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Lecture 3 Deep Ecology

1. DEEP ECOLOGY: ORIGINS In 1972 Arne Nss (1912-2009; a Norwegian philosophy professor and an avid mountaineer) gave a lecture at the 3rd World Future Research Conference, at Bucharest in Romania, and the lecture was published the next year under the title The Shallow and the Deep: LongRange Ecology Movement. The origin of the deep ecology movement is traced back to this lecture. (The theoretical part of my notes for this lecture is taken from this paper of Nss.) Nss had left his philosophy professorship in 1969 in order to commit all his time and energy for the deep ecology movement. In 1970, he chained himself to rocks in front of the Mardal waterfall, successfully pressing the Norwegian government to abandon plans for a dam on the fjord that feeds the falls. He has also stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Norwegian Green Party. He lived in Tvergastein (means crossing the stones), a mountain cabin he built in 1937 in the Hallingskarvet Mountain Range in Southern Norway. Other than deep ecology as a theory, Nss believed that each one should develop his/her own philosophy. His own personal philosophy was called Ecosophy T, where T stands for Tvergastein, which meant to say that he was achieving self-realization through his own personal philosophy of ecosophy T by living a life closer to nature in the Tvergastein. Deep ecology is a radical theory of the intrinsic value of nature. It is to be remembered that Nss proposed the theory after he observed how people of the Sherpa tribe in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and India did not venture to climb what they considered the sacred mountains. (Tenzing Norgay, who, along with the New Zealander Edmund Hilary, first reached the peak of Mount Everest in 1953, was a Sherpa.) Nss extended this thought to the whole of nature that is to say, nature in its entirety, in all its elements is sacred and valuable. We have seen that according to modern philosophy individuals primarily live like atoms separated in their value from everyone/everything else. Nss, on the other hand, proposes that people and other things are constituted by their relationships with others as knots in a larger web of life. According to him such a relational conception of the human self was anticipated in animist, Hindu, Confucian, Jain and Buddhist traditions. Taking relationships seriously, according to him, meant that humans should care for the extended or ecological self because each person is more than just his or her body and mind. Extended self-concern obliges humans not only to connect with and care about the other people who have made them what they are but also to care for the multifarious systems and beings on which their continued human existence depends. He not only argued for the intrinsic worth of things but also for a communitarian view of life as a whole. Human and nonhuman life has value in its own right, and hence promotion of life in all forms is important. Gandhi was one of the persons influenced Nss the most. He wrote two books on Gandhi: Gandhi and the Nuclear Age (1965), and Gandhi and Group Conflict (1974). Gandhian idea of leading a simple life, his nature-friendly ways and his non-violence were what attracted Nss to Gandhi. Most of all, Nss was influenced by a rationalist philosopher, Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who was a Dutch Jew. (Spinoza is the most inspiring figure in the whole history of western philosophy. He lived a life of conviction. Spinoza fell into disrepute with Jewish

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orthodoxy for his beliefs about an impersonal God. His books were banned, and he was excommunicated from the Jewish community. He had radical modern political views and gave expression to an impersonal conception of God, who is in everything and in which everything exists. This is not a personal God who is a provider, but a God who is the ultimate substance upon which everything else depends for being. Spinoza used the terms nature and god interchangeably. He advocated a life of reason which would be a life of virtue. Politically, he argued for the strictest separation of the Church and state. Spinoza was a philosopher saint; refusing all academic positions, he earned a living by grinding lens and died quietly at the age of 44.) Just like the Indic religions belief that everything in nature is imbued with the divine, Spinoza believed that we cannot think of a God separated from nature. Now, how this view can inspire Nsss deep ecology is not difficult to grasp. 2. SHALLOW ECOLOGY Nss makes a clear-cut distinction between deep and shallow ecology. Let us be clear about the concept of shallow ecology first. For Nss, shallow ecology means all other environmentalisms other than deep environmentalism. They are all marked by a selfcentered agenda; they all want merely to nibble at the surface and want to leave the deepseated foundation of the environmental crisis; they all want merely to do certain things extra (things green) to reduce the environmental harm, but want to keep to the affluent, consumerist life-style of the west and westernized non-western elites in other parts of the world unchanged. Hence the change they want to bring about is cosmetic and not fundamental, not deep. Shallow ecology is a fight against pollution and resource depletion, but the aim of this programme is to save the earth for further exploitation so that the extremely and unreasonably affluent life style of the west will continue. With regard to the scientific culture that is grossly unfriendly towards the environment, shallow ecology wants to maintain the status quo. It is only a way of being more eco-friendly by way of a few countable habits, but it does not support a cultural and intellectual revolution. No change of cultural filter; everything remains the same, except that we plant a few trees, we campaign against plastic, we think about waste management. We dont rather question why the trees are cut, why there is so much waste, why consumerism... and so on. In comparison to shallow ecology, the deep ecology wants to ask very basic questions and bring about a cultural, philosophical revolution. Deep ecology is not simply about green practices, but about the foundations of green practices. For example, shallow ecology promotes green goods, but deep ecology asks whether these goods are, first of all, needed at all. Shallow ecology will be violently against pollution, and will set in place very expensive pollution-reducing systems. Deep ecology would ask whether we need so many cars first of all, and would encourage us to reduce our fuel consumption drastically. Notice that shallow ecology takes an anthropocentric ethical stance, whereas deep ecology takes an ecocentric ethical stance. 3. TOTAL-FIELD IMAGE What Nss wants first is a change of image (the story change) in the western imagination of the human being. According to contemporary culture, we have a humans-in-environment image. What Nss here means is the image of the atomistic individual who is unrelated to

