Chapter 2: Nature, First and Second Introduction Amid the technological enchantment of the 1950s, proponents of organic farming, like Bookchin himself, had to defend organic agricultural techniques against the scorn of federal agencies and the chemical industry, both of which were busily making pesticides into agricultural commonplaces. Unlike today, when the value of organic farming is recognized, in those years its value had to be fought for. As part of that struggle to defend organic farming, Bookchin borrowed the concept “unity in diversity” from the German idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Recast as a principle of organic agriculture, the concept suggested an alternative farming technique that was able to rid crops of pests, without the use of carcinogenic pesticides. Unlike the monocultures that demanded pesticide use, a diversity of crops in one field could play off potential pests against one another, leaving the crops...
Our Synthetic Environment Murray Bookchin CHAPTER THREE: URBAN LIFE AND HEALTH The Changing Urban Scene Man's environment attains a high degree of simplification in the modern metropolis. At first this may seem surprising: We normally associate metropolitan life with a diversity of individual types and with variety and subtlety in human relations. But diversity among men and complexity in human relations are social and cultural phenomena. From a biological point of view, the drab, severe metropolitan world of mortar, steel, and machines constitutes a relatively simple environment, and the sharp division of labor developed by the modern urban economy imposes extremely limited, monotonous occupational activities on many of the individuals who make their livelihood in a large city. These have not always been the characteristics of urban life. The metropolitan milieu represents a sharp departure from the forms and styles of...