Our Endangered Garden
101
globalization. The global media, for instance, intensify but block recognition. Global markets forge patterns of deep connectivity, but can efface recogni-tion of distinctive ethnic and cultural identities. The spread of disease is a The dynamics of recognition are interwoven with the other processes of
reflexive process that compresses the world in much the same way that global warming does; the horror of epidemic and the fear it breeds often deprive those who suffer of moral recognition. It would take more pages than we have available to sort through the connections among these dynamics and
processes, as well as to address the many moral and political challenges they pose at the intersections of basic, social, natural, and reflective goods.globalization – poses a fundamental challenge, namely, how can human con-The current locale of lived social reality – the processes and dynamics of
sciousness be transformed in order to foster recognition of and responsibility with and for others that does not devolve into the horrific celebration of power? On many fronts, the challenge is to recognize and respond to the moral claim of diverse forms of life within the actual process that structures
global reality. This raises the question of fundamental attitudes towards natural life, as well as deeper reflection on basic goods. We turn to that question now and then explore social and reflexive goods in the following chapters.
Three challenges define the topic of basic and natural goods.ingly, human beings can alter forms of life from the genetic to planetary The Status of “Nature”^12 First, increas-
levels; we can communicate globally even as we can probe life at its most minute levels – map the genome. This technological explosion has had pro-foundly good and profoundly destructive consequences. By technology is meant not just tools people use to accomplish things, although it includes
that. Technology, as thinkers like Heidegger noted, is a structure in our lives. It implies a way of seeing and valuing the world, a whole worldview. Reality is increasingly perceived as subject to human power and what many value is the extension of control over life to serve the ends of human control. (^13)
People seek, for instance, to end disease and to relieve physical suffering, and that is good. Yet this implies a worldview that is sometimes stated as the technological imperative: because we Some even define morality in this way. “Morality,” Brian Wicker puts it, “is can do something we ought to do it.
essentially concerned with the exercise of those capacities which make us more self-aware, and so more in control.”ought never to do, even if we can? (^14) Is that right? Are there things we