Evoking the ecological self

Abstract

“Deep ecology” is a term coined in 1973 by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. It has become the central label for an increasingly militant branch of the international environmental movement. Deep ecology rejects mechanistic assumptions about the natural world, supplanting them with the premise that at a metaphysical level, the natural world is a sacred, interrelated whole, characterized by a dynamic, ongoing process of evolutionary change. All creatures are similarly interrelated; indeed they are related as kin. Since all creatures are sacred and related, none are superior; all have intrinsic worth. Humans, therefore, ought to defend each life form and the integrity of the ecosystems they inhabit so that all creatures can fulfill their evolutionary destinies. The international deep ecology movement resists what movement activists label the human “war against nature.” Increasingly, however, deep ecologists recognize that this war is also a war against indigenous peoples and peasants whose survival is th...