Deep Ecology Article 2

The philosophy of ‘Deep Ecology’ is the belief that nature does not exist to simply serve humans. Rather, humans are part of nature, one species among many. All species have a right to exist for their own sake, regardless of their usefulness to humans. And biodiversity is a value in itself, essential for the flourishing of both human and non-human life. In our attempts to subordinate all of nature to human use has led us to the brink of collapse of the Earth's life support systems.

 

Turning to the concept of ‘biocentrism’, biocentrism can be understood as a law of nature, that exists independently of whether humans recognize it or not. It doesn't matter whether we view the world in a human centred way. Nature still operates in a bio-centric way, and the failure of modern society to acknowledge this is short-sighted and dangerous.

 

It is worth recalling the saying: "The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth." But in the context of today's consumer world such wisdom is profoundly revolutionary, challenging the system to its core. Bio-centrism is not a new theory, and it wasn't invented by Deep Ecology, it reflects ancient native wisdom and understanding.

 

It could be argued that the Capitalist system is in many ways in direct conflict with the natural laws of biocentrism. Capitalism, first of all, is based on the principle of private property - of certain humans owning the Earth for the purpose of exploiting it for profit. At an earlier stage, capitalists even believed they could own other humans. But just as slavery has been discredited in the mores of today's dominant world view, so do the principles of biocentrism discredit the concept that humans can own the Earth, or parts of it.

 

Deep Ecology in general, clearly advances some worthwhile ideas and perspectives to anyone concerned with environmental well-being. It offers an apparently radical philosophical agenda, promising a total transformation of our deeply alienated civilisation. It sharply characterises the essence of the present climate crisis, explaining the origins of our problems and their solution, via an ethically driven agenda.

 

For some time now Western society, has been dominated by the scientific rationalism of the enlightenment, which in many ways has not been a bad thing, however it did reflect in many ways a mechanistically approach dividing the parts of the total system from each other, thereby ignoring the vital interconnections  between all parts of the Earth’s ecosystem. Addressing this alienating, mechanistic and anthropocentric system of values is imperative, in relation to protecting the Living Earth. The problem is that:

 

It is not at all easy to change in positive ways the ‘values’ of a civilisation, or indeed to change its deep-rooted structures. Nevertheless we must together try.

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