Sermon

Imagine you work for General Motors in Detroit, and one cold winter not so much different from this one, a salesman from Florida invites you to a presentation on retirement in Charlotte County after work. With dreams of warm breezes and palm trees swaying in your head, you go to the meeting and hear about a plan where you could spend a few dollars a month and when you retire you would already own a piece of land on which you could build a house and then retire in comfort. Low taxes and little government interference seem like icing on the cake, so you buy a large lot and dream of the day you will move to sunny Florida.

Many years pass, retirement is near and you decide it's time to survey the lot and get started looking for a contractor. You fly down and after much searching, you discover an overgrown road to the property you almost own. There are few homes nearby, but you view this as an asset, not a liability, after living in a row house with neighbors practically in your back pocket. You get out of your car enjoying the pleasant February sun and decide to survey the property. There are slash pines, palmetto trees, and several live oaks on the property along with Brazilian peppers and some red and white mangroves next to the dredged canal on the far end of the property. You see a gopher tortoise scuttle to his burrow and a blue heron standing still on one leg, intent on both you and what is moving in the water.

As you walk the property, you discover you are not alone. There is a woman taking pictures of some weeds on the canal bank. You startle her by your presence and you explain that you are the owner of this property and will soon be building a home here. She looks at you with horror and points at a strange- looking butterfly in the weeds. This, she explains, is the only place in Charlotte County where the flutter-up-a-gus breed and if you build here, you will destroy their habitat. She goes on to say there are already homes here, pointing to the tortoise burrows. Then she points to a soggy spot and proudly proclaims, "And that right there is wetlands!" She asks how important it is to build here anyway if there are already many fine pre-owned homes in the County for sale. And beyond that, she prods, "Why do you think you can retire here anyway? Don't you have a northern home already?"

You are very surprised to be confronted on your own property by a stranger telling you what you can do and not do with it. You ask, "You do you think you are?" "A deep ecologist!" she responds proudly.

Although this story comes out of my imagination, in some places, such as property with standing water on it, this woman could be speaking for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state Department of Environmental Protection, or the County zoning department. The era of unrestricted land use is fading fast, to the consternation of property rights advocates.

This valuing of a mini ecosystem and its inhabitants over its development for human enjoyment is an example of an evolving value system called deep ecology. Deep ecology is not a philosophy or belief system, at least in the mind of the father of the term, Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. He sees the principles of deep ecology much the same way we see our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles: One can start with different beliefs which have little in common, such as Buddhism and Christianity, and deduce the same principles. Thus a humanist, a Christian, and a Pagan can share the same ecological principles but have quite different reasons for doing so.

Deep ecology gets its name from its interest in asking probing questions. In Naess' words,

The essence of deep ecology - as compared with the science of ecology, and with what I call the shallow ecological movement - is to ask deeper questions. The adjective "deep" stresses that we ask why and how, where others do not…we need to ask questions like, Why do we think that economic growth and high levels of consumption are so important? The conventional answer would be to point to the economic consequences of not having economic growth. But in deep ecology, we ask whether the present society fulfills basic human needs like love and security and access to nature, and, in so doing, we question our society's underlying assumptions.[1]

Deep ecology departs from the anthropocentric world view and looks at things from a planetary or ecocentric viewpoint. Rather than taking the shallow approach which looks at pollution as a control, placement and dispersion problem to limit human toxicity, the deep ecologist questions the production of any toxic waste at all and evaluates its effect on the total biosphere. A shallow approach to acid rain would be to replant acid-resistant trees versus eliminating acid rain to preserve the original plants and animals and steering the economy away from the need for burning sulfurous fossil fuels. Rather than developing heavy polluting industry in underdeveloped countries and encouraging export to developed markets at low prices, indigenous industries and traditional crops and technology are encouraged to limit the cultural disruption of a region.

The first principles of deep ecology are:

(1)The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (intrinsic value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. (2) Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.[2]

This is a different way of valuing nonhuman life forms than Western society has traditionally done. Instead of seeing other species as instruments to serve human need, they have their own independent inherent worth and dignity. It posits the idea that a cat may have an intrinsic right not to be used as a laboratory test animal. It asserts that butterflies have the right not to be driven into extinction. The third principle extends the valuing of other life forms to an human ethical principle:

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

Deep ecologists put a reign on human exploitation of natural "resources" except to satisfy vital needs. (In fact talking about other life forms as "resources" smacks of speciesism!) Thus, the use of a field by an African tribe to grow grain for survival is an example of a vital need whereas the conversion of a swamp to an exclusive golf course would not. Rest assured that much of the mining, harvesting, and development of our technological age would not meet the vital needs requirement of this principle. Rather than being concerned about how to raise automobile production, this ethic would be interested in solving the problem of human mobility in a way that would not require the disruption of highways, roads, and parking lots. It rebels against Peter Drucker's industrialist world view: "Before it is possessed and used, `every plant is a weed and very mineral is just another rock'"[3]

In the deep ecologist's view, the human species is dethroned and made the servant of the richness and diversity of the planet. If richness and diversity is threatened by human encroachment, then we should reduce the population to a point where we can live in harmony with the biosphere. The fourth principle states:

The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires a smaller human population.

