Opinion Environmental Hormones of the Mind By DOUGLAS LUMMIS	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
心の環境ホルモン 心の環境ホルモン ホルモン（内分泌物質）の代わりに体に入り込み、 恐ろしい結果を招く環境ホルモンの影響が 懸念されているが、ある日、筆者は 心に入り込む知的環境ホルモンが あるということに気付いた…。

In my amateur understanding, "environmental hormones" are not real hormones, but chemical substances that resemble hormones. Or rather, they have the ability to fool the body into thinking that they are. They enter the body, deceive it into accepting them as hormones, and begin to function in the place of hormones, with terrible consequences.

It occurred to me recently that there are also such things as "intellectual environmental hormones." These are pseudoideas that have as destructive an effect on the mind as the pseudohormones have on the body.

Two striking examples are "modernization" (as in such expressions as "modernization of society") and "development" (as in "development economics" or "development aid").

Both of these closely resemble ideas and have the ability to deceive the mind into accepting them as ideas. When they enter your head, they give you the illusion that you have gained some knowledge.

When you bring them up in your consciousness, they give you the illusion that you are thinking. When you use them in sentences, they give you the illusion that you are saying something. When you use them as a lens through which to look at the world, they give you the impression that you are seeing something real.

And just like real ideas, they lead to conclusions and generate action. They are environmental hormones of the mind, for while they give you the illusion that they help you to see and think, in fact they obstruct vision and impair thought.

Whenever you describe a process as modernization, you relieve yourself of the responsibility of observing what, exactly, is changing. Whenever the term development is used, it becomes a substitute for attentive observation and careful description.

These pseudoideas — especially the pseudoidea of development — have the power to render a big part of the world — a big part of what is happening in the world — invisible.

There is one thing, however, that the pseudoidea development does have the power to make visible: the pseudophenomenon development.

Once you are persuaded that development is a real idea, you see it everywhere. Or you see its opposite, "underdevelopment," or some stage between the two. Like King Midas' golden touch (or like cancer cells) development has the power to transform everything into some version of itself.

This ability to obstruct vision and stop thought serves an important function. The pseudoidea development hides from us the environmental and cultural destruction, the systematic exploitation and the impoverishment that are being carried out in its name. To put it the other way around, it persuades us that these things are not a massive historical catastrophe, but rather are development.

And it is impossible to be critical of development. Why? Because it is impossible to think about it. Thought stopped when we accepted it as an idea in the first place.

Shukan ST: July 9, 1999

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