7. Thinking Outside the Box: Potentials and Limits of Human Mind

What we know from the emergence of life on Earth, evolution of species, and the role of biodiversity in sustainability and enrichment of life provide a materialist, scientific basis for the ethical position of Deep Ecology.[i]^,[ii] Let us recall what they are:

“1. The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.

2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.”

The remaining six points of the Eight Points of Deep Ecology are prescriptive and follow from these premises. I will return to them when we turn to the discussion of policy.

But before proceeding further, let us pause to explore the concern by at least some who read these notes who still validly ask: are we humans not somehow special? The short answer is: of course, we are. Indeed, each species is special in some way.

However, humans are not among species that are critical for life on Earth. In fact, it is easy to argue that Homo sapiens have the unfortunate distinction of topping the list of invasive species category—species that are not native to an ecosystem and threaten its balance when they are introduced. But why is that so?

To answer this question let us consider one view of how humans are special relative to other animals.

In his 1871 book, The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin argues that the difference between human and nonhuman minds is “one of degree and not of kind.” Marc Hauser, a leading neuroscientist at Harvard University, thinks Darwin was wrong. Hauser holds a computational view of the mind. Hauser’s view is close to the computational theory of mind in philosophy developed in the 1960s by Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor, and Noam Chomsky’s theory of language that had great impact not just on linguistics but also on cognition theory and on philosophy of mind. Hauser’s research aims to explain how and why a “profound gap” separates human intellect from those of other animals. These studies show that while the building blocks of human cognition exist in other animals, there are four qualities of human mind that are truly unique.[iii] I use Hauser’s argument not because I prefer it to other theories of human mind but because it does tend to be closer to the view that humans are superior to other animals.

In a recent article[iv], Hauser discusses these four uniquely human traits.

1. Generative Computation is “the ability to create virtually limitless variety of ‘expressions,’ be they arrangement of words, sequences of notes, combinations of actions, or strings of mathematical symbols.”[v] Generative computations are two types. Recursion is the repeated use of a rule to create new expressions (e.g., Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose.”). The combinatorial operation is mixing of discrete elements to generate new ideas that can be expressed in novel words or musical forms, etc.

2. Promiscuous Combination of ideas makes it possible for humans to routinely connect thoughts from different domains of knowledge. “From this mingling, new laws, social relationships and technologies can result, as when we decide that it is forbidden [moral domain] to push someone [motor action domain] in front of a train [object domain] to save the lives [moral domain] of five others.”[vi]

3. Use of mental symbols enables us to “spontaneously convert any sensory experience—real or imagined—into symbols that we can keep to ourselves or express to others through language, art, music or computer code.”[vii]

4. Ability to use abstract thought is apparently only a human trait. “Unlike animal thoughts, which are largely anchored in sensory and perpetual experiences, many of ours have no clear connection to such events. We alone ponder the likes of unicorns and aliens, nouns and verbs, infinity and God.”[viii]

Hauser dates the historical origin of the newly evolved human mind at approximately 800,000 years ago:

“Although anthropologists disagree about exactly when the modern mind took shape, it is clear from the archaeological record that a major transformation occurred during a relatively brief period of evolutionary history, starting approximately 800,000 years ago in Paleolithic era and crescendoing around 45,000 to 50,000 years ago. It is during this period of Paleolithic, an evolutionary eye-blink, that we see for the first time multipart tools; animal bones punctured to make musical instruments; burials with accoutrements suggesting beliefs about aesthetics and afterlife; richly symbolic cave paintings that capture in exquisite detail events of the past and the perceived future; and control over fire, a technology that combines our folk physics and psychology and allowed our ancestors to prevail over novel environments by creating warmth and cooking foods to make them edible.”[ix]

Hauser is careful to point out that other animals “do exhibit sophisticated behaviors that appear to presage some of our capabilities.”[x] He cited animal “ability to create and modify objects for a particular goal,” “ability to generalize beyond their direct experiences to create novel solutions when exposed to foreign challenges in the laboratory,” “exhibit social behavior in common with humans,” (e.g. teaching their young how to find food), exhibiting “inequity aversion” (e.g., objecting to unfair distribution of food), and ability to change routine daily behavior to meet various needs.

