Page 25 - Studio International - December 1969

Technolo gy hotchpotch of humanist or utilitarian moral activists, and it is rarely direct or predictable.

The fine and applied arts of the past responded
beliefs. Literature, with a few exceptions, has
and art g tended to reflect states of human centreless­ with full vitality to such physical or techno­
ness rather than map new centres of signifi­
logical issues of the day as horsemanship,
cance for human life. How can we make up optic�, anatomy, clockwork, steam locomotion
our minds about the optimum ecological use and photography-each of which has in its
of material resources-when most of us have time effected both the phys_ical and the cul­
no idea what, if anything, makes life worth tural environment. There are plenty of big
living at all? Yet a social critic and anthro­ issues today for the artist to tackle, wringing
pologist like Dr Edmund Leach tells us that out and interpreting their significance. Of
science has put man in the position of a god. course, when one talks of an artist 'confront­
Science ( the argument goes) has now made ing issues', one is using a kind of shorthand.
possible many things that were in the past The artist, like everyone else, does not
considered beyond man's control; so we must respond to abstract 'issues' but to the experi­
be quite calm and unsuperstitious, and make ence of being a certain person in a certain
the wisest possible decisions about our future. time and place.
The actual situation is that man's quasi­ I use the word artist simply to mean someone
divine powers are being usurped by politicians, of superior imagination or clairvoyance which
bureaucrats, military strategists and corpora­ is expressed through some medium or other.
tion men, against whose pressures only a In the act of co-ordinating his technical
minority of scientists and technologists are resources he has to co-ordinate his own
prepared to make a stand. instincts and intelligence-that is, his psycho­
The delicacy of moral questions in a scientific logical resources; and to do this can be to
context may be illustrated by the following enact new possible meanings for human life.
sentence from a neurological paper in the The artist, then, is likely to become the
Penguin Brain and Behaviour series (vol. 4, 'minister' of a higher ecology of his own
p. 15 7). Describing the post mortem examina­ making. Art has always conveyed that the
tion of eight cats' brains, the authors (Dewson, physical factors in life-continuity and growth,
Noble and Pribram) write: 'Electrode tip the struggle for survival, the satisfaction of
placements [were] verified by noting the basic drives, and so on-have an element in
THE RELEVANCE OF ECOLOGY-PART II
location of the electrolytic lesion made at the them which is more than physical. The social
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; time of sacrifice'. This use of the word sciences are quite inadequate to give an
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared 'sacrifice' appears to be common in science. account of the full significance of these non­
with toil; Now sacrifices are usually made to some kind physical factors. One sociologist has written
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: of supreme being, and one wonders whom or that the field of urban sociology 'is a major
the soil what these experimenters had in mind in battlefield for those who stress the impact on
Is bare now, nor canfootfeel, being shod. immolating eight of that proud species, the urban life of "objective conditions" -the
cat. Man? Science? The greatest happiness of external environment, population structure
And for all this, nature is never spent; the greatest number? I am not quarrelling and the like-and those who emphasize, for
There lives the dearest freshness deep down with their choice of the word 'sacrifice', which instance, the role of social or cultural values
things ... conveys, as 'slaughter' would not have done, as a key determinant of the so-called objective
(Gerard Manl ey Hopkins) a proper scruple for ecological relationships. conditions and of human action in general.'l
But the implications behind the usage are This dilemma, if resoluble at all, is unlikely to
What have th done to the earth? significant at a deeper level than that of pro­ be resolved within a sociological framework; it
ey
What have th done to our fair sister? fessional ethics. is classically the field of the artist. Merleau­
ey
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her Ecology should give us all the answers, in fact; Ponty has some penetrating words on the
Stuck her with knives in the sight of the dawn and but an ecology that takes account of the full subject:
Tied her with pincers and dragged her down. needs and resources of man in nature, includ­ 'It is impossible with man to superimpose a
(The Doors) ing what can only be described as the spiritual first layer of behaviour that one calls "natural"
or metaphysical. Buckminster Fuller, one of and a fabricated cultural or spiritual world.
Hopkins' fine affirmation of the inexhausti­ the few sages of our day, writes in Operating All is fabricated and all is natural with man,
bility of nature will n9w seem to many under­ Manual for Spaceship Earth that the task of so to speak, in the sense that there is no word or
guaranteed. In part one of this article, which comprehensive designers is the 'metaphysical conduct which does not owe something to
appeared in September, it was argued that mastering of the physical'. simple biological being and which at the same
the balanced ecological use of material We come back to the artist. Once he was the time does not steal away from the simplicity of
resources will be hard to achieve for a society servant of a religion or of the state, if often a animal life, and divert vital behaviour from
that lacks belief in non-material ends. Most wayward servant. Most of our instinctive its path, by a sort of escape, and by a genius
religions, if not all, are profoundly ecological knowledge of Christian doctrine is indebted for the equivocal, which could serve to define
in proposing a detailed and higher-than­ to the iconography of Christian art-the man. Already the simple presence of a living
material ordering of man's relationships with Incarnation, the Resurrection, Paradise, etc.; being transforms the physical world, makes
the living world and the inanimate world. though there are plenty of religious artists like "foodstuffs" appear here, elsewhere a "hiding­
One has only to think of the Christian symbol­ Bosch whose transformations of traditional place", gives to "stimuli" a meaning that
ism of the lamb, the fish, bread and wine, the material are stunningly individual. Today, they did not have. Even more so does the
Nativity in a stable; or of the poetic strength the artist is more his own master in a sense; presence of a man in the animal world.' 2
of the Anglican burial service. Religion might but he is equally important and powerful. A good start towards the formulation and
be described as a transfigured ecology. His potential impact on society is in the expression of what I have called a 'higher
Nowadays most of us in the West live by a longer term than that of social or political ecology' could be a knowledge of exact physi-
207