A culture of power and control

Written by: Abd al-Ilah Belkaziz

Man's relationship with nature has witnessed, in our modern era, a dramatic transformation in which it has changed from what it was in the past. That is, over a long history, man remained a part of nature, not distinct from it or separated from it. A new feeling of distinction and superiority within the natural system led him to think of leaving this system and establishing a parallel and antithetical system that would be more compatible with the type of new view that he began to form about himself. This marked the birth of the modern era.

The idea of controlling, conquering, subjugating and harnessing nature does not have a long history; Its history dates back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in particular: the results of modern science tempted man to come to that control, and to transform nature from a pet into a harmful being that needs subjugation and taming, and from an incubator to an external subject for his conquests! It is the moment when man separated from natural morals; That is, the morals that he derives from the feeling of belonging to nature, in order to impersonate in it other morals, which are the morals of power: the power that was inspired by science, and inspired by the feeling of the centrality and uniqueness of man, and the authority of reason and rationality entrenched it in him to transform, with the effect of all of this, into the warrior morals.

Nature has been defamed since then, and it has become represented in consciousness as a synonym for what preceded the act of human creation, then everything that man produced was placed against it: history versus nature, culture versus nature, science versus nature, industry versus nature, and technology versus nature..then Soon, the philosophy of the social contract in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries consolidated this view through the defense of its philosophers (Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau...) for an alternative system to the natural system, which is the political and civil system, with strong criticism of it. The natural order, according to him, is a system of perpetual war.

Thus, all human activities seemed to be organized within a new system. post-nature system.

It is the age of power par excellence, and the age of the philosophy of power even before Nietzsche's thought entered its space, the age of the scientific revolution, the discovery of gunpowder, the violence of religious wars, the industrial revolution, the advance of the capitalist system, the rule of rationality and the experimental spirit. With these resources and tools, man was able to accomplish his conquests and to control nature and man himself, and to absorb their powers by exploiting them.

With gunpowder, he controlled the land, extracted forests and jungles from the animal after he exterminated it to turn it into farms or cities, keeping some of its original inhabitants in cages to watch in zoos. And with gunpowder he took control of three quarters of the land in which the “man of nature” lives, who, according to his custom, has not yet become a human being in the manner of the white European man, and he justified his colonization by spreading civilization and urbanization in “barbarian” societies.

Through industry, he transformed nature and harnessed it for an interest, without caring what it entailed in terms of disturbing the environmental balance, and through it and with science, he produced its opposite: technology, and established its authority in the material world. And with reason and rationality, he made the human faculties that came before them insignificant and more ignoble than them: imagination, intuition, and creation.

The age of power worship is that age; the era in which we are still living; The era of a new religion in which the human being is deified with power to impose his mighty will on nature and man. There are no limits in it to the law of force: Natural Darwinism elects the strongest: man versus nature and animals, and legitimizes for the stronger the dominion over what is less powerful, and Social Darwinism elects the strongest: white man versus all blacks and colored people, “precious” races versus “vile” races, and the upper classes of society Society versus the lower classes, and thus the new master/slave relationship is established to justify all kinds of crimes: genocides, colonial wars, racism, slavery, and class exploitation..!

This power and its carriers (science, reason, capital) that imposed its law in the modern era, and established its institutions that begged for control and subjugation, imposed its morals on all morals (natural morals, religious morals, human morals...), and looked with contempt at the values of mercy and kindness And pardon, charity, solidarity, and peace, considering them morals for the defeated slaves (Nietzsche), venerating the morals of force. On the other hand, its dominant culture, which was spread by its institutions, is positivism, scientism, and pragmatism: the new religions of the age.

In agreement with the Gulf