However, Hauser still concludes: “These observations inspire a sense of wonder at the beauty of nature’s R&D solutions. But once we get over this frisson, we must confront the gap between humans and other species…”[xi]

Hauser notes that the “roots of our cognitive abilities remain largely unknown.”[xii] His hope is that neuroscience will help uncover this mystery partly through conducting more animal studies such as study of chimeric animals, in which brain circuits from an individual of one species are transplanted into an individual of another species.

Conducing animal experiments for human scientific curiosity raises important ethical questions and questions about our relation to the rest of nature. What appears to Hauser as the superior quality of human mind has historically translated into a burning desire to understand, control and dominate nature. We cannot enter into the ethics of animal experiments here or devolve on problems associated with the historical tendency to reduce our relation to nature to its scientific understanding and in controlling and dominating it. However, the reader can immediately recognize that these are problems associated with the anthropocentric view of the world. These are also forces at work during the last 10,000 years that have placed Homo sapiens as the primary invasive species causing the present-day environmental and ecological crises that threaten among other things, human life on Earth.

The four qualities of human mind that Hauser notes are mixed blessings. They are partially responsible for the development of class societies and our alienation from ourselves and the rest of nature. We can only hope that they may also help us resolve these historical problems by understanding Our Place in the World and in living in harmony with nature. That consistent with the view that nature and nurture combine to create our minds. While knowledge cannot substitute for wisdom, we can be wiser if we know better. We can perhaps think outside of the box.

Hauser’s message is less hopeful. He concludes by telling us that the human mind, being wired as it is, has trapped us into a mode of thinking that precludes us from “thinking outside of the box.” Thus, human society is essentially the product of our wired brains and there is no escape until and unless evolutionary change will produce a novel mind capable of thinking outside of the present box. Given the burning problems nature an society, few scientists could argue that we have the necessary time for such evolutionary change. Our only hope may be a revolutionary change in the understanding of Our Place in the World and subsequent radical change in our society and the way we relate to the rest of nature.

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[i] See, posts 4-6.

[ii] See, post 3, “The Eight Points of Deep Ecology”.

[iii] I am not qualified to express an option on such expert knowledge domain. But the reader should be warned that there are alternative approaches to the study of the mind and some evolutionary biologist can reasonably disagree with Hauser’s computational approach. I use Hauser’s approach because it emphasizes the gap between human and other animals minds and his position somehow resonates with those who argue for human superiority.

[iv] Scientific American, Volume 301, Number 3, September 2009.

[v] Ibid. p. 46.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid. p. 48.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid. p. 51.

6. Biodiversity

As I noted in the last two posts, evolutionary biology shows us that species evolve in non-deterministic, non-hierarchical way and the Gaia Hypothesis (now accepted as a proven theory for the “weak” statement of it) maintains that they collectively contribute to the maintenance of conditions of Earth's surface within a range conducive to the persistence and perpetuation of life. But how do individual species contribute to the web of life on Earth and weather and how biodiversity matter? Since 1990s, these questions have been tackled by ecologists who have shown that while contribution of species to the maintenance and flourishing of ecosystems vary in degrees, they each contribute to it is a meaningful way and biodiversity is essential for continuation of life on Earth.

To explain this succinctly, let me again turn to professor Shahid Naeem who is one of the early ecologists who worked on reverse engineering of ecosystems.[i]

“Because every species influence Earth’s chemistry—sometimes in barely detectable ways, sometimes in major ways—every species can be said to have a function (though not in the sense of purpose). … [T]he best way to deduce what function a part plays in an ecosystem is to remove it and see what happens. This is standard practice in ecology, with the University of Washington zoologist Robert Paine’s experiment in the 1960s being perhaps the best-known example.

