Blog#6 - Social Ecology

So - I am back after having been pretty sick last week......

Social Ecology........= Ecological Logic?

After reading Bookchin and the other authors for my Social Ecology Teaching group, it seems to me that Social Ecology is essentially reorganizing society, using natural ecosystems' evolution as a model.

I think this makes A LOT of sense - on the one hand it ensures long-term viability because, obviously, natural ecosystems have been around for a while - and on the other hand, it satisfies the apparently uniquely human desire for organizing "the other," as Bookchin put it, in a complementary fashion as opposed to a hierarchical one. Natural systems, even in primate groups it seems, do not actually resemble modern Human ideas about dominance.

Indeed - I can agree with this because any individual that is an "alpha" in a social group only retains their position so long as they are stable and sufficiently competent - when they become otherwise, they are promptly dethroned.

So........this contrasts somewhat with my previous post stating that hierarchy is possibly innate in Humans........well, it still is, but the Hierarchy of our evolutionary past was defined and administered fundamentally differently than modern hierarchy - where "Only institutions, formed by long periods of human history and sustained by well-organized bureaucracies and military forces, could have placed absolute rule in the hands of mental defects like Nicholas II of Russia and Louis XVI of France. (Bookchin 101)"

This stuff sounds good to me -