.  Within the context of the second law of thermodynamics wherein energy is lost at each moment of energy transfer, it is important to realize that we are paying for something that we are not actually using since these items in our electric bill are paid as a consequence of an inefficient process of production.  It would be an interesting research project to scrutinize each of these items in our electric bills, compare them with the bills by those who live in Metro-Manila, and to evaluate whether they conform to the norms of distributive justice.

          The results of such a research project, I am afraid, could add credence to the consciousness of a Bicol Republic or at least justify the possibility of a Federal form of government that could stimulate economic growth in the country sides and thus mitigate the population and pollution problems of Metro-Manila.

Conclusions

Let me then conclude these reflections by specifying the kind of human beings that we must become if we are to reverse the catastrophic trajectories that are imbedded in our technological and social systems.

          First, we must support the productive patterns of the natural world and heed her warnings whenever we are reaching the tipping points of her carrying and productive capacities.  We cannot continue with our business as usual without re-evaluating our production and consumption patterns.

          Finally, humans are called upon to make our distinctive contribution to a life that is lived closer to the ground.  Preferential option for technologies that regenerate the earth such as the use of composting instead of chemical fertilizers and promoting biodiversity in our agricultural systems instead of mono-cropping could go a long way in conserving the energy requirements of our present and future generations.

          These recommendations herald a new kind of human being who is more circumspect and caring about the natural and social environments. 

rai

Ateneo de Naga University

October 14, 2011

summary of Thermodynamic ethics of Climate Change from an Neo-thomist perspective

The laws of thermodynamics from the perspective of a Neo-thomist
environmental ethics of climate change

Rainier A. Ibana

Ateneo de Manila University

Philippines

Summary:

This paper is anchored on St. Thomas’ fundamental insight that only
the most perfect being exists as pure act of being.  The activities of
finite existents, on the other hand, are bound by the limitations
imposed on them by their particular modes of being. The actions and
interactions among finite existents, although bound by the
potentialities imposed on them by the natural world, however, can
share and receive the activities of other beings, by means of the
principle of causality, in the same manner that the first law of
thermodynamics states that energy is neither created nor destroyed but
merely transformed from one entity to another.   This system of
interaction can be kept in balance for as long as the total energy
consumed from one transformation to another are received and consumed
by other beings.  The cyclical laws of nature demonstrate such cosmic
harmony in their acting, receiving, and interacting with one another.

Modern linear and vertical production and consumption patterns,
however, are extending the cyclical patterns of nature to the extent
that she can no longer regenerate herself and instead produces systems
of complexity that lead to drastic climatic changes that lead to a
more chaotic world.  Biology?s ten percent law demonstrates the second
law of thermodynamics when it shows that only ten percent of energy is
retained by one tropic level to the next.  As levels of consumption
are increased, however, more energy is expended that heat up the
environment especially if these excess energies, in the form of non-biodegradable
entities, cannot be absorbed or received by other beings.

These laws of nature question whether there can be technological
solutions to technological problems related to climate change if these
solutions merely increase levels of production and consumption
patterns that threaten the life-carrying capacity of planet earth.  An
environmental ethics, therefore, must be built on lifestyles that
rest on the primacy of the act of existing and not on the consumption
of entities that produce excessive energies that cannot be received
and transformed by other beings.  The human being, as dominus sui,
cannot abdicate its responsibility for the current state and future of
the environment.  The type of human being that we are and will become
is reflected by what we have done or not done to our surroundings.

Filipino Language Perspectives on Nature and the Environment

Filipino Language Perspectives on Nature and the Environment

Rainier A. Ibana

Ateneo de Manila University

This paper will analyse the Filipino words for Nature and the Environment from the perspective of an ecological ethics.  This analysis presupposes that languages reveal the world views shared by speakers and hearers as they communicate with one another in order to achieve mutual understanding.  This paper will be divided in according to five key words that constitute the Filipino terminologies for nature and the environment in the Tagalog language: (1) Ka, (2) likas, (3) pa, (4) ligid, and (5) an.

