Devall, Bill & Sessions, George. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1985.
The mid-eighties were the period for the full fruition of a freshly developed philosophical synthesis called deep ecology. Coined by the Norwegian naturalist and philosopher Arne Naess, “deep [versus shallow] ecology” implies—everything. Religion, economy, politics, society, philosophy, science … deep ecology implicates all aspects of human/nature interaction within its sphere, and seeks to look at the big picture, in time and space, of any given anthropogenic situation affecting the natural world.
Whereas “shallow” ecologists are concerned with, say, the number of moose that can be annually “harvested” by wealthy out-of-state hunters in Vermont from the perspective of pleasing the game commission and department of tourism, a deep ecologist would look at the scene very differently, starting from a premise based on what is integral for the species as a whole: its breeding and feeding habits, population viability, habitat quality, dispersion capabilities and reproductive rates, and its present ability to successfully reinhabit a land from which it was largley extirpated not long ago. Ideally, politics and money would have no say in an initial decision based on strict ecological principles guided by an overt desire to benefit the species and the landscape. Beholden to no ulterior motives of financial gain or political support, the decision to hunt moose would take place with the best interest of the moose foremost in mind.
This is not to say that the very best interests of the animal are put forth—the tearing up of the interstates, the dismantling of the subdivisions and factories and a concomitant plunge in human population. What matters is that a spiritual realignment of priorities, based on the best available science, takes place in which Lord Man (as John Muir would have it) is deposed from his almighty pedestal, and other life-forms and life processes are allowed at least some say in the future of our shared existence.
Deep ecology, as recorded by the authors of Living as if Nature Mattered, is a science-based philosophy that nevertheless owes its conception to a diverse field of intellectual and religious backgrounds including Taoism and Darwinism, the English Romantics and the American Transcendentalists, Aldo Leopold and Walt Whitman. The above sources stress several common emphases: responsibility, decentralization, self-sufficient communities, tolerance, reverence of nature as it is (or was), and the idea that modern industrial society is caught up in a warped, self-immolative fantasy known among the Hopi as koyaanisqatsi, meaning “‘life out of balance’ or ‘weird craziness, man,’” (in the interpretation of Edward Abbey). It is a wild and free vision of life, expressed in America as an urge to reclaim the land for nature and for nature-based, sustainable living, and is in many ways the polar opposite of our current drift toward globalized homogeny and precarious economic interdependence. Indeed, to some American deep ecologists, like Dave Foreman, this country represents the last, best hope that Western man will have to redeem himself and a global legacy of environmental destruction and sacrilege.
Devall and Sessions’ Deep Ecology is not without its flaws, chiefly in a reliance on giddy Californicated goofiness when it comes to discussing experiential “earth reverence” (we must attain “joyous confidence to dance with the sensuous harmonies discovered through spontaneous, playful intercourse with the rhythms of our bodies, the rhythms of flowing water”). There is also the historically inept and falsely romantic insistence on the role of the American Indian as the spiritual steward of Eden: “Native Americans and other primal peoples teach us reverence for the land, the place of being. Nature was used—beaver, bison, etc.—for sustenance, but richness of ends was achieved with material technology that was elegant, sophisticated, appropriate, and controlled within the context of a traditional society.” This scenario of appropriate use presumably includes elegantly stampeding two thousand bison off a cliff in order to feed thirty people; the extinction of much of North America’s Pleistocene megafauna likewise seems debatably “controlled”.
This book remains important, however, in that it is an initial gathering together of a wide field of different ideas from history, science and art that point us toward a saner path of life. The interactions and conflicts of New Age, social ecology, ecofeminist and Eastern traditions are discussed, and the inclusion of poetry and symbolism points us toward the realization that technology and science alone are not enough to guide us out of our current predicament—the human heart and spirit must play the leading role.
The mid-eighties were the period for the full fruition of a freshly developed philosophical synthesis called deep ecology. Coined by the Norwegian naturalist and philosopher Arne Naess, “deep [versus shallow] ecology” implies—everything. Religion, economy, politics, society, philosophy, science … deep ecology implicates all aspects of human/nature interaction within its sphere, and seeks to look at the big picture, in time and space, of any given anthropogenic situation affecting the natural world.
Whereas “shallow” ecologists are concerned with, say, the number of moose that can be annually “harvested” by wealthy out-of-state hunters in Vermont from the perspective of pleasing the game commission and department of tourism, a deep ecologist would look at the scene very differently, starting from a premise based on what is integral for the species as a whole: its breeding and feeding habits, population viability, habitat quality, dispersion capabilities and reproductive rates, and its present ability to successfully reinhabit a land from which it was largley extirpated not long ago. Ideally, politics and money would have no say in an initial decision based on strict ecological principles guided by an overt desire to benefit the species and the landscape. Beholden to no ulterior motives of financial gain or political support, the decision to hunt moose would take place with the best interest of the moose foremost in mind.
This is not to say that the very best interests of the animal are put forth—the tearing up of the interstates, the dismantling of the subdivisions and factories and a concomitant plunge in human population. What matters is that a spiritual realignment of priorities, based on the best available science, takes place in which Lord Man (as John Muir would have it) is deposed from his almighty pedestal, and other life-forms and life processes are allowed at least some say in the future of our shared existence.
Deep ecology, as recorded by the authors of Living as if Nature Mattered, is a science-based philosophy that nevertheless owes its conception to a diverse field of intellectual and religious backgrounds including Taoism and Darwinism, the English Romantics and the American Transcendentalists, Aldo Leopold and Walt Whitman. The above sources stress several common emphases: responsibility, decentralization, self-sufficient communities, tolerance, reverence of nature as it is (or was), and the idea that modern industrial society is caught up in a warped, self-immolative fantasy known among the Hopi as koyaanisqatsi, meaning “‘life out of balance’ or ‘weird craziness, man,’” (in the interpretation of Edward Abbey). It is a wild and free vision of life, expressed in America as an urge to reclaim the land for nature and for nature-based, sustainable living, and is in many ways the polar opposite of our current drift toward globalized homogeny and precarious economic interdependence. Indeed, to some American deep ecologists, like Dave Foreman, this country represents the last, best hope that Western man will have to redeem himself and a global legacy of environmental destruction and sacrilege.
Devall and Sessions’ Deep Ecology is not without its flaws, chiefly in a reliance on giddy Californicated goofiness when it comes to discussing experiential “earth reverence” (we must attain “joyous confidence to dance with the sensuous harmonies discovered through spontaneous, playful intercourse with the rhythms of our bodies, the rhythms of flowing water”). There is also the historically inept and falsely romantic insistence on the role of the American Indian as the spiritual steward of Eden: “Native Americans and other primal peoples teach us reverence for the land, the place of being. Nature was used—beaver, bison, etc.—for sustenance, but richness of ends was achieved with material technology that was elegant, sophisticated, appropriate, and controlled within the context of a traditional society.” This scenario of appropriate use presumably includes elegantly stampeding two thousand bison off a cliff in order to feed thirty people; the extinction of much of North America’s Pleistocene megafauna likewise seems debatably “controlled”.
This book remains important, however, in that it is an initial gathering together of a wide field of different ideas from history, science and art that point us toward a saner path of life. The interactions and conflicts of New Age, social ecology, ecofeminist and Eastern traditions are discussed, and the inclusion of poetry and symbolism points us toward the realization that technology and science alone are not enough to guide us out of our current predicament—the human heart and spirit must play the leading role.
