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My Opinion

Sources

Deep Ecology

Jainism

Pierce, Christine, and Donald VanDeVeer. The Environmental Ethics & Policy Book. 3rd ed. Canada: Holly Allen, 2003. 263-268. Print.

Schindler, William. "Hindus/atman." All Experts. (2013): n. page. Web. 24 Feb. 2013. <http://en.allexperts.com/q/Hindus-946/2012/2/atman.htm>.

*I do agree with the idea of self-realization. Just like in the example mentioned above, I identify myself with my family, my nation, and my planet. When my sister, for example, feels pain, I too feel pain. When she is happy, that in turn makes me feel happy. When I see a tragedy such as 9/11, I too feel pain as a result of identifying with the nation.

*I do not agree with the idea of biocentric equality. Those who practice Jainism, for example, spend their lives making sure that they do not kill any biotic being. They move very slowly, when they actually decide to move. They try to stay as still as possible. When they walk around, they use sticks to brush organisms out of the way so they do not step on them and kill them. I have to say that I respect their dedication to their practice, but I feel that living one’s life that way is a waste of time. All in all, I believe that a person with the capacity to guide their life with moral principle has more worth than a mosquito. Thinking otherwise is simply crazy.

*I do believe that we should live in harmony with nature to the extent that we appreciate what we have. For example, I am an animal lover and I would never participate in “recreational puppy cooking” because seeing an animal in pain makes me feel pain as well. However, I do go hunting for a majority of hunting season. The difference between the two “methods” of killing lies in respect for the animal. A person who cooks a puppy does not have respect for the animal. When I hunt, I DO have respect for the animal. I would rather me hunt a deer and eat the meat than a deer get hit by a car and decompose on the side of the road. I look only for clean kills so that the animal experiences the least amount of potential suffering. In the end, I am left with a feeling of not regret, but recognition of killing a beautiful being. I recognize that the deer was not a zero and indeed has meaningful worth, and therefore has my respect.

Bill Devall and George Sessions

*I have to pick on #3 in Sessions and Naess' List of Basic Principles.

Basic Principles of Deep Ecology

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and

nonhuman life on earth have value in themselves.

These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhum world for human purposes.

2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

4. The flourishing of human life and culture is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.

5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

6. 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.

7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.

8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

Basically, they are saying that a human cannot use anything on earth except the tiniest portion to keep themselves alive. This means that when you are hungry, you can only eat enough so that you do not die. You cannot make your own shelter unless your life is in danger otherwise.

In my opinion, this is just crazy. Nobody would have homes, technology, or transportation. Towson University would not even exist and we would not be sitting here right now. This is an extremely radical proposition that Sessions and Naess bring to the table.

"He was attempting to describe the deeper, more spiritual approach to nature."

Deep Ecology

Sessions & Naess

Basic Principles

"The term deep ecology was coined by Arne Naess in his 1973 article, 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long - Range Ecology Movements.'"

"George Sessions and Arne Naess summarized the principles of deep ecology while camping in Death Valley, California...They articulated these principles in a literal, some what neutral way, hoping that they would be understood and accpted by persons coming from different philosophical and religious positions."

"Readers are encouraged to elaborate their own versions of deep ecology, clarify key concepts and think through the consequences of acting from these principles."

Deep ecology examines the relationship

between humans and nature.

"In sharp contrast to the dominant worldview...which regards humans as isolated and fundamentally separate from the rest of nature."

*They view humans as superior.

Main Thesis

Dominant Worldview

Deep Ecology

"In order for living and non-living creatures to live in

harmony and increase life quality, humans must

develop their spirituality and realize their uniqueness as a part of a whole."

-Devall & Sessions

Devall and Sessions note that "there is no grand solution which is guaranteed to save us from ourselves."

Dominance over Nature

Natural environment as resource

for humans

Material/economic growth for growing human population

Belief in ample resource reserves

High technological progress

and solutions

Consumerism

National/centralized community

Harmony with Nature

All nature has intrinsic worth/biospecies equality

Elegantly simple material needs (material goals serving the larger goal of self-realization)

Earth "supplies" limited

Appropriate technology; nondominating science

Doing with enough/recycling

Minority tradition/bioregion

"But insofar as we perceive things as individual organisms or entities, the insight draws us to respect all human and non-human individuals in their own right as parts of the whole without feeling the need to set up hierarchies of species with humans at the top."

- Devall & Sessions

Basically means:

"The realization of self-in-Self."

self = individual biotic being

Self = organic wholeness

"Biocentric equality is intimately related to the all-inclusive Self-relation in the sense that if we harm the rest of nature then we are harming ourselves."

- Devall & Sessions

=

Self Realization

Western Culture Continued

Equal in intrinsic worth

"Humans are 'plain citizens' of the biotic

community, not lord or master over all other species."

- Aldo Leopold

How can this goal be achieved?

"Dominance Obsession"

Goal: "To attain full mature

personhood and uniqueness."

Family

Nation

"We must see beyond our narrow contemporary

cultural assumptions and values, and the conventional wisdom of our time and place, and this is achieved by the meditative deep questioning process."

- Devall & Sessions

*Humans over non-humans

*Masculine over feminine

*Wealthy & powerful over poor

*Western over non-western cultures

Basically: Realizing one's role in life & seeing oneself as a unique part of the big picture.

(There are no isolated egos)

These ultimate norms are:

*Self-realization

*Biocentric Equality

Biocentric Equality

Planet

Identifying yourself with larger and larger unities.

Time for a quick history lesson!

"The intuition of biocentric equality is that all things in the biosphere have an equal right to live and blossom and to reach their own individual forms of unfolding and self-realization within the larger Self-realization. This basic intuition is that all organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth."

*Hinduism portrays an interesting concept known as atman and Brahman which is essentially the same as self-Realization.

*atman: means "soul" or "individual soul" and is eternal and immortal, however since the body is not, Atman still "lives" even after bodily death.

*Brahman: means "world soul" or "cosmic soul" and is not an individual life source, but "is the life source of all that has been, is and will be throughout the entire cosmos."

*"So, the phrase "atman is Brahman" is saying, quite simply, that the individual soul is the world soul."

(Intrinsic worth of an animal refers to the value it possesses in its own right.)

So what does this mean?

= one-in-"organic wholeness"

"Real work" = "self-in-Self"

Arne Ness "developed two ultimate norms or intuitions...and were arrived at by the deep questioning process and reveal the importance of moving to the philosophical and religious level of wisdom"

This idea can be summarized by the phrase:

" 'No one is saved until we are all saved,'

where the phrase "one" includes not only me, an individual human, but all humans, whales, grizzly bears, whole rain forest ecosystems, mountains and rivers, the tiniest microbes in the soil, and so on."

photo credit Nasa / Goddard Space Flight Center / Reto Stöckli

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