The Three Ecologies

Life is an ‘aesthetico-existential process'. Among the many arguments stringed to the thread of human ecology, it is perhaps this that Guattari would kindly nod to the most. In ‘The Three Ecologies', it is the artists who are considered to provide the most profound insights into the human condition:

“ ... that poetic utterances can anticipate scientific advances by decades”.

As a conceptual construct our life is a work in progress ... to learn to develop or respond to the chance events and the singularized points that take us in a new direction; or let us recognize a situation as a potential ‘new' direction.  

Ecosophy as an idea is illuminating in the sense that ‘involves', it allows to dissolve the various forms of mental attitudes we develop. The philosophy of ecology, of human environment within the natural world, which we are mainly a ‘part' of and not owners or bearers.

In light of the model of ‘Ecosophy', Guattari stresses the generation of these singular events that mark one's ‘mental ecosophy', as well as their regeneration for subsequent resingularization of such moments, most importantly, to combat what is depicted as “fatalistic passivity”.

This sort of ‘idle' passivity which results from the mass media's “infantilization of opinion” is what freezes whatever discourse our ‘social ecosophy' is engaged in, and thus emanates an atmosphere of a mass-passivity which endangers our already fragile ‘environmental ecosophy'.

As a document of cultural theory, ‘The Three Ecologies' is an interestingly relevant read for our times. Guattari proposes what he terms as a ‘heterogenesis' – a ‘process of continuous singularization' of subjectivity.

The poetic utterance and a simultaneous discursivity attached to its innumerable ambiguous chain of signification allows us to reject reductionist dominant interpretations of the individual, the society and the natural ecosystem. And the relevance of individual as well as collective participation of human beings in questioning the homogenization of a mass-discourse is restored.