“Paine removed a single species of starfish (Pisaster ochracues) from an intertidal community in Mukkaw Bay, Wash., and found that its absence allowed a prolific species of mussel (Mytilus californianus) to grow and displace most of the other species in the ecosystem. The starfish functioned as a regulator of mussel density, something that could only make sense in the context of the intact ecosystem.”[ii]

Naeem explains that Paine’s method does not result in an explanation of biogeochemistry function of the starfish. To do that one must measure how the distribution of elements in Mukkaw Bay changes in the presence or absence of the starfish. And this is a difficult task; it requires removal of all starfish, and keeping them out for a long time to detect the resulting biogeochemical changes. Alternatively, one can count up all the starfish in the region, determine the respiration rate and estimate how much carbon dioxide they release into the water and atmosphere in a given year. One can also estimate how much carbon they consumed and how much they excreted as waste, and do the same for nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus, and so on, until all the likely influences of the starfish species on the ecosystem’s geochemistry were determined.

“As this exercise shows, to determine the functional significance, in terms of biogeochemistry, of even a single species is a daunting task. For this reason, there are few species whose biogeochemical impact are experimentally known. In most cases, as we did for starfish, one estimates what their function is based on size, abundance, growth rates and other biological properties.”[iii]

In the 1990s, ecologists began to reverse engineer ecosystems. A pioneering reverse engineering experiment was the study conducted at Imperial College of London’s Centre for Population Biology under Sir John Lawton, by several scientists including Naeem, of a weedy meadow typical of Berkshire County, England.

“…[W]e deliberately engineered our ecosystem to be different from a real ecosystem in one specific detail: All our meadows were identical except for the amount of biodiversity each had. Six of the chambers contained ecosystems with 31 species of plants and animals inside; four contained only 16 of the original 31 species; another four chambers had just 10. Everything else was the same—the same volume of soil, same amount of light, same amount of water added each day, same breeze, same timing of dusk and dawn.

“What we found was quite surprising. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the communities, the amount of biomass they produced, the fertility of the soil and the amount of water retained by the ecosystems differed. Because everything was held constant among the ecosystems except for their biodiversity, the only conclusion we could come to was that our monkeying with the number of species was sufficient to drastically change the way ecosystem functioned. Most important, there was a clear pattern that related how many species were in the ecosystem with how much carbon dioxide it absorbed: More diversity led to greater absorption of carbon dioxide.

“… There was no doubt that ecosystems were critical to the processes such as the cycling of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and biosphere and the cycling of nutrients between soil, water and the atmosphere, and that these processes were an integral part of global environmental process. The Weak Gaia Hypothesis already told us this. There was also no doubt that some species had strong impacts on an ecosystem while others—such as Paine’s starfish in Mukkow Bay—had weak impact. But no one had experimentally tested the idea that simply reducing the number of species would change ecosystem function.

“Since then there have been numerous studies that have been variations on the same theme—hold as many factors constant as possible, vary biodiversity, then see what happens to the functioning of the ecosystem. …

“These experiments found that some species, when left out, had no detectable effect on biogeochemistry, while in others, if left out, had dramatic effects. But, on average, the removal of species caused changes in ecosystem functioning, and the more species one removed, on average, the stronger these changes become.”[iv]

There are many reasons why loss of biodiversity affects ecosystems. Naeem notes two that emerge most often in experimental research.

“First, the more species one removes, the greater the probability that an extraordinary important species will be lost. But there is a second reason that biodiversity loss reduces ecosystem function: complementarity. The more species you have, the more ways they make use of limited resources such as light, water, nutrients and space.”

The United Nations commissioned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a five-year effort to assess the state of the planet, published in 2005 and 2006, has become the standard reference for the state of the biosphere.

