Truth needs to be well constructed

Notes on ecological thinking

🌱 | Created on 15-07-24 | Edited on 18-05-25

infopunk

Actor-network theory is the idea that reality is a network of agents called actors. Everything is connected, everything is related and there is no one way to claim the truth. Everything is a work in progress, because relations between things are a work in progress. You need multiple pieces to make the whole.

The truth, which is an assemblage of relations between many different things human and non-human, is constructed. It matters how well it is constructed.

Though it is neither an enabler of post-truth gaslighting or post-modern cynicism, there are some risks in this proposition :

If everything is everything, then anything can be anything? i.e. Can flat-earthers say that the earth is really flat since they have pieced together multiple bits to support the claim?
Anything can be reduced to one thing i.e If fundamentalists want to claim that everything is the way it is because it is the will of God

Every actor in a network has agency. Science has been a meeting of ecological, political and social pieces. So even non-human actors should have agency. If a dam is to be built, the fish of the river should be considered just as much as the humans.

A very useful way to understand the climate crisis, because it is also a result of multiple moving things. If handled right, the crisis could start a new era in our way of looking at the world and living in it, with other actors.