Commentary on Starhawk’s “Webs Of Power”

Matthew Salazar

bigmatt@stanford.edu

The reading and discussion of Starhawk’s “Webs Of Power” quite simply bothered me. I couldn’t help but feel that there was something remotely sinister motivating her writing. While she would no doubt criticize me as being a) slave to the conditioning I have been brought up with as a child of a consumer society and b) male, I still think that I might be able to discern some flaws in her reasoning. The society Starhawk advocates is, to say the least, restrictive. Her first goal seems to be first to eliminate any real “power” from exerting its will on society. Her second goal seems to be to drastically curtail any effects humanity might have on the environment. While this sounds all well and good, as she lays out her “solution” things get positively dreadful. As I pointed out in the discussion, she isn’t merely advocating a society lacking SUV’s, she’s advocating a society lacking orange juice. As she herself apparently admits, millions (if not billions) will have to die to achieve this goal. Civilization, and technology will literally have to de-evolve centuries to what amounts to tribes more primative than any in recorded history since they at least have some governing structure, and lacking of any real technology beyond the most rudimentary agricultural skills. Doesn’t this seem, for lack of a better word… evil?

Of course, she would no doubt respond on a few levels. Firstly, with regards to “what we’d lose” the argument seems to be that if we weren’t brought up wanting such things, we wouldn’t miss them. Secondly, the lives lost are inevitable anyway since the environmental collapse will be just as deadly, if not more so. Finally, we don’t actually need any form of government since a democratic “web” would serve our needs.

All of this I think demands greater discussion… far greater than I have the stomach to answer. Nonetheless, I will submit a few of my responses for consideration. First off, I think that there is something fundamental about exploration and “progress.” I cannot help but think that any crippled farmer wouldn’t work to refine his own technique… over time, civilization would “re-evolve” no matter how fanatically the concept not to do so is ingrained. Similarly, if the environmental collapse is going to kill so many, then it will. If we cannot stop it (which I think we can), then we’re fundamentally an evolutionary dead end anyway. We’re hard wired for progress we can’t be anything else. Lastly, there is a reason we don’t use “direct democracy”… it really isn’t possible to get anything done in such a system. As a former student-adept of parliamentary procedure, I know that this is true.