Order-making fueled by the gardening metaphor licenses eliminating whatever lacks utility.

Evidence

Second – from the Enlightenment on, the modern world was distinguished by its activist, engineering attitude toward nature and toward itself. Science was not to be conducted for its own sake; it was seen as, first and foremost, an instrument of awesome power allowing its holder to improve on reality, to re-shape it according to human plans and designs, and to assist it in its drive to self-perfection. Gardening and medicine supplied the archetypes of constructive stance, while normality, health, or sanitation offered the archmetaphors for human tasks and strategies in the management of human affairs. Human existence and cohabitation became objects of planning and administration; like garden vegetation or a living organism they could not be left to their own devices, lest should they be infested by weeds or overwhelmed by cancerous tissues. Gardening and medicine are functionally distinct forms of the same activity of separating and setting apart useful elements destined to live and thrive, from harmful and morbid ones, which ought to be exterminated. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 202 (#expands, via linked claim)

Whereas the word order has acquired certain negative connotations within the ambit of Western rationality, as something implying imposed structures, it can also mean “balance,” as in harmony, and beneficial forms of interconnectedness and living well together. Order is the abstract term for many elements of human life we are truly thankful for: routine, expectation, the security of knowing that people generally act as they say they will. But one must always ask: Order for whom? Order on what terms? — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 612 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The bowl’s magic ‘lived not in the wood but in the giving.’ That’s a deep idea: the power was in the action, not the object. How is generosity like a bowl that fills only when you empty it? Can you think of real things in life that grow when you give them away (like love, or knowledge)? — , A Year of World Stories, 11790 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modern order-making zeal demands everything justify itself by utility — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 428; Efficiency logic ignores that leaving harvest for others is wise — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 648; Modern societies adopt a gardener’s stance of engineered order over nature — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 171 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The garden metaphor made eliminating ‘weeds’ seem a normal administrative task #expands (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 202
• Order can mean beneficial balance rather than imposed structure. #complicates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 612
• Giving something away can make it grow rather than diminish #complicates (0.76) — , A Year of World Stories, 11790
• Efficiency logic ignores that leaving harvest for others is wise #complicates (0.74) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 648