NOT EASY TO ACCESS WILDERNESS SPACES:

A real challenge for busy urban lives is access to wilderness spaces. Most cities are, we know, overgrown concrete jungles and if there is any forest adjacent, it is being quickly usurped.

We seem to have become locked into our urban and isolated realities without any release on the horizon. As I write this page –  in mid 2022– we are indeed in the midst of a severe environmental crisis and a pandemic that has taken thousands upon thousands of lives across the world. Beyond our urban disasters, forests and natural places are under dire strain from destruction and wildlife threatened to extinction.

SACRED PAST, SACRED FUTURE:

It would be an understatement of the hour to say that our own destiny, as humans, is at a crisis-point and has proven to be in fact interlaced and connected with our fellow species on the planet. It is in fact now a matter of our survival to learn the tragic lessons from pandemics and climate change catastrophes and take care of our planet. The future has knocked on our doors and compels us to listen. In this grave moment, it seems vital to offer alternative perspectives than those prevalent in popular media.

One such approach is of ‘Deep Ecology’ – a distinct bio-philosophical approach to ecology  which expresses the need for a paradigm shift world-wide and a renewal of what indigenous peoples across the planet have maintained all along – humans are, and always will be, an integral part of a much larger web of life that sustains each species equally across borders, nations, continents, oceans, and natural spaces.The system of deep ecology was developed by Arne Naess.

This larger ecosphere we inhabit has a life of its own and a sovereignty and power, which needs to be acknowledged and grasped experientially. None can be severed from another without self-destruction. The natural world is who oneself is at the core and unconditionally free – it is not an instrument, an ‘other’ or ‘object’ for exploitation. the old paradigm of a dead material world to be used for economic gain or profit is proven bankrupt.

ORIGINS OF ‘DEEP ECOLOGY‘ IN SETTLER UNITED STATES

1. Aldo Leopold and a dying wolf: ‘Fierce Green Fire’

To grasp Deep Ecology, it is perhaps meaningful to recount how Arne Naess came to formulate his understandings of the natural world and connection to human societies. In his early readings in the bitter-cold mountains of wild Norway,  Naess came across a book by Aldo Leopold, a wildlife manager in western United States in the 1920’s titled ‘A Sandy County Almanac’.

2. Life Transforming Encounter:

In this book, Leopold recounts a life-transforming moment when he could see through to the genuine power and magnificence of the natural world. When he came to grasp in all his senses how alive an eco-system can be and what power it can exert. He was on a mission to exterminate wolves across the northwestern United States, a mission sanctioned by the federal government. In the company of hunters, he was tracking a pack of wolves when he saw an old wolf by a lake in the shadow of a mountain and shot her dead. Looking into her dying eyes, he was astonished to see a power that seemed in synchrony with everything around it – the lake, its fish, the trees, and the majestic mountain overlooking.

3.‘Thinking Like a Mountain:

He writes in a chapter entitled ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’ that: “there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

The question is: what could Leopold have seen in the eyes of the dying wolf that gave him certitude of a knowledge greater and more compelling than the rationale of hunters? How could a mountain disagree or agree with anything? One can see that Leopold experienced an understanding that went beyond the limited goals of his companion hunters – meat for human consumption.

4.Wilderness and Wildlife – Absolute Value

He saw living value and presence – a magnificence that could not be rendered as utilitarian purpose. He saw that an entire eco-system lives in each being and its wholeness can neither be broken or fragmented by a hunter’s bullet. In that moment, he had become one with the entire eco-system and entered into it. This was a presence that had its own life, its own pathway, its own working quite distinct from any projection of inertness from mechanist material perspectives.
After this pivotal event, Leopold went on to formulate a new way of looking at the natural world. He writes: ” humans are members of a biotic community” adding that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

ECOLOGICAL DEPTH VIEW NEEDED:

The Norwegian philosopher Naess could see that such a spontaneous moment of awareness and recognition came from a far deeper place than accustomed to. Rather than a discrete thought, an experience such as above is more like a gestalt, a pattern, a web, and an eruption that – in a moment – dissolves the structures of conditioned responses and illuminates. In a flash of recognition one grasps the deeper interconnectedness of all seeming ‘things’. Objects can be seen, as it were, constellations or crystallizations  in a vibrating web of relationships.

