I’m writing this while listening to Air America Radio’s broadcast of Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission. I write and erase multiple attempts to confront this spectacle.  I feel a dis-ease deep down inside of me, yet I am unable to give voice to this nausea.  In despair, I wonder what I, as a concerned citizen, can say when Rice’s defense has already been over-covered and spun well before she spoke a word in defense of the Bush administration’s actions prior to 9/11.  The one bit of knowledge that I am confident about is that each side is already lining up, eager to gain capital from this media event. Frustrated at the attempt to pierce the veil of secrecy or misdirection or noise, I try to think about whether it is possible in an age of cynicism to retain trust in our public servants.

This is doubly distressing for me because, at the same time, I am developing a writing course designed to facilitate student engagement with the upcoming presidential elections.  How can I expect my students to make meaning out of the swirl of data when I am devoting large parts of my life to informing myself about current events without clear results? I lack certainty! I am often confused! I know my reflective doubt is supposed to be a good sign in that I am avoiding the dogmatic certainty that often leads to abuses, but can radical doubt be the foundation for critical engagement?  Academia has skillfully prepared me to question all texts and positions. Grasping my hammer tightly, I eagerly assault all sacred idols and social illusions, leaving the mess for others to clean up. Perhaps in this time of secrecy and lies it is time to think about a reconstructive ethics?

Still stumped, I have to return to the basics.  What is it I see as a problem in our society?  What plagues my own thoughts? What would I like my students to learn?  What ideas can frame the beginning questions that might allow the imagining of new possibilities?  This nausea that pervades my being initiates a radical need to return to the etymological roots (rad-) of the words that might jumpstart my stalled intellect.

A framing concern for me — personally and professionally — is ecology as the study of the interconnectedness of beings in environmental systems of all types.  The root “eco-” originates from the Greek word oikos, which referred to an understanding of home, household, or more fully, our habitus.  Ecology, then, is the study or understanding (take that apart — the foundations of the ground below us that support our current position) of the world which we inhabit and the attempt to derive new meanings from the interconnectedness and interrelationships of life. The need for ecological awareness seem obvious to me, but the word has unfortunately been paired in an oppositional relationship to another dominating term — “economics.” While ecology derives its conjunctive meaning from logos (knowledge), economics draws its conjunctive power from nomos (law).  We have then in contemporary society a dualistic division of the concerns of these two important and powerful words. The study, knowledge, and understanding of our environments vs. the control, regulation, and management of those environments.  

Might a reconstructive ethics start here in a rapprochement of these two essential concepts for understanding the increasingly interrelated and interconnected global system?  Would the breaking down of these artificial barriers between these two major concerns of life allow for a fuller understanding of how we might restore a sense of justice, rights, and responsibilites? No longer would it simply be an issue of ecology against economics, or the market before our environment, or a separation of the human from nature.  

Still, Rice drones on in the background as our public servants take turns grilling her. Glaringly absent from our current politics is any concern about rebuilding or restructuring our world.  Instead, it is always a matter of attacking, retributio,n or punishment. We must isolate, preempt, and sterilize. We must be on guard, vigilant, and controlling. When will we begin to think about the foundations of our thought and ask if, in our origins, there may be flaws that infect our questions and proposals, stalling our efforts before they start and distorting the results beforehand?

thivai