“This Assessment places biodiversity squarely at the center of all the environmental processes that affect human wellbeing. Whether the environmental problem is the spread of emerging diseases, control of invasive species, food security or climate regulation, and whether we are talking about human health, poverty, education or even freedom itself, almost all aspects of human well-being and prosperity traces back to biodiversity for their foundation.”[v]

While there is a bit of instrumentalist view of nature in Naeem’s concluding paragraph, it offers much wisdom backed by scientific research on how each individual species contributes to the functioning and prosperity of the web of life on Earth and that biodiversity much like cultural diversity enriches it. Here is further evidence for the ethical foundations of Deep Ecology as well why any sound theory of radical social change needs to be based on ecocenterism.

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[i] Naeem, Shahid, “Lessons from the Reverse Engineering of Nature: The Importance of Biodiversity and the True Significance of the Human Species,” Miller-McCune, pp. 56-71, May-June 2009.

[ii] Ibid. p. 63.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid. pp. 63-64.

[v] Ibid. 65-66.

5. The Gaia Hypothesis

Darwin's perspective on the origin of species is useful to us because it is non-deterministic, non-teleological, and ecocenteric. In Darwin's "tree of life" Homo sapiens are not at the top of the pyramid but on the same evolutionary level as other life forms. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective Homo sapiens are yet to prove their fitness the same way sharks or other species with much longer history have.

The Gaia hypothesis (names after the Greek mythology supreme goddess of Earth) proposed by James Lovelock, provides further context for reflection on Our Place in the World. A British scientist, in the 1960s Lovelock served as an independent consultant for NASA in planning for the Viking mission to Mars. NASA was interested to learn about how best to determine if there is life on Mars.

Lovelock realized that one does not need to land on Mars to know if there was life on it. Atmospheric conditions on Mars (carbon dioxide 95%, oxygen 0.13%, nitrogen 2.7%), stable for very long time, precluded existence of life, as we know it on Earth. Lovelock then asked what are the preconditions of life on Earth? Using a chemical model of Earth without any life forms (no photosynthesis or respiration), he found that carbon dioxide would be 98% (currently 0.03%), oxygen barely detectable (currently 21%), and nitrogen less than 2% (currently 79%). Furthermore, such a lifeless Earth would be very hot at 554F/290C with atmospheric pressure 60 times of what exists today.

Lovelock defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil, the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system, which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.

Columbia University ecologist, Shaheed Naeem, explains it in simpler terms:

Lovelock came away with a sense that there was something truly remarkable about Earth, a sort of meta-life or gigantic global biological system in which the sum of the parts--all the plants, animals and microorganisms--made Earth the habitable planet that it was. He speculated that it was an autopoietic system, meaning (roughly) that all its species actively contribute to the functioning of the biosphere in such a way as to ensure their growth and regeneration, which, in turn, is what governs biospheric functioning. This is a complex idea, but essentially he felt that life actively holds the conditions of Earth's surface within a range conducive to the persistence and perpetuation of life, a homeostasis similar to our bodies' regulation of core temperature to a constant of around 37 C (98.6 F).[1]

The Gaia hypothesis was initially ignored or ridiculed by some as some kind of neo-pagan New Age religion. Renowned scientists such as such as Doolittle, Dawkins and Gould criticized it on various grounds (click here).

However, in 1980s the Gaia hypothesis received positive recognition by scientists and a number of scientific conferences have been held to develop and implement it as a research agenda.

