sust-mar: Deep ecology, animism and land ethics

Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 14:44:04 -0400 (AST)
From: "David M. Wimberly" <ag487@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: David Orton <greenweb@fox.nstn.ca>
cc: sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <sust-mar-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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Dear David and sust-maritimers,

I very much agree with what you are saying.  During my early 20's I spent
years actively researching cultures and belief systems throughout the
world and throughout history.  I was looking for a culture & belief system
that was healthy, just, life-affirming, ecological, joyous, true in
profound ways and was not just an ideal or a fantasy.  Time after time I
found fantastic assumptions that were just not verifiable or consistent
with reality and groups that caused great harm.  

Without going into writing a tretis, I was disappointed repeatedly.
Ancient cultures that were hunter/gatherers would disrupt the environments
profoundly just as soon as they had fire and spears.  With each new
technology, people caused increased environmental harm and were able to
organize more fully to channel wealth from many into the control and
benefit of a few.   Animal husbandry, the wheel, walled cities, metal
smelting, writing and so on are each associated with people and the
environment being more fully and more harmfully exploited by cultures, and
especially by those in control.

Aboriginal cultures are no exception.  Their level of environmental and
social exploitation and harm are closely related to their level of
technology that enables them to do that exploitation and harm.

But they do have one factor that helps to lessen that damage.  To the
extent that individuals, communities and cultures are active participants
of a mystical practice that imbues in them a sense of "oneness" or
"non-separatness" they refrain from causing harm to their environment.

"Ultimately, deep ecological awareness is spiritual or religious
awareness.  When the concept of the human spirit is understood as the mode
of consciousness in which the individual feels a sense of belonging, of
connectedness, to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that
ecological awareness is spritual in its deepest essence.  It is,
therefore, not surprising that the emerging new vision of reality based on
deep ecological awareness is consistent with the so-called perennial
philosophy of spiritual traditions, whether we talk about the spirituality
of Chrisitian mystics, that of Buddhists, or the philosophy and
cosmology underlying the Native American traditions."  Fritjof Capra, "The
Web of Life."

But there are always people in every culture who are naturally drawn to
doing right, and there are also those who are opportunistic and seek to
take improper advantage of any situation.  And all aboriginal cultures
and all communities are not alike in this either.  So we have Hopi's
guarding their spiritual high ground and protesting that the newcomer
Navajo are destroying the Hopi and their sacred lands.  The Hopi are
correct.  The sheep herding Navajo are denuding the land and sold a sacred
mountain (Black Mesa) to the Peabody Coal Company to produce power for Los
Angeles while polluting the entire wilderness area.  And the Navajo
systematically kill the eagles in their nests that Hopi rely on for their
religious practices.  Meanwhile the Navajo present themselves as wonderful
people using all of the stereotypes of Native American spirituality.  This
is all so very sad.  

Of course, many Navajo behave much better than their tribe has a whole
does.  And a few Hopi do not behave well either.

Closer to home we have the heartbreak of MicMac logging old growth
forests.  Of course these are just a few out of many that are behaving
better.  But the elders and the communities were unable or unwilling to
control them, so one cannot make an idealized case for a special spiritual
ecological awareness for natives that will survive both opportunity and
technology.

We all need a spritual practice and a spiritual commitment and a
spiritual understanding that will firmly commit us to not destroying the
very living system that we are but one part of.

Aboriginal spiritual practice does lead higher percentages of aboriginal
persons to conserve the earth than in most other populations, but it does
not go far enough, nor is it a practice non-aboriginal persons can widely
adopt since it is dependent on belonging to an aboriginal group conferred
by birth.  

We need a spiritual & ethical transformation of our cultural paradigms.  
All of our religions, our scientists and so on have to adopt this ethic of
biological caring.  And we have to actually practice it.

All the best,
David Wimberly


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