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others and the environmental world. Human beings are like water poured into the bottle. Water is not related at all to the bottle; it is merely contained in the bottle. Instead, Nss proposes the relational total-field-image, according to which, human beings, like all that exists, live in a biospherical net of intrinsic relations. This web of relations is the total field Nss speaks about. The total field could be said to be like Spinozas God. Things of the world, according to Spinoza, are inexplicable without their relation to God, and God too does not have a separate existence from its relation with nature and the world. Without the relation, the things related are no longer the same things; they become radically different things. Hence, the total-field image is supposed to demolish the humans-inenvironment image. Now, Nss thought that the total-field-image is clearly anticipated in non-western traditions like animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism. The new image, according to him, should force the westerner to realize the deep implications of understanding how life prospers in a community of relations rather than in isolation and without relation to one another. Hence, new image means also an image of the COMMUNITY OF LIFE (biotic community) versus atomistic individualism. The notion of individualism, according to Nss, is not true to the way life is fostered, whether it is human life or the life of the most elementary organisms. Understanding the relatedness of everything (the way our body is related to the universe) helps not only non-human life but also human beings. Hence, Nss asks for a philosophical (metaphysical) image makeover. When such a fundamental image makeover happens, we will begin to think differently about our place in the universe. We begin to live in a new story. Remember that in the Axial Age, when philosophy began, such an image was still prevalent, even in the west. Homer had such an idea. In India and China, and in the animist (anima in Latin means soul; animists worship nature because they believed that everything in nature, including humans, was imbued with soul) traditions in general. So, what Nss demands is a recapturing of humanitys beginnings and undoing quite a bit of its present. This is quite a RADICAL change. 4. BIOSPERICAL EGALITARIANISM IN PRINCIPLE Deep ecologists advocate biospherical egalitarianism, the view that the whole of nature is intrinsically valuable in its own right, independent of its usefulness to others. However, what strikes us first in this view is: how then can we live our own life without doing violence to these things of value? Unquestionably, we cant live without being violent to beings of nature in some way, for that is the cycle of life take, for example, the food chain. Our relatedness to other beings on earth means also that we depend on them for the maintenance of our own life. In this advancement of our life, this drive to live, we cant avoid harming non-human beings. How can biospherical egalitarianism meet this challenge? It is for this reason that Nss added the phrase in principle to biospherical egalitarianism. Any praxis (process of putting a theory into practice) necessitates some violence, some exploitation, killing and suppression. This unavoidable violence is not frowned upon by the deep ecologists. This is considered a natural part of life. Even a pure vegetarian has to suppress plant life in order to uphold her own existence. For Nss, there is no difference in the existential priority of plant, animal, and inanimate beings. What is frowned upon is the turning of the existential struggle (the struggle to exist) into a cult of violence and exploitation. Here the matter of degree is important. What is objectionable is