Climatologist Stephen Schneider who organized the first Gaia conference in San Diego in 1988 proposed that the Gaia hypothesis includes a range of possible claims. Naeem summarize these as the Weak Gaia Hypothesis that says life is critical to Earth’s environment, and the Strong Gaia Hypothesis that says that the biosphere is autopoietic. He notes:

Though the jury is still out, the bulk of the scientific evidence is against the Strong Gaia Hypothesis. One of its strongest critics is Dawkins, who sees no way that evolutionary or ecological processes can generate an autopoietic biosphere from a seemingly unstructured confederation of species whose fates are determined by their individual fitness or stability of the community, ecosystems or biosphere they reside in. Nevertheless, life is what makes Earth habitable, so the Weak Gaia Hypothesis is undeniable.”[2]

While we wait for the future assessment of the Strong Gaia Hypothesis, the consensus on the Weak Gaia Hypothesis offers materialist and scientific grounds for a view of "web of life" in addition to Darwin's "tree of live". Life on Earth is inherently interdependent. This validates ethical principles of Deep Ecology ’s Eight Point. It also offers a framework for rethinking Marx’s vision of de-alienation of humans from nature.

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[1] Naeem, Shahid. “Lessons from the Reverse Engineering of Nature,” Miller-McCune/May-June 2009, p. 60.

[2] Ibid. p. 62. Naeem does not here note Lovelock's response to Dawkins criticism, which is based on complexities in evolutionary process associated with non-linear systems.

4. Darwin's Ecocenterism

The intellectual roots of Deep Ecology are found in ecocenterism and social criticism of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, D. H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, Aldous Huxley as well as George Orwell, Theodore Roszak, and Lewis Mumford. Cultural history of primal peoples, ecocenteric religions such as Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and writings of Saint Francis of Assisi also influenced it. However, there is a curious lack of attention to Darwin’s ecocenterism. And yet, Darwin’s evolutionary theory is truly revolutionary in that it has provided a solid materialist and scientific basis for ecocenterism.

For centuries, religious belief and philosophical reasoning had placed Earth at the center of the universe. It also took more than 150 years of controversy and confrontation spanning most of the 16th and 17th centuries, from Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543 to Newton’s Principia in 1687, to revolutionize cosmology. These efforts led to present-day view of an expanding universe that may have millions of life-supporting planets in our galaxy alone.

Darwin’s evolutionary theory laid the groundwork for overcoming centuries of anthropocentric views of life on Earth preached by organized religions and influential philosophers. Naturalists had conceptualized evolution for centuries before Darwin. Greek philosopher Anaximander had suggested that all life-forms evolved from fish in the seas and went through a process of modification once they were established on land. Carl Linnaeus published the first volume of Systema Naturae (1735), which laid the foundation for taxonomy. He later suggested that plants descend from a common source. Darwin’s contemporary evolutionary thinkers believed that evolution unfolded like an ascending ladder in which each lineage of plant or animal arose by spontaneous generation from an inanimate matter and then progressed inexorably toward greater complexity and perfection.

Darwin rejected this linear progression in favor of what is now known as branching evolution, in which some species diverge from a common ancestor along separate pathways with no prior limits to how far this process can go. Darwin sketched a “tree of life” to illustrate this in his book Origin of Species (1859). But how this evolutionary change unfolded? Darwin’s great insight was the theory of natural selection. Taking a cue from Thomas Malthus, Darwin recognized that populations tend to grow quickly thereby exhausting natural resources. From the vast hereditary diversity within a given species, natural selection blindly weeds out those individuals with less favorable traits. That is a design without a designer. In fact, if two populations of one species remain isolated from each other in different environments they may evolve over a very long period into two different species.[i]

The modern version of Darwin theory benefits from the field of genetics that Gregory Mendel’s research on inheritance (published in 1865) founded, and the discovery of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.

Thus, Darwin provided us with a materialist ecocenterist view of life. The prominent evolutionary biologist Ernest Mayr offers a good summary of Darwin’s contributions to modern thought:

“… [H]e established a philosophy of biology by introducing the time factor, by demonstrating the importance of chance and contingency, and by showing that theories in evolutionary biology are based on concepts rather than laws. But furthermore - and this is perhaps Darwin's greatest contribution - he developed a set of new principles that influence the thinking of every person: the living world, through evolution, can be explained without recourse to supernaturalism; essentialism or typology is invalid, and we must adopt population thinking, in which all individuals are unique (vital for education and the refutation of racism); natural selection, applied to social groups, is indeed sufficient to account for the origin and maintenance of altruistic ethical systems; cosmic teleology, an intrinsic process leading life automatically to ever greater perfection, is fallacious, with all seemingly teleological phenomena explicable by purely material processes; and determinism is thus repudiated, which places our fate squarely in our own evolved hands.” (Mayr, “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought”, 1999).

