Society Must Be Ecologised

Let us imagine that you have invited a group of friends to dinner, and they are not vegetarians. The example is borrowed from N. Katherine Hayles (who in turn borrowed it from Hans Moravec, whose written source could not be traced). So, you find yourself in a supermarket in front of a meat refrigerator, realising that your choice essentially boils down to poultry, pork, veal, and beef. Who decided to reduce the infinity of possibilities to these four choices? Nobody did, or perhaps everybody did to some extent. Better still, not everybody, but everything. However, even this is not quite right because it keeps us firmly locked in a reified world. So, what has decided? The answer is ecologies, always plural. It is at least three ecologies – mental, social, and environmental – that have conjointly modulated the attractor landscape to produce the four basins of attraction, while simultaneously ‘pushing alternatives up the hill’.