In the spirit of upcoming Earth Day, watch this short, informative video. Either we ditch capitalism or we ditch the environment....enjoy
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Our definition of ‘the
good life’ is reflected in policy, behavior, and social norms; and
rhetoric defining ‘the good’ has
always been a moral inquiry. One of the things that struck me most from
reading about Deep Ecology was the synthesis of metaphysical and environmental
discourse.
We
cannot begin to reshift our understanding of nature until we understand
ourselves. I appreciate Deep Ecology's emphasis on the interrelationship
between the moral/spiritual realm and our overt behaviors towards each other
and the environment. As quoted by Devall and Sessions, "spiritual growth,
or unfolding, begins when we cease to understand or see ourselves as isolated
and narrow competing egos and begin to identify with other humans from our
family and friends to, eventually, our species,”
(Devall & Sessions 435).
Expanding
the realm of injustice to include the whole biotic community is a huge move.
Doing this opens the space to address how the maltreatment of each other stems
from our relationship with the environment. A good friend of mine always posited that we treat mother
nature in the same way we treat our women--we abuse, manipulate, objectify,
compartmentalize, and find value only in superficial beauty. I think this idea
is eloquent because it illustrates an axiom of deep ecology: that our social
norms with regards to other humans reflects our norms with all other beings.
What
we do to nature we inevitably do to ourselves. With the homogenization and loss
of biodiversity, we are also promoting a monoculture society, in which everyone
has the same gadget, hair-do, and Prius. Sometimes it seems like corporations
are even trying to commidify
environmentalism into an industry of 'green-cool.' Not to say that the
incorporation of sustainable ideas into the capitalist market isn't a huge step
forward, but the promotion of ecology in this sense perpetuates a broken
system.
Our
system is broken because it functions around the golden arrow of consumption.
We have become a nation of consumers—this is our identity. Our value is
measured and demonstrated by how much we consume. Because of the prime placed
on novelty, almost 99% of the stuff we produce is out of vogue within the next
year. We have converted the buying and use of goods into our new religious
practices and seek to solace the deep existential angst by consuming more
goods.
Bringing
it back to the quote mentioned above, our society defines the self in narrow
terms—by virtue of the things we are consuming and whether or not
those THINGS are the newest, best, shiniest, fastest, most popular things. And
we are addicted because we are trained like rats in skinners box. We have been
trained that always wanting more ‘things,’ is
the moral good, because it is good for a productive economy.
And
we wonder why our nation is the fattest, saddest, sickest, most addicted,
anxious, and violent on the planet—because our society aims at an
illusory moral good. Just think of how our culture could be transformed if we
defined ‘the goodlife’ in terms of spiritual satisfaction
as opposed to a mass accumulation of material goods.
I
think what Deep Ecologists were trying to get at was that an economy which
functions under the basic assumption of unlimited resources, aka capitalism,
cannot only flourish for so long on a finite planet. While I can understand how
people would see Deep Ecology as too radical, I appreciate the attention they
call to systemic injustices and the call for aggravated action against top-down
injustice. At this point what we need is a radical paradigm shift.
References
Devall, B. & Sessions, G. Principles of Deep Ecology--from Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment. (2003). Thomson & Wadsworth.
Naess, A. Ecology: The Shallow & the Deep. chapter from Green Critique.
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