When such an experience happens – and it can’t be predicted – one can understand or grasp a deeper and wider sense of ‘self’. It is charged or saturated ith life-energy and can be profoundly real. In ancient Indian wisdom traditions, such a breakthrough with full feeling and sense of meaning is how genuine knowledge arises. Knowing is not abstract or theoretical but alive with personal meaning and experience – while being universal in significance. For Indian knowledge systems, philosophy is not a cerebral exercise in abstract logic but direct experience.

‘AHIMSA’ AS LIVING TRUTH:

Through such understandings, when they arise, a sense of connection is perceptible and empathy awakens. It is in fact, according to Naess, the real significance of Gandhi’s  approach to nonviolence. Our well being is the well being of the natural world and the web of life we are a part of. For Naess, each living being, microbe to human is in a trajectory of expansion and one can see that we are, each one, fellow-travellers rather than ‘owners’ of the planet. Through such respect for life, respect for the environment becomes easier.

‘SELF’ AS REFLECTION – NOT ISOLATED:

Our sense of identity is in fact an intersubjectivity. We are each one reflections of one another. Then, how could one divide or make a claim for isolated ownership?

ARNE NAESS, FORMULATOR OF DEEP ECOLOGY:

Arne Naess (1912-2009) was an environmentalist and philosopher who coined the phrase ‘Deep Ecology’ in early 1970’s. ‘Deep Ecology’ is a set of views on the natural world that distinguishes itself from most popular environmentalist thinkings – its cardinal principle is that ‘nature’ is not to be viewed as at service of
humans, ‘secondary’, or for manipulation – it has its own sovereignty and autonomy that needs to be maintained. This is so for the well-being of all beings – humans included.
In 1972 at a conference in Bucharest, Naess outlined his understanding of how cultures world-wide had understood relationships to natural environments differently from each other.

Contemporary environmentalist movements in the US were then largely influenced by Rachel Carson and tended more towards a ‘palliative’ approach to human interference in the natural world. This included methods of ‘recycling’, minimising effects of industry, etc. Naess saw the value of these but went further. He outlined views from cultures like ancient Indian with Jain and Buddhist traditions as well as from Vedic times. He also presented views from indigeneous cultures worldwide including native American and Polynesian. The threads running through these indicated a ‘deeper’ paradigm – of unconditional sovereignty of the natural world and value.

DEEP ECOLOGY IS A PARADIGM SHIFT:

This implied a ‘shift’ in our assumptions and unconscious patterns of conduct. It was a critique of values and methods of the industrial economy.
The long-range deep approach, according to Naess, involves redesigning our whole systems based on values and methods that truly preserve the ecological and cultural diversity of natural systems.One just can’t go on exploiting the natural world with simplistic palliative approaches. Rather, a deeper transformation is needed in value-systems and ways of life.Without it, we will destroy the diversity and beauty of the world and its ability to support human cultures.

RESPECT FOR BIO-DIVERISTY, MULTI-ETHNICITY, CROSS-CULTURALISM:

Inherent in Naess’s critique of industrial societies, is a recognition of the value of bio-diversity and multi-ethnicities across cultures and spaces. The richer natural eco-systems become through cycles of ‘succession’ and interplay, the greater the quality of human lives as well which also thrive through diversities and multiplicities.
Rather than look at the earth as a source for ‘raw materials’ to feed inflated needs for consumptions, economies would be better served by focusing on enhancing the quality of life everywhere. The principle of bio-diversity is in fact crucial to Naess’s views on ecology. It comes from the understanding of ecology as a system of rich interrelationships between elements of a natural community. It is how plants, living beings in a forest or natural context relate to each other and create a whole ecosystem.

