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DEEP_ECOLOGY
September 13-16, 2007
An oddity of the 80s and 90s was the
rise of the "deep ecology" movement,
which as I understand it takes as
it's fundamental moral entity the EMPIRICAL_MORALITY
whole of nature, with humanity as
just one species among many.
The phrase "Deep Ecology" was [ref]
apparently invented by Arne
Naess in a 1973 essay ("The
Shallow and the Deep ..."): (Dave Foreman also mentions:
George Sessions, Bill Devall)
As his opening move, Arne
Naess defines by opposites, Murray Bookchin seems to like
contrasting his "Deep Ecology" the phrase "social ecology".
against that plain old variety
that he has named "Shallow":
"I. The Shallow Ecology
movement: "Fight against
pollution and resource
depletion. Central I thought this might just be a
objective: the health sarcastic aside, but Naess
and affluence of people continues to develop his thesis
in the developed countries." based on this premise. This is
particularly funny, because
And here, right at the elsewhere Naess recommends against
outset, he leads off the use of "straw man" arguments,
with a distortion: and calls for neutral statements
myself, I don't think of the subject of debate.)
I've met an ecologist so
"shallow" they were
uninterested in health
and happiness of people Another irony: One of the problems with
everywhere... the folks who went off the "deep" end is
that they have a tendency to shrug off
third world plagues and famines (the
"too many humans" idea turns into "let
'em die" pretty easily).
"II. The Deep Ecology movement:
"1. Rejection of the
man-in-environment image in favor
the relational, total-field
image. Organisms as knots in the Tangled up in the
biospherical net or field of network metaphor, as
intrinsic relations. [...]" are all of us nodes.
"2. Biospherical
egalitarianism-in
principle. The "in
principle" clause is And as is often the case, the
inserted because any places where we allow exceptions
realistic praxis from the principles are where the
necessitates some actual principles are to be found.
killing, exploitation,
and suppression."
"The ecological field-worker
acquires a deep-seated I think I see where this is going: it's
respect, or even veneration, okay to slaughter the chickens as long
for ways and forms of life." as we've got the right attitude. Does
this hold for slaughtering human beings
as well?
"To the ecological field-worker,
the equal right to live and
blossom is an intuitively clear
and obvious value axiom. Its
restriction to humans is an
anthropocentrism with detrimental
effects upon the life quality of So, now we're justifying this
humans themselves. [...]" egalitarianism in terms of it's
benefit to our own species?
And this differs
from those "shallow"
types, how?
CONSEQUENCES
"Ecological egalitarianism implies the
reinterpretation of the future-research
variable, "level of crowding," so that
general mammalian crowding and loss of
life-equality is taken seriously, not only
human crowding. (Research on the high
requirements of free space of certain
mammals has, incidentally, suggested that
theorists of human urbanism have largely
underestimated human life-space And everyone is so
requirements. Behavioral crowding symptoms, *polite* out in the
such as neuroses, aggressiveness, loss of 'burbs. They do such
traditions, are largely the same among a fine job of preserving
mammals.)" their worthy traditions,
too. And their
ecological consciousness
is legendary.
This is the anti-urban
"Goodbye Yellowbrick Road"
version of environmentalism,
which just by coincidence
kicked-in right around the
time the "white flight"
was in progress.
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