The benefit of Darwin’s contributions to Deep Ecology and Marxian theory is immense.

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[i] This paragraph is a summary taken from “Darwin’s Living Legacy” by Gary Stix, Scientific American, Volume 300, Number 1, January 2009.

3. The Eight Points of Deep Ecology

A good place to begin the process of development of a theoretical synthesis of Marxian social theory and Deep Ecology’s ecocenterist worldview is the Eight Points that Arne Naess and George Sessions formulated as a proposed platform for the Deep Ecology movement.

Let’s review the eight points:

1. The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and culture is compatible with a substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires a smaller human population.
5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasing standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between bigness and greatness.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

In his 1986 article “The Deep Ecology Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects”[1] Naess attempts to unpack each of these point. I draw on these briefly and selectively.

Point 1 refers to the biosphere as a whole that includes individuals, species, populations, habitats, and human and non-human cultures. Value means that “The presence of inherent value in a natural object is independent of any awareness, interest, or appreciation of it by any conscious being.” (In his latter essay--see endnote 1 below--Naess settles for the term "inherent value".)

Point 2 “presupposes that life itself, as a process over the evolutionary time, implies an increase in diversity and richness” and that “lower” or “higher” order life forms are equally of value.

In Point 3 the term “vital needs” is deliberately left vague[2] to allow “considerable latitude in judgment” and to allow taking into consideration differences in climate and social structure.

Point 4 correctly singles out urgent needs for a world population strategy analogous to the present widespread consciousness that we need a climate policy to stop global warming

Naess himself accepts that Point 5 is rather mild and human interference and destruction of the ecosystems is increasing with alarming rate (and that was 25 years ago!) Naess notes: “Present ideology tends to value things because they are scarce and because they have a commodity value. There is prestige in vast consumption and waste.” These are clearly characteristics of a capitalist system. Thus, this point implies that the Deep Ecology movement must be an anti-capitalist movement.

In discussing Point 7, Naess correctly takes aim at those economists who will criticize the use of the term “quality of life’ as too vague. He correctly points out that “One cannot quantify adequately what is important for the quality of life as discussed here, and there is no need to do so.”

Point 8 offers very general policy recommendation as the authors clearly hoped currents within the Deep Ecology movement would work out more specific tasks and how to carry them out.

As a coalition building document, these Eight Points offer a great beginning. But let me make three comments about it.

First, the Eight Points include a set of ethical positions that are simply declared. This is fine for a coalition-building document. But they can only be more effectively promoted if they are clearly related to scientific knowledge and argued rationally. Naess himself does so in his defense of Point 2 when he makes reference to the evolutionary theory. In fact, it is true that from a consistent Darwinian evolutionary theory all life are equally valuable and that diversity supports and extends life forms.

Second, in the same paper Naess takes pain to explain that various ecosophies (Buddhist, Christian, philosophical) can equally lead to the adoption of the Eight Point (he does so without showing any preference for any of them). However, when he defends the Eight Points he uses arguments consistent only with a materialist philosophy. It is clear that from both theoretical and practical perspectives it is important in the fight for Deep Ecology goals to advance a fully articulated and consistent materialist ecosophy within the ecology and environmental movements and in society at large.

Third, Naess also find it necessary to explain that the key factors undermining nature at our time are those clearly associated with the capitalist system. This is particularly important in light of the expressed need to advance along radical change in economic, technological, and ideological fronts. They are part of the process of radical social change.

