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EMPIRICAL_MORALITY
September 13, 2007
I've often heard Gary Snyder's
name associated with "deep DEEP_ECOLOGY
ecology" -- he didn't invent
the term, though he may have
invented the ideas. As an undergrad, Snyder was
saying things like "I want
to create wilderness out of
empire."
"... the Ainu suggest to us with great
clarity that this life-support system is
not just a mutual food factory, it is
mysteriously beautiful. It is what we
are. We now see the Ainu not as a fading
remnant, but as elders and teachers whose
playful sense of their own bioregion points
a way to see and live on our planet as a
whole."
Gary Snyder
"Amazing Grace"
"A Place in Space" (1995)
p. 98
My temptation is to say
that "deep ecology" is
completely wrong --
a confusion of logical But really, it's probably not
categories the sort of issue that can
be right or wrong.
a conflation of different
kinds of "life" Our difference is on the level
of "values", perhaps a
"religious issue":
I take the human "as the
measure of all things"
(by what other yardstick
would you expect a human
to measure?)
For someone like me, the
notion that human concerns
should be sacrificed or
compromised for the good
of the non-human is to be
"a traitor to your own kind" --
In unguarded moments,
Though my take on at least, some
"humanity" is that it deep ecologists
includes all of the have said things
intelligent, thinking, that make this
At present, feeling, communicating abundantly clear.
this means entities out there...
essentially E.g. a stray
just "homo All who are capable of remark from Dave
sapiens", creative imagination, Foreman (since
but it could and are not solely ruled retracted) about
change... by "instinct". the African AIDS
either via epidemic being a
contact with The liberal humanist restoring force
ETIs, or looks at the history of of nature.
scientific overcoming parochial
data to back chauvinism to achieve RADICAL_FREEZE
the notion respect for others,
that whales, notes that there have
chimps, etc been changes in our
deserve this thinking about what we
status. are and about what we The process by which
are not, and tries to The Other has become
(My understanding extrapolate that line to just another.
is that whales future changes.
at least come
close, but And that's where I
chimps, not think they get confused:
really.)
In the past we
considered some
"non-human" that
we now recognize
as truly human.
It does not follow
from this that we
will someday
embrace everything
as human.
VEGE
Still, let's say my first
impulse was correct to
call the Deep Ecology
worldview "erroneous"...
there's still a difficulty:
This "erroneous worldview"
often leads to the right
answer.
My own "correct worldview" has at
least historically -- and
probably even now -- a tendency
toward being too clever about
manipulating the non-human world.
We are justified -- in our eyes --
in sacrificing part of the natural
world to our own interests, but we
have a tendency to assume we know
precisely what those interests are
and how to act on them, and often
we don't quite.
The world is a very complex
system -- and indeed, we
are a very complex system
(and Snyder would say this WILD_MIND
is because we and the world
are all the same system),
and it's very easy to make
errors in calculation.
The deep respect for the natural
embodied in deep ecology results in
an inherent conservatism in dealing
with the environment, a reluctance
to gamble, a risk-adverseness, and
this may very well be more sensible
in the long run given either of
our points of view.
Now, it is not all that difficult for
someone with my human-centered point of
view to make a case for being cautious
in dealing with the natural world -- This reminds me of the convoluted
since after all, all our lives depend on mental gyrations that Ayn Rand's
it -- but it's necessarily a more characters go through to get to
indirect argument: I repeatedly need to conventional moral behavior
establish points that "deep ecology" without admitting to believing in
takes as axiomatic. anything but self-interest...
Why not just grant
that "altruism" is
In what sense then, can okay sometimes?
I claim that the "deep
ecology" worldview is Or admit that you're
"wrong"? using an expansive
definition of "self"
when you say
"self-interest".
If we were discussing a scientific model
and not a moral one, wouldn't we judge
the model solely by whether it produced
the right answers?
And in the event of competing models
that generate the same answers, the
model that gets there most directly
would be taken as "true" (or at least
as preferable over a more complex
equivalent).
But: I don't think both
mental models produce the
identical results.
My expectation is that there
are cases where someone like
myself will see an acceptable
rational calculation of a
tradeoff in environmental
damage for the sake of human
gain, where a Deep Ecologist
would instead insist on the E.g. the knee
need for humans to sacrifice jerk tendency
their own ends for some of the deep Don't we have
Greater Good that I just ecologist to too many people?
don't think is there. take the side
of plague germs. If you really
think that's
true, don't we
have to get rid
of some of them?
Who exactly?
Would you be
willing to help?
From "Defending the Earth" (1991)
A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin & Dave Foreman
p. 125:
RADICAL_FREEZE
Murray Bookchin:
"... Dave Foreman has clearly pulled
back from the precipice of oppressive
extremes that have been articulated
from within the deep ecology
movement. Yet if the deep ecology
principle of 'biocentrism' teaches
that human beings are no different
from lemmings in terms of their
'intrinsic worth' and the moral
consideration we owe them, and if
human beings are viewed as being
subject to 'natural laws' in just the
same way as any other species, then
these 'extreme' statements are really
the _logical_ conclusions of deep
ecology philosophy."
"Some deep ecologists such as Warwick
Fox have used harsh words in
condemning Dave's old views on famine
in Ethiopia. Yet if one is
consistently 'biocentric,' one can
easily come to believe that Ethiopian
children should be left to starve
just as any animal species that uses
up its food supply will starve. And
one can also easily come to believe
that AIDS is 'nature's revenge' for
'excessive' population growth,
ecological damage, and the like."
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