Sy, Florge Paulo December 5, 2017

PHIL526 (Environmental Philosophy)

A Reaction Paper to The Story of Stuff1

Man, Property, and Technology

Introduction

Although the film addresses the system and its hidden ill-effects towards the environment
through which concrete everyday-objects are created, used, and discarded, it fails to mention the
ontological possibility of this phenomenon called consumerism, i.e., if consumerism is the cause
of environmental problems, what is, in turn, that which makes possible consumerism? Or better
yet, how is consumerism, at all, possible?

Man

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle begins by saying that human action is always
directed towards some good as end.2 However, he subsequently mentions that this end which
man seeks must be the ultimate end, which, Aristotle answers, is happiness. Happiness in the
context of Aristotle pertains to a speculative and contemplative life, that is, a life in which man
exercises his highest faculty, which is reason.3 The rational faculty of the human being is what
distinguishes him from other existent beings: plants and animals. Thus, what man seeks for is
neither mere sustenance that plants naturally strive to achieve, nor just physiological satisfaction
for which brutes compete. Rather, man’s function as a rational being is to be virtuous, which is
achieved in habit and training.4 And being virtuous is further exemplified when man acts
according to a mean, which is acting between excess and deficiency.5 Man’s aim, which is
happiness, therefore, is acting in accordance with his rational faculty in order to live in
moderation alongside with his vegetative and sensitive faculties.

1
“The Story of Stuff,” Youtube, last modified April 22, 2009, accessed November 28, 2017,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM.
2
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. F.H. Peters (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.,
1906), 1. “In all he does man seeks some good as end or means.”
3
Ibid., 337-8. “But if happiness be the exercise of virtue, it is reasonable to suppose that it will be the
exercise of the highest virtue; and that will be the virtue or excellence of the best part of us... This exercise of faculty
must be the highest possible; for the reason is the highest of our faculties, and of all knowable things those that
reason deals with are the highest.”
4
Ibid., 43. “If, then, the virtues be neither emotions nor faculties, it only remains for them to be habits or
trained faculties.”
5
Ibid., 44.” By an equal or fair amount I understand a mean amount, or one that lies between excess and
deficiency.”
 It remains true what Martin Heidegger says that, with Plato, Aristotle still also speaks in
what is our language of today.6 But placing Aristotle’s ethics in today’s consumerist society,
man’s consumerist tendencies tell us otherwise. Man is buried by his acquirement of goods and
is blinded from the true essence of his Being. The consumerist mindset captures man’s
rationality from being in a state of moderation; in other words, despite man’s continuous
consumption that satisfies his desires, instead of placing him in a state of happiness, borrowing
Karl Marx’s modified term, it “alienates”7 him from it and brings him in a state of excess―a
state of always wanting “more;” hence, in line with consumerism, in his The Myth of the
Machine, Lewis Mumford says: “there is only one efficient speed, faster; only one attractive
destination, farther away; only one desirable size, bigger; only one rational quantitative goal,
more.”8

But the question remains as to how man is led towards this consumerist cycle. Although
the film states the linear system of how objects are created, received, and thrown out by man,
which is from extraction, to production, to distribution, to consumption, and, finally, to disposal,9
it misses to state the motivation of the human being to carry out this process. What is the impetus
of man to exploit the environment, to supply and distribute the produced exploited material, and
to demand and consume, that is, buy, them? Following a Marxist perspective, the probable cause
of exploitation and alienation―of both man and nature―is the development of private property.

Property

As a dialectical materialist, Marx says that within the progression of history arises private
property, because human beings, distinguishing themselves from plants and animals, “produce
their means of subsistence.”10 And this production of means, according to Marx, further develops
into an ownership in the form of property. But due to the scarcity of resources, production after
production in the progression of history, there comes as well an unequal distribution of goods.
Taking this as an advantage, those who constitute the epoch of capitalism that own more of the
materials produced make their production as a business and their goal to gain more than what is
the priced value of the object; hence, this accounts for what Marx says about history as a “history

6
Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row Publishers,
1968), 75. “Plato and Aristotle speak in what is still our language of today.”
7
Karl Marx, “The German Ideology,” in On Marx: Revolutionary and Utopian, ed. Alan Ryan (New York:
Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014), 131. “...man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which
enslaves him instead of being controlled by him.”

8
Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), 173.
9
Youtube, “The Story of Stuff.”
10
Marx, “The German Ideology,” 113.
of class struggles”11―a history that depicts those who have and those who do not have. And,
undoubtedly, today’s society still reflects the character of the struggle between capitalists who
own and workers who do not.

