Glocal “if-then”s

In the process of thinking about the term Ecology- which constantly moved between being extremely banal to being confusingly complex- I found Stengers’s text to be the most interesting one. It has to do first of all with the way she thinks, her use of language and metaphors and her personal input being brought into the text as if she is not trying to cast her perspective into a rigid obsolete truth- which is exactly her point at the same time. The Idea of questioning modes of thinking that are nowadays considered almost as rules of nature is probably the best strategy to situate ourselves in the present since we no longer have the ability to easily predict the future. The idea of not complying with allegedly global “if-then” rules of certain ways of thinking (i.e. the example she gives on physics) resembles somehow a specific idea of the historian Yuval Noah-Harari in his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”. Looking into the idea of religion and trying to describe its features, he marks modern science as a discipline having the same problems as every other religion in the way it is perceived by the people and constructs the environment. As it has its own set of rules, its own ideal horizon as Stengers calls it, it is clear how modern science is also a product being traded in the market of “Truths”. Moreover, this notion of not being able to create a firm global recognition (a term criticized by Stenger throughout her text) to follow immediately reminds me of more ancient practices of magic, spirits, afterlife, sorcery etc., which are native to certain cultures and are just not my own western “if-then”. To add just another note on Stengers idea, It feels like it only makes sense that this ecology of practices would be the appropriate mode of thinking in a technological world like ours. The logic needs to be local, almost temporary, while correlating with what “is” and responding to the environment without trying to shape it a priori.