This is an excellent article, from a British perspective, of the two movements so influential in the global environmental movement, virtually under girding the anti-technology arguments animating it.
The very important fifth principle of eight (particularly for those anticipating having a large family) of the deep ecology platform (from it’s founder) is: “5. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.” Arne Naess, 'Ecology, Community and Lifestyle', Cambridge, 1989, CUP, p. 29.
How deep is your ecology?
— The New Age versus the New Militants in hardline environmentalism.
There is a stereotypical picture of the British Pagan's interest in the preservation of the environment. Beards, long hair, flowing clothes, excessive use of wind-chimes and language peppered with references to "Mother Earth", "the cosmos", "Oneness with the universe" or even "transcendence of the false ego to achieve union with nature" are recognisable facets of this stereotype. However, while it is undeniably true that the lighter element of "pagan" ecology is often used as an excuse to drink a lot of herbal tea and wear dream-catcher earrings, there are other pagan and pagan-influenced perspectives on environmental issues which are worthy of note. If not always valid as scientific hypotheses, pagan-influenced environmentalist theories offer a fascinating alternative to "conventional" (i.e. person-oriented rather than earth-oriented) ecology.
This distinction between "humanist" and "holistic" ecology may come across as arbitrary at first. For what is ecology if not simply the scientific study of the relationships that living things have to their environment and to each other? Those who advocate the "holistic" approach, and most notably followers of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, would argue that the idea of study in itself suggests something that is apart from the student, a perspective which, as we are all part of the self-regulating organism that is Gaia and thus cannot separate ourselves from it, is ultimately misguided. If the earth or universe is conceived of as a self-regulating organism, then ecology, rather than being an observational scientific practice, becomes a thought system, a perspective on life and the structure of the universe that dominates all other thought. In opposition to "humanist" ecology, the accusation is that conventional scientific attitudes towards ecology are heavily rooted in the Western/Judeo-Christian perspective on nature which assumes that humanity has a certain amount of stewardship over the earth. This use of the term "humanist" is far from its standard definition — we can simply assume that, for the Gaia theorist, ecology that starts and ends with the perspective of the human is, for want of a better word, BAD. As Adrian Harris puts it in his article "Sacred Ecology":
"Besides the cerebral knowledge we all possess, the words & ideas stored in our heads, there is a deeper knowledge held within the tissue of our bodies. It is a somatic, physical knowing which comes from direct experience. This is the knowledge of faith, of emotion, of the gut feeling.
The philosophical tradition of the West is an intellectual one founded on logic & language. It is profoundly limiting, for within it whatever cannot be said does not exist. What I am proposing is a radical alternative: A Somatic philosophy which respects the knowing of the body, the knowledge memories & wisdom held within our muscles, flowing with our hormones, sparking through our nerves." (available at www.thegreenfuse.org)