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the degree of violence and the view that only humans are valuable. Under such assumption, violence is perpetrated as just and proper. On the other hand, the emphasis of the principle of biospherical egalitarianism is on the question of value. All beings are intrinsically valuable. They all have equal right to live and blossom in their own way and time. Since all beings exist in a relational community of life, all members of the community are equal in value, though they are not equal in other , respects (intelligence, life, movement etc.) Hence, ethically, we are obliged to respect, or etc.). even venerate all ways and forms of life. The restriction of this right only to the humans is restriction anthropocentrism (speciesism), and it affects the quality of life of humans themselves. For , Nss, according to the cultural change that he is intending, this right to live of all should become a conviction of all people, and its success depends solely on the deep satisfaction we ll receive from close partnership with other forms of life. The estranged relation of human life. beings from nature alienates them from their own self, which is a relational whole whole. In tune with the image o philosophy makeover, Nss asks for an ethics makeover or by the principle of biospheric egalitarianism egalitarianism. Figure 1: Biospheric egalitarianism

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5. COMPLEXITY, DIVERSITY, SYMBIOSIS Three important principles or norms of deep ecology are the natural principles of complexity, diversity and symbiosis. Firstly, Nss makes a distinction between complexity and complication. Due to the naivety of human beings, they take what is complex as complicated. The ecosystem is not something complicated without any unifying principles like a chaotic modern city. Indeed, it is a complex system a multiplicity of more or less lawful, interacting factors operating together to form a unity, a system. The ecosystem is the macro scale of a micro-organism; that is, the ecosystem itself is organismic. The ecosystem is upheld by deep-rooted organic principles. Hence, the complexity. Organisms and interactions in the biosphere exhibit astonishing complexity. Hence, we need to begin to think in terms of vast, intricately complex organismic systems (which sometimes defy human logic). The complexity of the ecosystem should make us aware of the profound human ignorance of biospherical relationships and of the disturbances we can cause, sometimes unknowingly, to the complex relationships of interdependence in the ecosystem. Secondly, the complexity of the ecosystem also means that there is enormous diversity within it. Diversity enhances the potentialities of survival, the chances of new modes of life emerging, the richness of forms. Since deep ecology considers all beings equal in value, it believes in the fostering of diversity. It believes that nature has a way of balancing things according to the principle of cooperation rather than competition. Hence, deep ecology pits the maxim live and let live against the evolutionary slogan survival of the fittest. (The evolutionary principle itself means only that the organism that adapts best to its environment survives; it doesnt mean the strongest survives.) Deep ecology advocates coexistence: both you and me versus either you or me. The rich diversity of life forms available on earth is disappearing on account of human arrogance and lordship over the earth. The deep ecologist, rather, fosters the available diversity. Thirdly, Nss emphasizes symbiosis: the close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that benefits each member; a relationship of mutual benefit or dependence. Symbiosis is the cooperative principle. Beings have the ability to coexist and cooperate in complex relationships, rather than in violent relationships of killing, exploiting, and suppressing each other. So: In accordance with the changed picture of the place of human beings within the universe and the ethics of biospheric egalitarianism, the complexity of individual organisms and the complexity of interconnectedness within the ecosystem are phenomena deserving human admiration and moral sensibility. The complexity of the ecosystem means also that there is enormous diversity within it, which calls for human fostering of this variety rather than reduction of it. The diversity available in the ecosystem is interconnected in a complex web of relationships called symbiosis, which calls for human admiration and is the statement of the cooperative scheme that dominates much of the ecosystem. 6. CULTURALLY DIVERSE, CLASSLESS, NON-EXPLOITATIVE HUMAN SOCIETIES Do the complexity, diversity and symbiosis of the ecosystem reflect at all on the functioning and organization of human societies and cultures? Nss does think so.