UNINTERRUPTED CYCLES OF NATURAL LIFE: WILDERNESS IS WAVES OF
SUCCESSION TO BE LEFT UNDISTURBED.

When we enter a natural space, it is vital to understand that we are treading on slow uninterrupted cycles of sacred life. Each cycle carries the living charge of plants, animals, trees, flowers, birds, bees – countless life-forms in interaction.

Ecology is also about these multiple energies and ways in which living entities cooperate with each other to generate more complex structures. This occurs through giving way to each other in waves of ‘succession’. This ability to transform through trans-fusion creates richness and resilience of life. In principle, succession leads to a ‘climax community’ which is self-sustaining through internalized cycles of  interaction.

The health of such interconnected systems can be then seriously impaired when they are torn apart and uprooted or destroyed through human interference. It is of vital importance then that we begin to understand our responsibility as co- participants in the eco-systems around us and act in synchrony with these rather than dissonance.

For Naess, it was of extreme value to learn from living indigeneous communities how to participate in an ‘ecosphere’ – each specific part of the earth has its own
systems depending on the natural conditions and their lessons are critical for us to observe and to learn from.

EIGHT-TIER PLATFORM OF DEEP ECOLOGY:

He formulated an eight-tier platform that simply and effectively lays down ‘Deep Ecology’.

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves. 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.
3. ‘Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires
   such a decrease.
5. Present human interference with the nonhuman 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 is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

Reading List:
Næss, Arne (1989). Ecology, community and lifestyle: outline of an ecosophy Translated by D. Rothenberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

EFFECTS OF DEEP ECOLOGICAL EXPERIENCES:

When one has an experience of connectedness to a living, breathing and intelligent ecosphere it can lead to deeper examinations of some of the fundamental premises of contemporary societies and cultures. This in turn can enable possibilities of new paradigms and methods that help in manifesting authentic changes around us.

HOW DEEP ECOLOGY CAN TRANSFORM OUR LIFE AND VISION:

1. Releasing the Power of Agency:

For any kind of real growth and change to occur, there needs to be energy arising from inner depths out into manifestation. To allow for change to happen – both internally and outside in the world – a sense of unhindered agency is invaluable. For a person experiencing an authentic connection in a moment with the natural world, the power of the entire ecosphere becomes active and functional in them.This can lead to genuine action and to transformation on many levels.

2. Personal experience is key:

When a person feels deeply and genuinely in a moment an intimate connection with the natural world, a deeper web of life awakens and becomes active.
Through a sympathetic vibration, a larger field is accessed. The key is the individual whose resonance is vital.
Without genuine changes implemented on a personal level – as a change in lifestyle or choices followed by more communal levels of interaction, deep ecology can remain an abstraction.

Experiences, when they happen, in fact already trigger deeper neural pathways in our brains and alter how we think and feel. Self-awareness of these inner changes is vital to manifesting external changes. It can lead further towards a questioning of the deeper origins of our collective crisis of pandemics and of climate change. In questioning the given paradigm of exploitation of the natural world, one understands its underlying assumptions from an ecological point of view. One can find that a deep-rooted anthropocentrism  has damaged our natural world for centuries of time – as if one had the right to do so! Undoing these assumptions is vital to rebirth and renewal of new ways of living.

3. Ancient Indian nature-based Eco-sophical spiritualities:

In fact, the Indian subcontinent is home to invaluable ancient understandings of the natural world. It would be wise to tap these and empower them with genuine and fresh recognitions and imaginings.. The spiritual traditions of ‘Jainism’, ‘Buddhism’, Upanishadic teachings, Shakti worship, Shaivism  are infused with awareness of the sacred in nature and outright reverence for it.

Similarly, shamanic traditions of Central America and North America – indeed, the world over – carry powerful understandings of nature and of codes for humans in living harmoniously with an ecosphere. Spiritualities here tend to be deeply grounded in the physical and natural worlds and carry recognitions of ‘ecospheres’ which are seen as infused with cosmic power and intelligence.