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Second Nature: The Man-Made World of Idealism, Technology and Power

by Dan Bruiger

333 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #06-0474; ISBN 1-4120-8718-X; US$22.57, C$25.95, EUR18.54, £12.98

For anyone who wants to save the world - or just to understand it! A theory of culture, consciousness, gender relations, the meaning and limits of technology, all rolled into one.

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About the Book

About the Author

Comments

Excerpts

Catalogue Information

About the Book

From the earliest times, culture has sought to transcend and replace the uncertainties of nature with a controllable human world. Arising in the separation of subject and object, the quest for the Ideal leads Man to the creation of an artificial world-a second nature.

The ideology of mechanism continues to inspire blind faith in technology and economic growth, which now threaten collapse of both nature and civil society. New technologies express ancient idealist dreams of immortality, freedom from embodiment and pain, and unlimited control of matter in man-made environments. But nature is not an artifact and may never be fully understood or controlled. While immortality and disembodied life may be delusion, this does not prevent the creation of dangerous new entities in the irrational search for divine power. Super-intelligence, artificial life, nanotechnology, or genetic engineering could defeat the reasoned use of technology to improve human life-if we fail to contain them or use them for universal benefit.

Both technology and economics reflect the masculine drives for power and subjective freedom that underly consumerism. The gender imbalance of modern patriarchy must be deeply rectified, not through the right of women to pursue a male model, but through the insistence of women and men alike to guide society sanely toward a more feminine vision.

While artificial organisms could displace human or all life, the global investment economy is a profit machine that already displaces local economies and ecologies, reducing the world to a monoculture, while siphoning declining wealth into ever fewer hands.

The world's economic disparities and the destruction of nature must be met by refusing corporate entitlement and the globalized consumer-investment economy. The answer to these threats is a new localism grounded in community and common sense.

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About the Author

Born 1945, I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up. I attended the University of California, Los Angeles and Berkeley, immigrating to Canada in 1969. My ancestor was pioneer and mountain man, Jim Bridger.

The passion for philosophy began in earnest at age seventeen, when I became acquainted with philosophy of mind and the fledgling science of Artificial Intelligence. A key intuition came around this time concerning the Mind-Body Problem, which formed the core of my earlier work The Rise and Fall of Reality. I also pursued studies with masters in the Sufi and Gurdjieff traditions, trained in relationship counseling, and have long maintained an interest in figurative art and design, first as furniture maker and later as sculptor.

I reside in the small community of Hornby Island, British Columbia, where I am involved in the movement for increased local autonomy and a sustainable lifestyle. I dance Argentine tango and still love starry nights.

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Comments

"Dan Bruiger's Second Nature sends a clarion call to rethink the implications of new super technologies and economies for human selfhood and for nature itself. The way forward is to resist globalization and monocultures by honoring the interdependence of local economies, ecologies, and communities. This book will be of interest to all who seek sane and humane responses to an increasingly artificial earth that threatens to separate humanity from itself."

- Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics at the University of California, Berkeley. Author of The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution and of Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World.

"Second Nature is the story of our society's 'blind faith' in the neoliberal model of unlimited growth and the need to return to a more life-affirming, sustainable relationship with the earth and one another. It should be required reading for all policy makers before they can even stand for office."

-Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, The Council of Canadians, and Director, International Forum on Globalization

"The insights in your book, Second Nature, are timely, interestingly articulate and often brilliant. The book is on the cutting edge and the issues you explore, gender and the reconciliation of technology with nature, will surely become a growing focus. That is, the intellectualized brilliance of the masculine mind that also disconnects us from nature is bringing us to a nightmarish place. The race is on..."

-Herb Goldberg, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, author of The Hazards of Being Male

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Excerpts

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Catalogue Information

Note for librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from the Library and Archives Canada at http://www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html.

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