That is why key contributions of the Marxian theory and radical movement for social change are important for Deep Ecologists to understand and assimilate.

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1. See, Deep Ecology for the 21^st Century, George Sessions, editor, Boston: Shambhala, 1995, pp. 62-84. See "The Deep Ecology's Eight Points Revised" by Naess in the same volume, pp. 213-22, for his other considerations.

2. Remember that the Eight Points are meant for Deep Ecology coalition building purposes.

2. Ecocenterism vs. Anthropocenterism: A Historical Sketch

By Kamran Nayeri, June 12, 2009

The rise of the first agrarian societies about 10,000 years ago resulted in sea change in world history.  Hunter-gatherers that existed for almost 200,000 years gave way to agrarian societies based on domestication of barley and wheat and then other plants and animals and produced a surplus of food that was stored.  This economic surplus made it possible for an expansion of the population, further division of labor, and then gradually to the development of private property, family, and the state. Class societies emerged.  Integral to this world-historic shift was a gradual change from an ecocenteric worldview to an anthropocentric one as was required by the domestication of plants and animals.  What is less understood is that with the domestication of nature came domestication of humans themselves.  The rise and consolidation of private property, patriarchy, slavery, the state, and culture, including organized religions, were part of the process of domestication of humans themselves.  To be sure there were progressive elements in this process, but it also was the process by which alienation and exploitation of labor became the basis of human “civilization” and it also set us on the path of environmental and ecological destruction.

The Marxian view of history focuses on the change in the social mode of production. It has the merit of showing how the human ability to develop tools influenced the socio-economic development and how the latter led to the Agricultural Revolution and the rise of class societies, hence alienated and exploiting relations.  Relying on Morgan’s anthropological studies, Engel’s argued that the agricultural surplus made possible the formation of private property, patriarchy, social classes and the state.  However, the Marxian discourse essentially ignores the world-historic shift from ecocenterism to anthropocentrism, perhaps because it is itself anthropocentric. This methodological error of "materialist conception of history", as the Marxian method is called, has had significant implications for the development of the Marxian theory and practice to which I hope to return in the future. 

It is a merit of Deep Ecology materialist ecosophies to focus attention on the world-historic shift from ecocenterism to anthropocentrism.  However, they largely ignore the simultaneous world-historic shift in socioeconomic relations that the Marxian theory focuses on.

In his “Ecocenterism and the Anthropocentric Detour” George Sessions offers an overview of this world-historical change and its implication for policy today, synthesizing over 30 years of research.

There is little controversy surrounding the view that primal cultures were ecocenteric and nature oriented.  Sessions quotes Stan Steiner who describes the American Indian notion of Circle of Life where “every being is no more, or no less, than any other.  We are all Sisters and Brothers.  Life is shared with the bird, bear, insects, plants, mountains, clouds, stars, sun.”

Ecocenterism of this type were replaced by agriculturalists that, as Paul Sheppard notes, “all shared the aim of completely humanizing the earth’s surface, replacing wild with domestic, and creating landscapes from habitat.”   

This radical change in the view of our place in the world was codified in the prevalent religious, philosophical and otherwise ideological texts. As Sessions notes, while some elements of the ancient shamanism were maintained in Taoism and other Eastern religions/philosophies, Western religions (Judaism and Christianity) distanced themselves more radically from wild nature in favor of anthropocentrism. 

