Worldviews can sometimes be moderately compatible, as in the case of material consumerism and conservationism, but preservation had to be enforced through legal means through the 1900s, and the more so as a newer worldview came on the tails of a populist movement in the 1960s – Environmentalism. Both Preservationism and Environmentalism have always had a battle with our materalist worldview since they are about opposing worldviews with a different kind of ethics about the natural world. It’s not that previous worldviews were necessarily unethical, just that they were limited in what was considered an ethical part of the system.
As in the last post, I am pointing out that earlier worldviews were about humanity specifically with everything else considered just inanimate objects only, with even spirituality for the most part being about a connection to ‘God’ and not to life in general. While prophets may have suggested that all life was ‘holy’ it was rarely practiced that way, except by specific holy people (e.g., St Francis of Assisi).
Indigenous peoples had always been ecocentric (see earlier post for explanation of terms) even as they used and manipulated the natural world. So, it’s not about some impossible idea of becoming ecocentric saints – i.e., not using nature, as if that is possible – it’s about living within a natural system without ruining and despoiling its regenerative capacity as we are currently doing.
To this point in our collective human story, we still act as if nature is just something to be used, with economic viability as the sole measure of success. We are slowly bringing in the natural world to the economic equation (with environmental and ecological economics), but still only as a resource to be conserved, and not as a partner in our own survival.
I talked in the last post about how nature is being given ‘legal rights’ that ‘forces’ us to consider our actions as we use nature, but that is far from being ethical, merely practical to avoid economic penalties. About 75% of environmental laws were enacted during the heyday of early environmentalism and remain because of a populist movement to ‘save’ the natural world from the ravages of human greed. Yet, if we are to save ourselves, we need to think much more deeply about how we interact with the natural world and especially how we think about it beyond any legal framework.
To this point, or at least since 1972, we have used the law courts as a stick to beat compliance to a growing ecological ethic. In my earlier post, I emphasize from my academic research how a large number of people are primed to be ecocentric thinkers with a high ethic for the natural world. But until we as a collective, insist that business practices do an ethical practice in protecting nature, it is still an uphill battle as hierarchically managed economics takes precedence over everything else.
Part of our problem is how we have societally evolved over the last millennia to think of ‘rights’ as legal rights and not inalienable natural rights for various ‘objects.’ Environmental History professor Roderick Nash, talks in his book, ‘The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics’ about how throughout history, the ‘right-less’ – slaves, women, others – have struggled to expand the body of legal rights to include themselves. For instance, indigenous peoples for many decades, were not even considered human in legal systems, and women, while considered human, were never considered to have any rights outside of their duties as subservient women. This was merely ‘the natural order of things’ to justify a corrupt and warped worldview for control and manipulation of whole human populations and exploitation of the planet for profit and power.
Many writers, along with Nash explain how and why there is a growing body of rights expanding to include nature. For example, author, Thomas Berry, in 2001, published ‘The Origin, Differentiation and Role of Rights’ in which he described how all members of the Earth’s community (biological and mineral) possess inherent rights. Our growing ethic, and task before us, is not to find legal ways to enforce rights, but to tap into a spiritual place for a new cosmology within ourselves that recognizes the inalienable rights of consciousness itself.
This is not a hurdle for indigenous peoples who understand and practice this already, but for the majority of humanity who are trapped with a dead-universe, scientific-materialism mindset, it requires a psychic revolution – an evolution of the soul. While most mainstream religions may promote stewardship of the planet, they still put humans at the top of the life pyramid and everything else as subservient to human needs.
Under the current system of law in almost every country, nature is considered to be property. Something that is considered property confers upon the property owner the right to use it, however they wish. What is needed is to have an ethic that natural systems are entities that have an independent and inalienable right to exist and flourish. Why is this so crucial? Despite laws protecting nature, by most every measure, the environment today is in worse shape than when the major environmental laws were first adopted some sixty years ago. The logic for a nature ethic is that a true human right to a healthy environment is dependent on the natural environment being healthy and thriving itself – this is a lot like creating a land ethic as Aldo Leopold stated in 1947 (e.g., see link of earlier post).
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” And, “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land” The Land Ethic: Aldo Leopold
We must see ourselves as part of the global system and not having dominion over it. We literally have to be the voice for the Natural World, acting as if it was not present in the room with us but has an equal right to be heard. And that is where knowledge and wisdom come in. We have a lot of knowledge about ecological systems, and where we don’t, we have to exercise caution and prudence when making decisions that interfere with such systems. And that comes from using wisdom at all times.
For most of human history, humanity thrived with minimal technology, but the ecocentric mindset is what was crucial to how they thrived. After all, we are all here today. We need to look at the wisdom of our ancestors (see early post links 1, 2, and 3) and then apply that wisdom to modern technology and economic thinking within a new equation to create the modern sustainability revolution. This must happen if we are to create the better world we truly desire, and not the one a corrupt hierarchical system has and would further impose upon us.
In the last few posts I hope I have expressed the urgency to give a voice to everyone (men and women) and then extend that voice to the natural world. The sustainability revolution is not about overthrowing some old regime, as had been typical for the past 5-6 millennia, but simply adjusting our mindset to eliminate the need for a hierarchy to run things for us. One of our persistent beliefs is that we must have a hierarchical system. That was a mindset imposed on us long ago by the male-patriarchal hierarchies of the past that have stretched their reach to the present day.
I realize how unnerving that may seem to so many people, inured as they are to having hierarchies making decisions on their behalf. Globally, I don’t think anyone trusts the various hierarchies, yet their millennia-long stories have been so pervasive, we are completely disempowered to believe that any other system of living is possible. As I have said many times in this blog, the transformation we need is really quite straightforward – just making a couple of choices to think independently and choose to express compassion and love for life and the many levels of true community within the natural world. Getting past 5-6 millennia of conditioning? – now that is the challenge.
0 Comments