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The tendency to dominate reduces the multiplicity of the forms of life in nature, and it also brings in destruction within the communities of the same species. Similarly, Nss thinks, the various forms of human cultural life (different cultures) also need to flourish in an ambience of cooperation and symbiosis, without one culture striving to swallow up another. Hence, deep ecology supports the fight against cultural domination as much as militaristic invasion (imperialism in all forms). As deep ecology is against the annihilation of whales and tigers, it is also against the destruction of human tribes and cultures in an effort to create one single modern human community. Deep ecology is against reducing variety in order to bring about unity; it is for the survival of various forms of life in a symbiotic relationship. Cultural imperialism and globalization are against the principles of deep ecology, which is against the levelling (flattening=making everything alike) tendency of modernization. Nss is eager to show that deep ecology is not a conservative ideology, eager to maintain the status quo position with regard to human society. While deep ecology is for the different cultural forms, he insists, it is not for the different classes and castes in societies. So: deep ecology is for cultures, but it is not for classes (working class, middle class, etc., and the elitism and privilege attached to being in a higher class or caste). A criticism that Marxists raise against cultural activists is that they break up the unity of the working class by rousing the cultural affinities of the workers, by working on their sentiments, and dividing them on these grounds. Nss does not want this Marxist criticism to affect deep ecology. While a culture is a meaningful idea (as it is the way of life of a people) and has the right to survive, a class or caste is a system of privilege and so it has no right to survive. A class in any society is defined by the relation of a group of people towards the means of production. Class defines whether its members own the means of production or not. (Caste is something different and is typical of India; it means a hereditary system of social hierarchy relating to occupation and notions of purity and impurity. Nss does not speak about caste; I am including it under Nsss discussion of class since caste too is a system of privilege and hierarchy rather than a cultural group.) Nss agrees that exploitation and suppression by the elite class in any given society might contribute to the diversity of cultural forms, consciously or unconsciously. In such instances diversities exist for the sake of class interests, and both the exploiter and the exploited are affected negatively in their progress towards self-realization. So, Nss emphasizes that the principle of diversity does not apply to the differences that are there in a cultural community only on account of class (or caste) interests of their elites. So the principles of biospheric egalitarianism, diversity, complexity and symbiosis are anti-class in intent. The future world is one of classless diversity and symbiosis. There wont be have-nots but there shall be cultural differences which will allow people to live meaningful lives according to their own designs. That is, cultural groups should have their own power for SELF-DETERMINATION determining their political and social life according to their own patterns and genius. Not classes but cultures. Thus, Nss champions cultural freedom and autonomy. The non-exploitative relationship that Nss speaks about applies also to group conflicts, including the biggest one existing today between the developed and developing nations of the world. Nss is openly critical of the cultural imperialism that is continuing in the world today. His design of the future world is one of rational and moderate life style in

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the west and enhancing the capacity of people everywhere towards a reasonably healthy and meaningful life, which will help them meet their important needs. So: Social life within the deep ecological vision is characterized by a culturally diverse but classless ways of living, and non-exploitative human relationships (among themselves as well as towards the environment). 7. DECENTRALISATION, LOCAL AUTONOMY AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY Any form of life, whether human or non-human, has an internal system of government. Outside exertion of power or government over these forms will make them vulnerable. Hence, the local region in which that form has obtained an ecological equilibrium will come to be disturbed. So, they will do well on their own, according to their own genius (this phrase was used by Nehru to characterize his policy of non-intervention in Indias tribal cultures; Nehru asserted that he was not sure whether his own or the tribals value system was better). With regard to human communities, Nss advocates Gandhian-type local selfgovernment, and self-sufficiency (swadeshi). Self-sufficiency should be both mental and material. (Note that for Gandhi also swaraj first of all means self-sufficiency and freedom of spirit.) Influences from outside can bring about ruptures to communities that live in harmony with nature. This requires radical decentralization. Local autonomy reduces energy consumption drastically. If a locality is self-reliant without importation of commodities and services from outside, it will use amazingly less fuel than a locality that depends for outside supply for everything. Local autonomy is strengthened by a reduction in the number of links in the hierarchical chains of decisions. According to Nss, longer the chain, less the upholding of local interests. Even if a decision follows the majority at each step, many local interests may be dropped along the line, if the decision-making chain is too long. Imitating the complexity of ecosystems, Nss advocates complex rather than uniform economies and a variety of means of living. Combinations of industrial and agricultural activity, of intellectual and manual work, of specialized and non-specialized occupations, of urban and rural activity, of work in city and recreation in rural nature and recreation in city and work in rural areas. With regard to what is in store for humanity in future, deep ecology does not favour technology aided prognosis but serene clarification of possibilities. It favours sensitivity towards continuity of living traditions, and sensitivity towards human ignorance of the complexities of relational totalities. Nss is not against technologies; in fact, he argues for an exponential growth of technical skills and inventions. However, he argues for new directions in technology which today have no support in the modern nations technologies that will enhance the symbiotic relations of the biosphere. Most technologies are only human-centric and disturb the ecosystems. So, deep ecology supports what is usually called BIO-REGIONALISM. It advocates leading a simple life with local production of food and other products by people that one knows. Such system of production will restrain human needs according to local sensibilities and availability and will curtail the malpractices that are done in food production when production is done for people one does not know. Bio-regionalism increases environmental

