DRAWING PARALLEL NARRATIVES BETWEEN FOSSIL FUEL ADDICTION AND REDUCTIONISM

Today I watched a documentary on climate change. The narrative is all too familiar to me, since it is part of the subject matter I teach. However something struck me as a resonance, of another narrative I have been dealing with. The documentary tells of an obstacle, in the early days, namely the reluctance of government, industrial players, and even scholars to acknowledge the harm of fossil fuels, in the face of mounting empirical evidence. After almost sixty years since the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, only recently has the green sentiment begun to take hold in civilisation.

I have been talking about reductionism in academia for so long. In doing so, I found similar symptoms in the economy, education, medicine and science itself. Despite the mounting evidence of their relationship with reductionism, it is hard to wean people off the reductionist mindset. I cant help but draw a parallel between the two narratives, our addiction to fossil fuel, and to reductionism.

In the beginning, the empirical evidence of global warming was abundant and clear. Yet we found the most polluting nations, and armies of corporations and enterprises, went all out to discredit or dismiss the notion that the cause of environmental degradation is our addiction to fossil fuels.

The reason is now obvious. It is not because of the relationship is blurry, but rather something else. Any move away from the use of fossil fuels, will, to a significant degree, disrupt the existing structure put in place by society. We have whole cities and districts designed around the abundance of fossil fuels. We have hospitals, schools and factories relying on fossil fuels to function. And the most resistive forces can be found from the businesses and commercial entities, especially those corporations making money out of fossil fuels extraction. The disruption in structure due to the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy is inconvenient. (reminds me of the documentary Inconvenient Truth highlighting the same concern).

Today after years of cumulative evidence, knowledge and experience, we see a major shift in public attitude to shy away from the use of fossil fuels and a general tendency to lean towards renewable energy. Listening to the narrator of Ice on Fire, the documentary in question, I can now see why reductionism is so hard to be recognised as the cause of the modern crisis.

If I were to draw a parallel between the two narratives, I have to identify what was the dynamic at play. The root of our addiction to fossil fuels, I can conclude, is due to the investment we put into it. Investment in the sense of what was given up in order to achieve its stated benefit. We invested in a city designed to rely on cars and trucks that run on fossil fuels. We invested in mass production mode relying on fossil fuels. Corporations invested billions of dollars on exploration, excavation and distribution of fossil fuels. In other words, fossil fuel is a commodity, a major one in the current economy. Suddenly if we were to move away from fossil fuels, a major reinvestment is necessary. In a business sense, this is a no no, moving away from an already lucrative business  model towards another with no clear guarantee of better or at least similar return.

So going back to reductionism. Just like fossil fuels, it has become a necessary item. To function in modern academia, in education, in economy, we rely heavily on tools, innovation and convention that are based on reductionist cognitive frameworks. We invested heavily on reductionist approach in everything we do. Our education is primarily based on behaviorism, on scientific and empirical foundations that are the manifestation of the reductionist mentality. Our economy relies on a measurable index, GDP, a reduction of the meaning of prosperity and well being. Our schools and university management relies on cartesian pedagogy, on KPI, on ISO to function. So on and so forth.

Just like fossil fuels, it starts with fascination with its potential. We grow to embrace it, and now are addicted to it. But now there are indications of the side effects of this addiction. Loss of meaning, purpose, essence, leading to global Warming, climate change, social inequality, famine. We are only beginning to understand these as symptoms of a reductionist mentality. Perhaps it is not so strange the final symptoms manifested are not far different from those of fossil fuel addiction. Reductionism, amongst philosophers and technocrats alike, begin to be recognised as the elusive criminal that is the cause of all these crises. But this phenomenon is still in the early phase of development, the acknowledgement phase. Especially in Malaysia, those acknowledging this causal relationship are still small in numbers. There are many who still resent this notion. Experts and scholars in the same fields are still arguing that reductionism is indeed the culprit. There are quarters who are bent in preserving reductionism, as they have adopted reductionism as the basis of their operation. Just like an oil company who invests and makes money out of extracting oil.

Now to decouple the various facets of civilisation from reductionism would simply disrupt the investment of many parties. There are people who are set in power seats because of the policy and framework arising out of the reductionist mindset. To move away from this is to take away their power. There are scholars whose rise in careers rely so much on the reductionist paradigm, doing scientific experiments, producing evidence based, mechanistic, cartesian academic papers. There are even those whose entire discipline’s epistemological outlook totally rests on reductionist philosophy. To do this any other way is impossible since they have invested their whole education and career navigation with a reductionist paradigm.

While a parallel can be drawn between the two narratives, the differences are also worth looking into. Establishing the relationship between fossil fuel addiction and modern world crises is somewhat easy. Evidence of rising ambience temperature, air pollution, acid rain, climate change, can directly be inferred from empirical data. The physical relationship between the factors at play are verifiable by scientific observation. Geopolitical skirmishes due to the hunger for fossil fuel is also somewhat easy to read. On the other hand, establishing the link between reductionism and civilisational crises is far more problematic. It is all in argumentation and theoretical inference. It is not easy to prove that the wealth disparity between nations and social classes is a result of the loss of meaning of a good life, which is a major implication from reducing the meaning of quality of life to GDP. It is not easy to convince a scientist that the results of his lab experiments have a metaphysical implication unobservable through a microscope. It might be downright offensive to him, if his positivist outlook is challenged.

To conclude, it should be understood that the effort to put reductionism to its proper place is necessary but difficult. If we are to learn anything from how we deal with our addiction to fossil fuels, the road is clear but the journey is still long. There might be a unique problem in curbing reductionism, and that we might be still be at the early stage of establishing acknowledgement of the problem.

Zaky Jaafar 2023