(1) Kalikasan, the Tagalog word for nature and kapaligiran, the term for the environment, are both prefixed by the word KA, which, taken by itself, refers to the singular second person in the Tagalog language.  It corresponds to the pronoun “you” in English or “tu” in Spanish.   KA is the other person to whom speech acts are addressed and thus refers to the implicit social dimension of communicative utterances.[1] 

When used as a prefix, moreover, KA underscores the mutual reciprocity between the subjective and objective worlds by emphasizing the symmetrical relationship between speaker and the hearer with respect to the object being spoken about.  The other is not only someone who can assent or dissent to the subject’s claims about the world; he or she also bears with the speaker the responsibility (his response-ability) of validating knowledge claims about the world as a companion and partner in a shared conversation.  The other to whom one speaks, for example, is my kausap or conversation partner and the one in front of me is my kaharap.

Even enemies (kalaban), opponents (kaaway), strange events (kakaiba) and weird objects (kakatwa) can be prefixed and embraced by the term KA.  Our enemies and opponents complement our partial perceptions and we can reach a more synoptic vision of experience if we encourage the complementary participation of others who happen to occupy different points of view towards reality.  Differences and objections can be overcome, in principle, by recognizing and engaging other participants in a shared complementarity of perspectives in order to achieve broader visions of reality. 

The inclusion of opposition and negation within the ambit of KA employs the performative logic of the social dimension of experience because even our attempts to deny this social dimension presupposes that the denial is being made before someone or something with whom the denial is being made. [2]  Excluding others from the social sphere merely redounds to an implicit admission of the existence of the excluded others.  Ka, therefore, is a prefix that radically implicates the inclusion of others in the same manner that Anaximander’s prefix a in his notion of the apeiron, pointed to the inherent negative unboundedness of all finite beings, except that Ka circumscribes the possibility of an infinite inclusiveness of everything that is.

From the perspective of an ecological ethics, we learn from environmental science that more complex ecological relationships sustain the stability and endurance of an ecological niche.  The more simple relationships, on the other hand, make ecological systems vulnerable and weaker because of the imbalances produced in the relationships among predators and their prey.   It is therefore an ecological imperative to preserve the inherent variety and plurality of living organisms in as much as they contribute to the stability of an ecological niche in the same manner that we must tolerate differences and opposition in the social world.

(2) The second element in the Tagalog term for nature or kalikasan is likas which refers to the essential nature of an organism that defines or puts a limit to what can be extracted or derived from its nature.  We have a Filipino adage which says that trees are known by their fruits or that one cannot expect a banana plant to bear mangoes.  Nature has its own implicit order that cannot yield what it does not potentially have.  The possibilities of cloning and genetically modified organisms are therefore limited by the inherent nature of the things themselves.

Even complex realities that evolve from a combination of simpler but lower forms of beings emerged from the actual entities embedded in the latter.  Oxygen using organisms, for example, can evolve only with the support of oxygen producing entities such as plants and other living organisms. 

Nature has its own laws that cannot be violated even with the aid of divine intervention or magical incantations.  It is therefore not surprising that the most prayerful places in the Philippine archipelago are also those which are most vulnerable to natural calamities by virtue of its location on the world’s volcanic ring of fire, the Pacific typhoon belt, and the clashing tectonic plates of continental Asia and the Pacific Ocean.  When nature unleashes its wrath, people can do nothing but humbly pray that their lives be spared.

The word likas is also used derivatively in reference to the habits and customs of people.  This usage of the term, however, is secondary to its primary reference to biological and physiological laws.  Habits and customs that have been repeated through many generations are encrypted, as it were in the collective consciousness of a people as if it already belongs to their so-called second nature.  Respect and a deep sense of gratitude to our elders, for example, are ingrained in Filipino children with behavioural consequences such as the use of deferential language and bodily gestures that express reverence towards elders. 

The legal system further takes these traditions into account by inscribing them in political constitutions and rules of conduct.  It is not uncommon, understandably, but also sometimes regretably, for Filipino prosecutors and judges to inhibit themselves from cases filed against their relatives and friends.  These cultural references, however, are merely derived, by way of analogies, from our more primordial experience with nature.

