Adam Smith & the Enlightenment Term Paper

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To Smith, the natural world from which human beings emerged was not only insignificant and worthless, it was positively odious. He saw nothing to save, foster, or conserve about it. He thought people who lived in subsistence cultures were "so miserably poor they are frequently reduced to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts" (p. 93). Nature was a resource to be used to create wealth. Consumption was the ideal -- everybody able to buy whatever goods were needed and wanted. And civilized Europeans were the "ideal of humanity" (p. 96).

In America and other Western nations today, we have seen the world Smith envisioned come to pass with everything he pictured a reality. People from developing countries are amazed, for example, when they visit the U.S. And find that the poor generally have roofs over their heads, food on the table, and a car to drive. But the downside of the picture is that cement pavements are everywhere and business establishments have blotted out the landscape. Even the Great Lakes are polluted with an inky layer of toxic chemical gunk on the bottom. The air isn't fit to breathe in many places. Rain forests and wetlands are diminishing at an alarming rate. The glaciers are melting, and global warming, the result of all the industry, threatens to destroy life on beautiful earth.

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People fail to appreciate earth's generosity and the fact that we are dependant on it. They are separated from the earth by their way of life and all the possessions and things they enjoy, and they feel sorry for anyone who doesn't live in a consumer society. People living in subsistence cultures and in the un-industrialized countries are viewed as pitiable and believed to be envious of the American way of life. "Applied science (technology) has drastically altered the relations, in force since the agricultural revolution, between culture and nature" (p. 95). The idea of wilderness has been transformed, and humanity's ties to nature have virtually been obliterated. Adam Smith idea that nature and society exist in opposition to each other and that the physical world is machinelike -- so many atoms in motion -- more or less prevails. The concept of earth as a nurturing Mother has been lost.

The poet, William Blake, wrote, "To see the World in a grain of sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour."

We should not accept scientific method to the point that our capacity as human beings is limited. Reason is not all there is; something more is required to bring balance and harmony to the world -- a more spiritual perspective -- not in the sense of religion, but learning to value what is meaningful and beautiful. A new consciousness has to come about, if.....

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