The difference between the context of Marx’s manifesto and today’s historical status is
that the capitalism found in the former is characterized by an industrial revolution of “steam and
machinery”12 while the latter, as Nick Bostrom describes, by a technological revolution of quick
introductions to new and newer technologies.13 Despite the distinction, today’s world,
nonetheless, still adheres to the capitalist system, which Marx is against (but deems it necessary
for historical development). One can therefore interpret the film along the lines of Marx because
it comments on the ill-effects of corporations that globally dominate man and the environment.
The film also corresponds to Marx’s sentiment that every relation at present, due to the modes of
production by the capitalists, is reduced into “mere money relation.”14

However, whether or not the film aims for communism at the end of history is not our
concern. Rather, the concern is to demonstrate the ontological possibility of the five-step process
of the creation of stuff in this capitalist society. Marx’s account already addresses the material
condition behind the continuity of the drastic effect that nature faces, which is the necessary
production of means by man in capitalism; this is what motivates the first, second, and half of the
third step of the system: extraction, production, and distribution. But the question concerned now
becomes the reason as to why man continues to do so. Marx hints that the reason is natural. But
behind the natural resides the ontological, that is, the very possibility of man’s nature. By
mentioning Bostrom’s description of today’s technological revolution of introducing new and
newer technologies to man, although it necessarily requires a medium to promulgate these
technologies, the concern is not the medium itself but rather the fact that there is a medium and
how man is related to this medium that it influences him to be engrossed by its existence. It is
mentioned above that Marx’s contribution to the basis of the system explains only until the half
of the third step, and that is because the other half is found in how products are themselves
acquired by man. And since the world today is dominantly technological, i.e., dominated
globally by capitalism’s innovations and inventions, an insight into technology provides an
efficient explanation for the ontological possibility behind the rest of the system.

11
Karl Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” in On Marx: Revolutionary and Utopian, ed. Alan Ryan (New
York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014), 145.
12
Ibid., 146
13
Nick Bostrom, “Technological Revolutions: Ethics and Policy in the Dark,” in Nanoscale: Issues and
Perspectives for the Nano Century,” ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron and M. Ellen Mitchell (New Jersey: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 2007), 129. “We might define a technological revolution as a dramatic change brought about relatively
quickly by the introduction of some new technology.”
14
Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 149.
Technology

In his The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger states that there is a difference
between technology and the essence of technology.15 The former pertains to what is
technological, that is, the concrete manifestation of technology itself. The latter, however, is a
mode of thinking by which the former is possible. In its usage, technology is oftentimes being
referred to as an instrument or as a means to an end, e.g. equipment, tools, and machines for day-
to-day production. But Heidegger is not concerned about that everyday understanding of
technology; rather, he is concerned with the essence of technology, which is thinking, in relation
to what it thinks, which is nature. In this sense, then, technology as thinking is precisely what
brings about the technological, or technology is that which brings itself into nature in order for
nature to be considered.

The way by which technology sets itself into nature is what Heidegger calls as poiēsis or
bringing-forth.16 In this manner, technology therefore brings nature to present itself as itself. And
precisely this bringing-forth leads nature into its very own presence because, subsequently and
ultimately, this kind of technology is a revelation of nature’s truth of itself or, as Heidegger calls
it, alētheia.17 Since the act of thinking springs from human thought, this kind of technology is
ideally what technology should be in relation to nature, for it does not convert nature into
something other than it is. The present technological day, however, has forgotten this kind of
thinking.18 Instead, through transforming nature into something other than it truly is, the present
conception of technology is what Heidegger calls as a challenging-forth.19 This kind of thinking
challenges nature in the sense that, although it brings nature into presence, it deprives nature to
truly present itself as itself. And this is, perhaps, the concern of the film when they mention the
exploitation of nature. This challenge against nature expresses itself also in a system where
nature is considered merely as a standing-reserve,20 a reserve only to be distorted:

Such challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what
is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is

15
Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Basic Writings From Being And Time to
The Task of Thinking, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1977), 311. “Technology is not equivalent
to the essence of technology.”
16
Ibid., 317
17
Ibid., 318
18
The forgetfulness of this kind of thinking, which is mentioned in the late Heidegger, is, perhaps,
correspondent to the early Heidegger’s penultimate ontological concern, which is the forgetfulness of Being. Martin
Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 21.
19
Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 320.
20
Ibid., 322
 in turn distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew.
Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways of
revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off
into the indeterminate. The revealing reveals to itself its own manifoldly
interlocking paths, through regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its
part, everywhere secured. Regulating and securing even becomes the chief
characteristics of the revealing that challenges.21

Man, as that which thinks, is therefore the cause of bringing nature into its distortion by
producing objects evermore. The production of these objects, then, is led into their distribution in
within the capitalist system in order for the owners to gain more money. But, as also mentioned
above, the medium by which these objects are distributed globally is superstructurally due to the
existence of media―and superstructurally because media, in turn, is base-structurally run by
human beings themselves.