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awareness and caring and decreases exploitation of the environment and people. Bioregionalism is the practice of self-sufficiency (swaraj). So: Political life within a deep ecological vision is widely decentralized with emphasis on local autonomy; economic life centers around self-sufficiency achieved through local production and distribution of commodities (bio-regionalism). 8. ECOSOPHY, NOT ECOLOGY Nss prefers the term ecosophy to ecology. Eco comes from the Greek oikos, meaning house. House here stands for the whole biosphere, the home of life. Ecology is the scientific study of the relations of organisms to one another, to their environment, and the interaction of human beings with the environment and life therein. The scientific study (logos=rational, scientific study), Nss feared, would lead only to shallow ecology. Rather, a philosophical study of the environment (oikos+Sophia[wisdom]), which would guide the environmental movement, he thought, would lead to a cultural revolution and will bring about new values and new attitudes towards the environment. Ecology is a limited science based on scientific methods and tools. Ecosophy (ecophilosophy) does not deal with scientific descriptions and predictions. It rather is a philosophy of ecological harmony and equilibrium. Philosophy is openly descriptive and prescriptive. It lays down norms based on fundamental principles. Science is neutral description and does not make value judgments. Philosophy leads to political actions and viewpoints, science does not. Nss wants a science that is not value-neutral but valueconscious. 9. ECOLOGICAL SELF An important aspect of Nsss philosophy is self-realization in fact the central aim of the human person within a deep ecological vision is to achieve union with nature: that is, to realize that ones self is not limited to the single ego (the I) but can be expanded to the whole ecosystem. As we have seen, inspired by Spinoza, Nss rejects atomistic individualism. Human being is not in essence separated from other human beings and nonhuman beings. The dualistic separation in modern philosophy leads to selfishness and insensitivity towards all that is not self. According to the total-field-image and interrelationship envisaged in deep ecology, human beings are essentially constituted by their relation to other humans and non-human beings. My identity or self is made up of my relation to the whole environmental world. This way of thinking alone, according to deep ecologists, can bring about an environment-friendly attitude. Hence, my self is not narrowly human and focused radically on myself. My self is constitutively (from its very makeup) turned towards the whole of nature. Not that I have no particular identity; this particular identity is penetrated already by my exposure towards all that exists. Hence, Nss calls the human self an ECOLOGICAL SELF. The boundaries of our skin are to be enlarged towards the whole of nature. As embodied beings who can think, we relate with the world through our senses. We see a bird that flies in the sky and hear a bird singing from the tree. So, our self is extended much beyond our body. More importantly, we are nourished and made what we are biologically and spiritually (that is, nonmaterially) by the relational whole where we are placed. Hence we are made of the extended

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ecological self. By definition we are extended beyond ourselves. We are outward-looking beings bent towards nature. Hence, respecting self means respecting nature. I am part of nature and nature is in me. Without nature I am not there, and without me and all that exists, there is no nature (remember Spinoza). And so, self-realization in the proper sense of the ecological self is reconnection with nature. This reconnection enhances the quality of human life, and lets other beings live with us in harmony. 10. CRITICISM OF DEEP ECOLOGY Deep ecologists and social ecologists agree that the relationship between humans and nature ought to be one of interconnection, cooperation and complementarity. Early societies, they agree, were based on such cooperation. But according to social ecologists, this cooperation disappeared not due to human-centrism but due to hierarchical social structures. For them, deep ecology gives wrong causes and solutions to the ecological crisis like population explosion and human-centrism. Rather, the human domination of other humans and the capitalist economy are the reasons for the ecological crisis. The solution, according to them, is not to recover a kind of spiritual affinity with nature as the deep ecologists advocate. Rather, the solutions lie in changing society through agitating against all forms of domination. Individual action and union with nature will make no difference to the ecological problem. For social ecologists, the biospherical egalitarianism of deep ecology is misanthropic. This is because deep ecologists do not have a critical historical approach to the environmental crisis, argue the social ecologists. Deep ecology has only a nonathropocentric core; it has neither a core philosophy nor a programme of action allege social ecologists. Ecofeminists criticize deep ecology as biased towards male perspectives. For example, according to them, the rationalist, all-inclusive, and supposedly universalist perspective usually masquerades its patriarchal assumptions. This feminist criticism applies in general to much of philosophy, and, thus, also to deep ecology. Such a perspective does not look at the details of real differences, hidden oppressions, and thus, through increasing the currency of such views, they help accumulate further privileges for males and their perspectives. Deep ecologys self-realization ideal in being one with nature mostly applies to privileged males in much of the world. Further, while deep ecologists emphasize human oppression of nature, they do not recognize other types of oppressions like racism, gender bias, oppression of the poor and the like. Deep ecologists criticize both ecofeminism and social ecology as movements that lose their focus on the natural world by getting involved in issues of social justice. They think that both social ecology and ecofeminism can formulate their respective positions from within deep ecology. Also, that there are issues other than patriarchy and capitalism that have given rise to the present environmental crisis, and that these other issues broadly surround anthropocentrism.