A similar break took place in Greek philosophy.  Sessions writes:

“The intellectual Greek strand in the Western culture also exhibits a similar development from early ecocenteric animistic Nature religions, the Nature-oriented (but less animistic) cosmological speculations of the pre-Socratics, to the anthropocentrism of the classical Athenian philosophers.  Beginning with Socrates, philosophical speculation was characterized by ‘an undue emphasis upon man as compared with the universe,’ as Bertrand Russell and other historians of Western philosophy have observed…

“With the cumulation of the Athenian philosophy in Aristotle, an anthropocentric system of philosophy and science was set in place that was to play a major role in shaping Western thought until the seventeenth century. Aristotle rejected the Pre-Socratic ideas of an infinite universe, cosmological and biological evolution, and heliocentrism. He proposed instead an Earth-centered finite universe wherein humans, by virtue of their rationality, were differentiated from, and seen as superior to, animals and plants.  Aristotle promoted the hierarchical concept of the “Great Chain of Being,” in which Nature made plants for the use of animals, and animals were made for the sake of humans….

“In the Christian version of the great chain of being, the hierarchical ladder led from a transcendent God, angels, men, women, and children, down to animals, plants, and the inanimate realm.”

Sessions rightly notes that the Garden of Eden story provided the moral justification for the subjugation of nature by humans.  However, the evolution of ideas and ideologies also justified the class society and all its trappings. 

The return to a “good society” where humans will renew our natural essence will require riding ourselves from alienating and exploitive relations, a process Marx and Engels called the socialist revolution. However, central to this process is our return to nature: naturalism and socialism become one and the same thing. Marxian and Deep Ecology concerns originate from the rise of class society and their insights are necessary and complementary for the theory and practice of forging the new world and our place in it.

1. George Sessions (ed.), Deep Ecology for the 21^st Century. Boston: Shambhala Press, 1995; pages 156-183.

1. Introduction

By Kamran Nayeri, June 9, 2009

There is no doubt that humanity faces a socioeconomic, environmental and ecological crisis. Radical social change is necessary to resolves these interrelated crises. As a contribution towards finding solutions to these crises, this page is dedicated to exploring and advocating ecosocialism as a way to find Our Place in the World.

By ecosocialism, I mean a critical appropriation of the contributions of the socialist movement, beginning with Karl Marx, synthesized with a critical appropriation of contributions from the Deep Ecology movement beginning with Henry David Thoreau.

Marx characterized modern human condition by alienation from society, nature and, therefore, our true self. As social animals, we are neither truly social nor live up to our full potentials. Socialism for Marx was a process of overcoming alienation and fully developing our human nature. However, Marx’s work is essentially focused on understanding and revolutionizing social relations; he did not develop his analysis of our relationship with nature and how it too should be revolutionized.

As a movement, socialists have committed two major errors with respect to our relationship to nature. The more benign error was the assumption that the problematic of our relationship with nature will wither away with the arrival of socialism. Thus, the disastrous environmental policy of Stalinist industrialization did not become an issue even with its revolutionary socialist critics. The more malignant error involved the notion of “struggle against nature.” Marx’s humanism was in continuity with the anthropocentric worldview of the Renaissance that claimed humans have unlimited potential and power and the task of history is to realize them. Thus, the socialist discourse included the argument that nature can be “better controlled” in a planned economy.

It is the great merit of Thoreau and the Deep Ecology movement to break with this Western anthropocentric tradition in favor of an ecocentric (ecological) worldview. Thoreau, who also criticized commercial relations of his time, equated freedom with wildness. Deep Ecology movement has registered significant progress to organize a mass movement to resolve the current environmental and ecological problems (see the Eight Point Platform by Arnes Naess and George Sessions). Still, analysis of socioeconomic relations leading to environmental and ecological problems remains undeveloped. More specifically, there is no clear vision for a post-capitalist society.

Clearly, there is something to be gained from the synthesis of Marxian socialism and Deep Ecology insights. But is it possible? Fortunately, they both (that is, some strands of Deep Ecology) are built on the basis of philosophical materialism and share a historical method.

I maintain that the key to the ecosocialist synthesis is the Darwinian evolutionary theory that is consistent with both Marxian socialist theory and Deep Ecology materialist ecosophies (ecological philosophies; Naess’ terminology).

This is the task of Our Place in the World. I am looking forward to your contributions.

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