(3) It is no wonder then that the second syllable of the Tagalog term for the environment is “pa,” a shortened expression of the prefix “paki,” which is affixed to a verb in order to seek solicitude or a pleading for inclusion.   It corresponds to the English term “please,” or the Spanish expression “por favor” that seeks exemption from the norms of social practice. When applied to environmental concerns, social habits can then reformed in favor of the sustainability of the  natural  environment.   

Respectful deference can be adopted to cultivate a more reverential relationship towards nature and the environment.  Segregation of biodegradable from non-biodegradable materials, for example, requires a deliberate awareness of the cycles of nature which can be imbibed by new habits of recycling, reusing and renovating old materials instead of throwing them away to garbage dumps that are becoming more crowded as we continue to extract resources from nature.  Linear production lines that wantonly extract resources and simply dumping waste products will not be sustainable anymore without deliberately inculcating new habits of conforming to the cyclical laws of nature herself.

(4) The third word in the Tagalog term for the environment, ligid, refers to the surrounding horizon of one’s universe.  This horizon can contract or expand depending on the scope and depth of one’s consciousness.  Cebuano, another one of our languages aside from Tagalog, actually has the same word for consciousness and the environment: kalibotan, which approximates the Tagalog term for surroundings or kapaligiran.  For the Tagalogs and Cebuanos, one’s surroundings is coterminous with the depth of one’s consciousness.

A person’s surroundings (ligid/libot,) can contract or expand depending on the scope of one’s circumspection.  A child’s horizon, for example, is limited to the home and its surroundings.  As one grows up it expands to include the school, the town, the province, the nation and eventually the world and the universe.  The advent of global information and telecommunication industries, moreover, broadly extend this horizon especially when older members of the family work and migrate abroad for greener pastures.  Children learn about foreign languages and other places much earlier in life due to their exposure to the television and the internet.  Their cultural identities are made more complex and are more extensive due to the variety of images and information they imbibe through the mass media. 

With new information technologies, neighbourhoods are no longer defined by geographical surroundings but by the numbers and addresses encrypted within cellular phones and electronic discussion groups.  It is ironic that as telecommunication instruments become smaller and smaller, the more we become immediately connected to a wider world of expanding horizons.  The intensity of the development of telecommunications technology has become directly proportional to the scope of our interconnectedness with people, events and places.  There is indeed a profound wisdom in the Cebuano identification of our surrounding horizons with the field of our human consciousness.

Through the expansion of the scope of telecommunications, we further become conscious not only of our families and relatives who might be working in other parts of the world but we also become more aware of the state of nature and of the environment . We can now readily establish causal connections between our local activities and their far-ranging effects on global warming and the frequency and intensity of typhoons and other natural calamities that eventually hit our localities.

(5) The suffix “an,” the last syllable in the Tagalog word for nature and the environment, emphasizes the local context where humans find themselves in relation to their environment.  Without the suffix “an”, the words kapaligid and kalikas are stripped of their contexts and they become mere objects and things whose meanings can be readily uprooted from their surroundings. 

Nature and the environment, however, are always located in particular habitats defined by the immediate vicinity and temporality that surrounds the human subject.  The battle ground for human survival is eventually waged, needless to say, at the local and personal levels.  The Filipino conception of nature and the environment demands a pragmatic and deliberate transformation of lifestyles and behaviour if we are to look forward and effect a more  sustainable future for humanity.  New habits and habitats are shaped and created through our repeated actions on the environment.

Summary:

We can then summarize the ecological ethics implicit in the Tagalog terms for environment and nature by referring back to the five elements that constitute these terms:  KA, which refers to the inherent relationality of beings, LIKAS or nature which preserves the inherent principles that abide in the things themselves, PA, the necessary solicitude required in dealing with nature and the environment, LIGID, the horizon of our consciousness and of our living spaces, and AN, the local and personal contexts that serve as our dwelling places.   We can therefore cultivate an ecological ethics by developing a solicitous attitude towards nature and by cultivating an awareness of the broader horizon of our decisions that eventually affect ourselves and our environment.

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[1] Jurgen Habermas formulates a similar framework in The Theory of Communicative Action Vol 2, Trans by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 24ff.

[2] Karl-Otto Apel makes use of this performative logic in “The Problem of Justice in a Multicultural Society: the Response of Discourse Ethics” published in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, Ed. by Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 159.