By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--August 28, 2012
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Although participants in these countercultural movements often eschew the label religion, these are religious movements, in which persons find ultimate meaning and transformative power in nature. Focusing on the deep ecology movement, I further argued that (1) experiences of nature spirituality are evoked by practices as diverse as mountaineering, neo-shamanic ritualising and states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens; (2) earthen spiritualities are often contested and may be viewed as inauthentic or dangerous by practitioners of other forms of nature spirituality, and (3) despite significant diversity, a sense of connection and belonging to nature (sometimes personified as a transforming if not transcendent power) unites these cross-fertilising, and sometimes competing, spiritualities.Lee explains the religious elements of the environmental movement:
While most Earth First!ers reject organized religion, the foundation of the movement lies in “a radical ‘ecological consciousness’ that intuitively, affectively and deeply experiences a sense of the sacredness of interconnection of all life.Lee claims that while religious symbolism is clear in these movements, the political aspect is more prominent, This combination of religion and political elements should not surprise us as it is quite common for leftists to appeal to either political theories, or religious ideas, depending upon their need to persuade.
Arne Naess invented the term deep ecology in a famous 1973 article, "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary." By "ecology movement" Naess means a cosmology or worldview. Naess faults European and North American civilization for the arrogance of its human-centered instrumentalization of nonhuman nature. He contrasts his new "deep" (or radical) ecological worldview with the dominant "shallow" (or reform) paradigm. The shallow worldview, which he finds to be typical of mainstream environmentalism, is merely an extension of European and North American anthropocentrism--its reasons for conserving wilderness and preserving biodiversity are invariably tied to human welfare, and it prizes nonhuman nature mainly for its use-value. The deep ecological worldview, in contrast, questions the fundamental assumptions of European and North American anthropocentrism-- that is, it digs conceptually deeper. In doing so, deep ecological thinking "is not a slight reform of our present society, but a substantial reorientation of our whole civilization". This radicalism has inspired environmental activists of many stripes to hoist up Deep Ecology as their banner in calling for nothing less than the redirection of human history.
In its most basic form, deep ecology demands that human beings reevaluate their relationship with the environment in such a way as to acknowledge that both human and non-human life have an intrinsic moral worth. In adopting a deep ecology perspective, one moves from the anthropocentric of industrialized society to what is believed to be an ecologically responsible biocentrism. The philosophy also predicts that if things continue as they presently are, crisis will result, and thus include an imperative to action.
Many of our environmental problems could be traced to the Christian notion that God gave this Earth to humans for their use and specifically directed humans to exercise dominion over the Earth and all of its life forms. While it is questionable that this is what White intended, the effect of the piece has been to serve as an indictment of Christianity as the source of our environmental problems, and to render laughable the idea that Christianity might have anything to contribute to our environmental crisis. As essayist Wendell Berry has observed, "the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world and uselessness of Christianity in any effort to correct that destruction are now established cliches of the conservation movement."The clear implication of White's thesis is the answer to the Earth's problems is to return to a more pagan view of our cosmos. Ironically, Dave Foreman, who created Earth First! wrote in a 1980 memo called A Statement of Principles: "Earth is Goddess and the proper object of human worship," writes Lee.
The term millenarian, derived from the Book of Revelation (20:4), implies the Christian mythic tradition of a chosen people, united by their faith in the return of Christ and their anticipation of a thousand-year period of glory. Such doctrines combine religious faith and political imperatives in a powerful way. They capture the human imagination and allegiance through the promise of a perfect world that transcends the secular state.In a fascinating exchange described by Lee, termed the "Anarchy Debate," radical environmentalists--such as Edward Abbey, eco-terrorism's patron saint--argued over what a post-enviromental apocalyptic world would resemble. Inexorably, the discussion turned towards "social justice," or a Marxist interpretation of the new world. The world described by the radicals was a return to primitive tribalism, where bureaucracy would not obscure every person having to stand up for their own actions. And all goods would be held communally. It is not accidental that Lee describes how religious and political symbolism in the radical environmental movement are interchangeable because this is the nature of Marxism. Everything is debased and sacrificed for use by the state. At the same time, everything is ultimately political in nature. The fact that the post-apocalyptic world of Foreman and others was one of "social justice," with a primitive tribal economy where all would share everything is quintessential Marxism. There is a strand of anarchy in the environmental movements that appears taken right out of Karl Marx's theory of the three stages, where the last evolution is into a kind of benign anarchy. So many environmentalists exhibit a kind of fatalistic idea that even if society did die while battling global warming, etc--humankind will be reborn into a kind of minimalist paradise. Further, the same kind of Marxism which infects leftist thinking regarding environmentalism and "social justice" is identified by Thomas Flanagan in Millennial Visions: Essays on Twentieth-Century Millenarianism, as a religion, or a kind of anti-religion, in structure and ideology.
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Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.