Notes

  1. . This is of course not the only way of looking at the possible relationship of ethics and politics. One could ask the question as did the great nineteenth‐century liberal Catholic thinker, Lord Acton: “Are politics an attempt to realize ideals, or an endeavor to get advantages, within the limits of ethics?” (as quoted by Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The American Revolution in the Political Theory of Lord Acton,” Journal of Modern History 21 [1940]: 312).
  2. . Aristotle Ethics 5. 7.
  3. . David Easton, The Political System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 146.
  4. . Christians are perhaps especially confused on this score with many in developed countries trying to act as spokesmen for the world's poor rather than developing their own insights. For some useful insights into this problem from a theological point of view see Bruce C. Birch and Larry L. Rasmussen, The Predicament of the Prosperous (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978).
  5. . For a typical systems approach see Ervin Laszlo, The Systems View of the World (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1972). For a useful critique of systems theory see the chapter “Social Cybernetics: Subjugation by Metaphor?” in Manfred Stanley's The Technological Conscience: Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 136–84.
  6. . See as an introduction Gerald O'Neill's The High Frontier (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1977).
  7. . The literature on imperialism or contemporary interdependence is too voluminous to be cited, but see Charlotte Waterlow, Superpowers and Victims: The Outlook for World Community (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1974). On the role of “reference societies” in national political development see Reinhard Bendix, Kings or Peoples (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). On the importance of exogenous variables generally see Robert A. Nisbet, The Social Bond (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), pp. 316–43.
  8. . Cancer of course may be triggered by exogenous carcinogens, but their effect is so impossible to predict in terms of individual cells that one can say from the point of view of the human physiological system that the response of cancerous growth is an unpredictable internal event.
  9. . Wickard v. Filbum, 317 U.S. Ill (1942).
  10. . See Charles B. Schuman, “Food Aid and the Free Market,” in Food Policy: The Responsibility of the United States in the Life and Death Choices, ed. Peter G. Brown and Henry B. Shue (New York: Free Press, 1977), pp. 145–63.
  11. . For a suggestive attempt to create an environmental/energy ethic see Howard T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society (New York: Wiley‐Interscience, 1971).
  12. . See BillDevall, “The Deep Ecology Movement,” Natural Resources Journal  20 (1980): 299–322.
  13. . Most notably in my The Future of Technological Civilization (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1974).
  14. . For an interesting attempt to reconcile an apparently meaningless world with traditional theology see Raymond J. Nogar, Lord of the Absurd (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966). See also David L. Hall's “Irony and Anarchy: The Utopian Sensibility,” Alternative Futures: The Journal of Utopian Studies 2 (Spring 1979: 3–24, and his The Uncertain Phoenix: Adventures toward a Post—Cultural Sensibility (New york: Fordham University Press, in press). For a moderate statement of the postulate of ignorance see Peter L. Berger, Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1976), p. xiii.
  15. . See my “The Pessimistic View of the Future,” in Handbook of Futures Research, ed. Jib Fowles (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. 479–96.
  16. . This is increasingly the obvious underlying premise of even the products of the Club of Rome. Note the differences in tone between Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1971), and such later works as Mihaljo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rom (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974); Jan Tinbergen, comp., Rio: Reshaping the International Order (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1976); and Ervin Laszlo, Goals for Mankind: A Report to the Club of Rome on the New Horizons of Global Community (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1977).
  17. . See. e.g., Garrett Hardin, Exploring New Ethics for Survival (New York; Viking Press, 1972). Much of Paul Ehrlich's normative statement is cast in the same vein. For a dissent from this position see Daniel Callahan, The Tyranny of Survival (New York: Macmillan Co., 1973).
  18. . For examples of discussions of ecological problems as continuing issues of international politics see Harold and Margaret Sprout, Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971), and Dennis Pirages, Global Ecopolitics (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1978).
  19. . For a historical study concentrating on attitudes toward nature see Clarence J. Gracken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
  20. . It has been argued, however, that Indians became actually hostile toward wildlife because they felt it was somehow responsible for the coming of the white man. See CalvinMartin, “The War between Indians and Animals,” Natural History  87 (June 1978): 92–96.
  21. . On the effects of technology see my Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1969) and “Symposium on Bureaucracy, Centralization and Decentralization,” in Technology, Power and Social Change, ed. Charles A. Thrall and Jerold M. Starr (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972), pp. 29–48.
  22. . See my “Freedom in a Planetary Society,” Humanitas  104 (1978): 5–16.
  23. . A current school of ecophilosophy aims at living life styles exclusively dependent on local possibilities, which they call reinhabitation. See Gary Snyder, The Old Ways (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977).
  24. . On alternative technology see of course E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). For an extended discussion of problems of technology transfer from a similar viewpoint see Denis Goulet, The Uncertain Promise (New York: IDOC/North America, 1977).
  25. . A classic if somewhat simplistic statement of this viewpoint is Emmanuel Mesthene's Technological Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970). For an opposing viewpoint see Langdon Winner's Autonomous Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1977). See also my “Man's Tools and Man's Choices,” American Political Science Review 67 (1973): 973–80.
  26. . On the global effects of technology and the global problems of control see Alternatives: A Journal of World Policy 5 (1979): 277–427 (special issue on “Perversion of Science and Technology”).
  27. . For an introduction to this development in theology see Ewert H. Cousins, ed., Process Theology (New York: Newman Press, 1971).
  28. . For a classic statement see Easton (n. 3 above).
  29. . See David Mitrany, A Working Peace System, 4th ed. (London: National Peace Concil, 1946); Seyom Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1974); International Organization 25 (Summer 1971) (special issue on “Transnational Processes and International Organization”).
  30. . HarlanCleveland, “Do Global Technologies Require Global Politics?;” Technology in Society  1(1979): 22.
  31. . See my Future of Technological Civilization (n. 13 above).
  32. . For an attempt to discover and synthesize the goals of different groups see Laszlo (n. 16 above). But see also Gustavo Lagos and Horacio H. Godoy, Revolution of Being: A Latin American View of the Future (New York: Free Press, 1977).
  33. . A useful and suggestive study of the views of leading members of the international scientific community active in working on global problems is found in Ernest B. Haas, Mary Pat Williams, and Don Babai, Scientists and World Order: The Uses of Technical Knowledge in International Organizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
  34. . See Aurelio Peccei's The Chasm Ahead (New York: Macmillan Co., 1969).
  35. . On this issue see my “The Developed Nations in an Independent World,” in Earthcare: Global Protection of Natural Areas, ed. Edmund A. Schofield (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978), pp. 623–34.
  36. . See Ali A. Mazrui, A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective (New York: Free Press, 1976).
  37. . Cleveland (n. 30 above), pp. 23–24.
  38. . See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).
  39. . See Michael Harrington, The Vast Majority (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), pp. 102–51.
  40. . See Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1949), pp. 715–17.