In a recent commentary, philosopher Mikael Marder looks beyond the immediate horror of what is happening in Gaza to consider the ontological implications of what we see in long-range drone footage of the ruins. Let me quote him at length:
"... Gaza is quickly turning into a landfill, where tall buildings and human bodies, ecosystems... and orchards are disfigured beyond recognition and reduced to organic-inorganic ruins. Solidarity with lives, places and worlds turned into landfills requires something other than compassion. So what could it be?"
Marder's answer is to propose "another kind of solidarity based on the common state of biomass." To say "I am biomass" is to "identify with the disappearing life," to see Gaza as "a condensed and particularly sharp version of a planetary tendency."
The conversion of all life into mere biomass - chaotic piles of organic and inorganic matter - can be found everywhere, but is accelerated in Gaza by cutting-edge technologies of destruction. Instead of compassion, therefore, we need the solidarity of the rejected, who dare to claim: "We are biomass." This idea of biomass echoes the insight of philosopher Levi Bryant: "In an age when we face the looming threat of monumental climate change, it is irresponsible to draw our differences in a way that excludes non-human actors."
Yet in today's capitalist societies, efforts to mobilize the vast majority of people on behalf of our shared ecological condition consistently fail. We all know that we are part of nature and completely dependent on it for our survival, but that recognition does not translate into action. The problem is that our choices and worldview are influenced by many other forces, such as biased media coverage, economic pressures on workers, material constraints, and the like.
In her 2010 book, Vibrant Matter, philosopher Jane Bennett invites us to imagine a polluted landfill, where not only humans, but also rotting waste, worms, insects, abandoned machinery, chemical poisons, and so on, each play an active role. This biomass scene exists on the same spectrum as the Gaza situation, although the latter is an extreme case.
Around the world, there are numerous large physical spaces, especially outside the developed West, where "digital waste" is dumped and thousands of people work to separate glass, metal, plastic, mobile phones and other man-made materials from chaotic piles. One such slum, Agbogbloshie, near downtown Accra (the capital of Ghana), is known as "Sodom and Gomorrah." Life in these environments is a horror story, and the communities that live in them are strictly hierarchically organized, with children forced to do the most dangerous jobs, in extremely dangerous conditions.
However, because this exploitation of biomass seems ecologically attractive (under the banner of "recycling"), it perfectly corresponds to the demands of modern technology: "In the technological age," writes philosopher Mark Vretal, "the most important thing for us is to get the 'highest possible use' of everything .” After all, the whole point of saving resources, recycling and the like is to make the most of everything.
The end products of capitalism are piles of junk - useless computers, cars, televisions, VCRs and hundreds of airplanes that have found their final "resting place" in the Mojave Desert. The idea of total recycling (where every scrap is reused) is the ultimate capitalist dream, even - or especially - when presented as a means of preserving the Earth's natural balance. It is further evidence of capitalism's ability to appropriate ideologies that seem to oppose it. However, what makes biomass exploitation different from capitalist logic is that it accepts chaotic desolation as our basic condition. Although this state can be partially used, it can never be revoked.
As Marder says, biomass is our new home; we are biomass. It is a fantasy to think that such environments can be abandoned and replaced by living in some idyllic "natural," ecologically sustainable environment. That easy way out is irretrievably lost to us. We should embrace our one home and work within its boundaries, perhaps discovering a new harmony beneath what appears to be a chaotic crowd. This will require us to be open to the objective beauty of different levels of reality (people, animals, ruins, decaying buildings) and to reject the hierarchical order of aesthetic experiences. Are we ready for it? If not, we are truly lost.
(Project Syndicate)
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