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11. EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF DEEP ECOLOGY I. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realizations of these values and are also values in themselves. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation to directly or indirectly try to implement the necessary changes.

II. III. IV. V. VI.

VII.

VIII.

12. CASES: INTRINSIC VALUE OF NATURE I have said several times in class that the intrinsic value of nature came as a spontaneous fact of life to pre-modern people and also to people who even today live in a world which is sealed off from modernity and its bifurcation between the subject and the object, fact and value etc. They experienced the interconnection between the universe and themselves much more easily than we moderns. How do we know? We know it from their religions, from their rituals and myths. One of the most powerful historical examples of the deep ecological view of the interconnection between humans and nature as a whole is expressed in the Speech of Chief Seattle, 1854. (I have uploaded this speech on moodle. Source: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/ Solutions/seattle.htm) In 1854, the white settlers in todays Washington state of the USA offered to buy the land of the natives, promising reservation for them. It is in this context that Chief Seattle, a prominent chieftain among native American Indians, gave the speech, which is said to be the most evocative expression of ecological responsibility. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?, he says, because the idea is strange to us. If you do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy or sell it? he wonders. Then he begins to articulate another worldview, how the attitude of his people is completely different from those of the white settlers. For his people, every part of the earth is special and sacred. For them, the water in the streams is like blood of their ancestors. They have a relationship of kinship with nature: rivers are our brothers. For the whites, on the other hand: One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.

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The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He wants to give the land to the whites only on the condition that they would treat the beasts as their brothers. He says ironically that he is a savage and may be these are savage ways, but he underscores the beastliness of a civilization that kills animals for fun. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. So the crux of the speech is this sense of connection with nature and everything in it. Another example that I want to give you is from the fictional world James Cameroons 2009 movie AVATAR. In this movie, Cameroon is imagining a time on the earth when our energy resources will be very meagre. And so humans attack Planet Pandora which is rich in energy substitutes. Pandora has a humanoid species called the Navi and one of the Navi tribes inhabits the energy resource that the humans want to capture. What is special about Pandora in Cameroons imagination is that its ecosystem is linked together in an extraordinary network. The animals, plants, the rocks and the Navi are all in synch as if wired with a special energy. The Navis worship a Mother Goddess by the name Eywa, described as a network of energy that flows through all living things, whose energy they think they have borrowed, and someday we will have to give it back. Cameroon exploits the animistic or panentheistic belief of something, some energy that connects all things. The Navi kills animals for food, and then speak to their prey as a brother whose spirit goes to Eywa, and the body to the earth. Avatar attacks the depersonalization of nature and its subjugation by the human being which is the philosophical foundation of modern science. Through the characters of Jack and Neytiri, Cameroon portrays the optimistic victory of the ecological vision over a speciesist, humanistic vision. (This is completely different from the vision of Dances with Wolves (1990), the Kervin Costner environmental drama, which expresses doubt over humanitys perception of the ecological crisis. Costner ends the movie a story of the colonizers destruction of the Native American eco-friendly culture by saying that the colonizers had indeed subdued the natives, destroyed their habitat and made the buffalos in the prairies on which they lived extinct. Costner points to the reality of mindless ecological destruction; Cameroon to the possible and even necessary victory of the ecological vision.) Did Cameroon imagine the movie in the ecological, ethical way that I am now portraying it to you? Yes, he did. He said: Avatar asks us all to be warriors for the Earth. This beautiful, fragile, miracle of a planet that we have right here is our land. Not ours to own, but ours to defend and protect. He continues: Theres a sense of entitlement Were here, were big, weve got the guns, weve got the technology, weve got the brains, we therefore are entitled to every damn thing on this planet. Thats not how it works and were going to find out the hard way if we dont wise up and start seeking a life thats in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth.

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