As you listen to these points of the deep ecology platform, notice the difference with the prevailing anthropocentric view on which this society has been constructed. Our society celebrates material wealth, technology and progress, seeing nature as an instrument for our satisfaction.

George Sessions, one of the leaders in the deep ecology movement, feels the anthropocentric view is a detour from our roots in primitive cultures (although this is still hotly debated in academic circles). The current thinking is that indigenous peoples have a ecocentric world view and live more harmoniously with nature than agricultural, bronze and iron age cultures and our modern industrial and post-industrial cultures.

The proverbial leaving of the Garden of Eden seems to be the development of agriculture. With agriculture, the land must be manipulated in order to produce a crop. The crop must be protected from marauders insect, animal and human alike. Hunter-gatherer and agriculture cultures didn't mix very well because they had very different relationships to the land. The hunter-gatherer engaged in a symbiotic relationship with the land, whereas the agricultural community sought to exploit the growing capabilities of the land by controlling what grows and what doesn't.

The rebirth of appreciation for nature and a humbler place for humanity has only happened within the last 150 years. Our own Henry David Thoreau, inspired by sitting by Walden Pond, observing carefully the natural world and carefully recording his observations, is one of the first modern ecocentric thinkers. Thoreau's 1851 statement, "in wildness is the preservation of the world" demonstrates an ecocentric view quite different from the American thought of his day. Thoreau rejected materialism, finding a much more satisfying existence in intimate relationship to the natural cycles of Walden Pond. Thoreau found more enjoyment and meaning from his relationship with the pond, as you can hear in this line from his book Walden:

…whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle.

On the west coast, John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club in 1892 and its first president, fought to conserve native landscapes from development.

Muir had a pivotal experience in 1864 (at age twenty-six) during a walk through a Canadian swamp. Here he discovered rare white orchids far from the eyes of humans. It dawned on him that things exist for themselves; the world was not made for man.[4]

After World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring marks the beginning of the modern environmental movement in 1962. Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis(1963), Lynn White's "Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" (1967), Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind (1967), and Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968), capped by the first Earth Day, all set the stage for the entrance of deep ecology from the pen of Arne Naess.

Coincident with the emergence of deep ecology is the rise of feminism, and the two have found they are mutually supportive but with some differences which stimulated the development of a position called ecofeminism. Rather than blaming the exploitation of the natural world on anthropocentrism, ecofeminism singles out patriarchy and hierarchical social development, which uses domination over women, minorities and the natural world, as an important source of the ills or our time. Women, because of the cyclical nature of their biology, are seen as more in tune with Mother Earth than men. Ecofeminists are fond of returning to ancient fertility rites and women's mysteries to find a unique feminist connection to nature.

In women returning to ancient rites and rituals, we find an example of the change of thinking advocated by deep ecologists. Deep ecology asks questions about what makes us happy and gives our lives meaning. The answer they find is a shift from the material to the spiritual as our source of meaning. Spiritual meaning has a much lighter impact on our world since it doesn't necessarily require any kind of consumption. Primitive tribes are often held up as example of what we have lost in our rush to feed at the trough of technology. We are discovering just how rich the spiritual life of primitive tribes can be and the amount of satisfaction it brings them. What the deep ecologist recommends is shifting our emphasis from getting and having to being and becoming, living a life "simple in means and rich in ends". Naess observes:

Most people in deep ecology have had a feeling--usually, but not always, in nature--that they are connected with something greater than their ego, greater than their name, their family, their special attributes as an individual--a feeling that is often called oceanic because many have had this feeling on the ocean. Without that identification, one is not so easily drawn to become involved in deep ecology.

This spiritual connection to the natural world is quite different from the Calvinist view of humanity and nature as sinful. Perhaps you too have had that feeling of oneness while walking in a national park. Like John Muir, I've had this feeling of awe when I have visited Yosemite National Park or climbed to the top of a mountain peak.

From this description, it might now be evident why Unitarian Universalists might feel at home with deep ecology. Many of our members have had the oceanic experience Naess describes, which may or may not feel theistic. We reject the dualism of Calvinist thinking and embrace the natural world as the expression of God or at least what is real and true. Our principle celebrating the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part resonates with the deep ecology platform. The addition of the sixth source to our Purposes and Principles: Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature, clearly puts at least one foot in the deep ecology camp.

There is, of course, much more to deep ecology which I cannot cover in this short space of time. The main points are the ecocentric rather than anthropocentric world view, respect for and protection of richness and diversity, a reduction in global population, a change in ideology from getting and having to being and becoming, appreciating living systems as they are rather than as we wish them to be, and asking deep questions again and again of why and how to expose the bankrupt philosophy which motivates the destruction of the ecosphere.

Let us now return to the story I began with about the land owner and the deep ecologist. The dilemma for our soon-to-be retiree, after understanding all these new ideas of the deep ecologist, is whether or not to build a new house on this property. The deep ecologist would say no, go back north and shiver in the cold and dark. There are already too many people here anyway. The landowner wonders, "Is a rare butterfly species really more important than my desire to build a new home? Is not displacing the gopher tortoises more important than the happiness of this Northerner seeking refuge in the South? Isn't there someone else I can talk to?"

Well, yes, there is but there isn't time enough today. Be sure to come next week when we continue this subject, discussing a critique of the deep ecology view.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.