i like this paragraph from the introduction because i think it slots nicely into an already existing synthesis between Social Ecology and Communalism and Braiding Sweetgrass i’ve previously observed:
Humanity has become a planetary force, regulating global nutrient cycles and changing the climate and rearranging ecosystems. This power is something to understand not only in terms of what we do, but in terms of who we are. Our values are inscribed on the planet. What and who we care about, how we see ourselves and others, our morals and our ethics: these now shape the course of life itself. And even if we prove unable to halt the ecological collapse, if our grandchildren’s Earth is a radically different and less verdant place than our own, there will still be nature, and animals, and the imperative to live well with them.
even though Social Ecology and Communalism was written before Meet the Neighbors, Bookchin pretty unambiguously concurs, in “What is Social Ecology?” with Brandon Keim’s notion that we have become a “planetary force”. to Bookchin, that reality means must accept our place—that we have created for ourselves in establishing a dominion over nature—as stewards for both our own well-being and the well-being of nonhuman life on this planet. he says of this:
[...]humans have an ethical responsibility to function creatively in the unfolding of that evolution. Social ecology thus stresses the need to embody its ethics of complementarity in palpable social institutions that will make human beings conscious ethical agents in promoting the well-being of themselves and the nonhuman world. [...] Social ecology, in effect, recognizes that – like it or not – the future of life on this planet pivots on the future of society.
he posits further that we should take an explicit “supportive role in perpetuating the integrity of the biosphere” and 'go beyond both the natural and the social toward a new synthesis that contains the best of both […] in which human beings intervene in natural evolution with their best capacities – their ethical sense, their unequaled capacity for conceptual thought, and their remarkable powers and range of communication."
Bookchin also notes that the framework of domination over nature is a byproduct of class structure and hierarchy—it is not intrinsic to human life and did not always exist:
We must emphasize here that the idea of dominating nature has its primary source in the domination of human by human and in the structuring of the natural world into a hierarchical chain of being (a static conception, incidentally, that has no relationship to the dynamic evolution of life into increasingly advanced forms of subjectivity and flexibility). [...] Its idea of dominating nature – so essential to the view of the nonhuman world as an object of domination – can be overcome only through the creation of a society without those class and hierarchical structures that make for rule and obedience in private as well as public life, and the objectifications of reality as mere materials for exploitation.
it is in large part because we maintain existing social stratifications; consider ourselves “superior” and the nonhuman world “inferior”; and structurally divide ourselves away from nature (or see ourselves as above it) that the objectification of the natural world into “mere materials for exploitation” can follow, and ecological destruction can occur without thought.
Keim’s assertion that “What and who we care about, how we see ourselves and others, our morals and our ethics: these now shape the course of life itself.” is likewise something that Bookchin has an answer to; from even his earliest anarchist writings until his death, Bookchin advocated for what he called an "ethics of complementarity.” by complementing nonhuman beings with our own abilities—and through acting as a supportive species rather than a “dominant” one—we can avoid the problems described above. simultaneously, values like mutualism (with nature and each other), self-organization (among ourselves), and freedom can also be prioritized.
an “ethics of complementarity” is also, in a way, advocated by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who states in Braiding Sweetgrass:
Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind.
Wall Kimmerer expands on this notion in pretty similar terms as Bookchin, saying:
As I grew to understand the gifts of the earth, I couldn’t understand how “love of country” could omit recognition of the actual country itself. The only promise it requires is to a flag. What of the promises to each other and to the land?
What would it be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the natural world as a member of the democracy of species, to raise a pledge of interdependence? [...] In the Thanksgiving Address,1 I hear respect toward all our nonhuman relatives, not one political entity, but to all of life. What happens to nationalism, to political boundaries, when allegiance lies with winds and waters that know no boundaries, that cannot be bought or sold?
1 a traditional address to the natural world given by the Haudenosaunee. a common translation/version of it by John Stokes and Kanawahientun can be found here.