The influence of media in this technological age is powerfully far-reaching. But since
man is behind the function of media, then, man is as powerfully influential. Man’s power and
influence situate themselves in the world as tradition, such that what man says on air on
television runs or on the radio is eventually accepted. Through this far-reaching advertisement of
products, the audience then creates a decision to buy these products. It is not a question of how
many people would actually buy these products, but rather it is a question concerning that,
through the mastery over nature, man blindly listens and accepts this fact and thinks that,
because the other is able to do it, why can’t he.

This establishment of tradition and directly-accepted views of the capitalist economic

system of the technological world today, however, is, in a dialectical sense, necessary in history.
But in Heidegger’s sense, it is what the world already is in which man is situated, or, considering
the present, man is thrown into this world as a child of technology, i.e., once he is born, he exists
already in a world of distribution, consumption, and disposal. He is, therefore, inevitably
influenced by it at birth; and he, then, also inevitably forgets the thinking that is alētheia. In this
forgetfulness, this characterizes man in default inauthenticity as, Heidegger says, Das Man.22

Man as Das Man is inauthentic precisely because he directly accepts what is handed
down by others and, thus, follows the others―the other Das Man―without question and critical
analysis, e.g. man’s consumerist tendencies compels him to follow the trends in the introduction
of new technologies advertised by media. This is the danger that man, as also a historical being,
faces, for those in future generations might follow the path that leads only to humanity’s demise.
However, amidst the danger of this forgetfulness, Heidegger quotes Friedrich Hölderlin that the

21
Ibid. 322
22
Heidegger, Being and Time, 149.
saving power lies hidden in that very danger.23 In other words, although man in his inauthenticity
is the cause of the downfall of the rest of men and of nature, because man’s freedom is blatantly
present in his questioning by having the capacity to question what is at hand which, in Aristotle,
is attributed to his rationality, then the world may not at all be in a hopeless situation; Marx’s
idea of communism, perhaps, can finally come in place, and man can finally be brought back
into a virtuous and contemplative life. And because the world at present faces an imminent
danger, but because man is also aware of this danger, then man is able to question what the world
ought to be―man should question what the world ought to be.

Conclusion

Once the issues of the world are addressed, then the system mentioned in the film will
finally be given a solution to its detrimental effects not only towards nature, but also towards
humanity. Whether this solution is by providing an environmental ethics coming from the
perspective of man―in order to promote the rational faculty for the flourishing of
humankind―or from the perspective of the environment itself―to allow what constitutes nature
alongside man, plants and animals, to survive―what is important is that the solution serves its
purpose. By interrogating the ontological status of the consumerist-technological system the
world runs at present, the locus of the problem can finally be brought into the light of day. But
man as well plays a crucial role in the provision of a solution. He has to realize as being one with
the Das Man or as one with the capitalist system―as either a supplier or a consumer―that the
system itself must be overturned.

23
Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 333. “But where danger is, grows the saving power
also.”
References

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by F.H. Peters. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner
& Co., Ltd., 1906.

Bostrom, Nick. “Technological Revolutions: Ethics and Policy in the Dark.” In Nanoscale:
Issues and Perspectives for the Nano Century.” Edited by Nigel M. de S. Cameron and
M. Ellen Mitchell, 129-152. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New
York: Harper & Row, 1962.

________. “The Question Concern Technology.” In Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927)
to The Task of Thinking (1964). Edited by David Farrell Krell, 307-342. New York:
HarperCollins, 1977.

________. What Is Called Thinking? Translated by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row,
1968.

Marx, Karl. “The Communist Manifesto.” In On Marx. Edited by Alan Ryan, 141-197. New
York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014.

________. “The German Ideology.” In On Marx. Edited by Alan Ryan, 112-136. New York:
Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014.

Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970.

Youtube. “The Story of Stuff.” Youtube. Last modified April 22, 2009. Accessed November 28,
2017. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM.