Explanations for a material universe must be based on material causes.
Mathematical analysis of its beginnings point to our universe as one of many that
have been set in motion, and we humans have become part of it by accident.
Through the ages, religion has conditioned us to believe that Earth is a gift over
which we have been granted dominion by a supernatural creator. The declines in
religiosity and the old theocratic outlook on creation, have shifted attitudes
towards our planet from dominion to stewardship. This has provoked thought
about the relation we bear to the universe as living parts of a vast cosmos that has
existed time out of mind, where we can be only onlookers. On our tiny planet at
the edge of a minor galaxy we are able to contemplate a hundred years of
detrimental impacts of our uses of planetary resources. We have evolved as an
integral part of Earth, and this has given us the power of predicting the
consequences of our actions.
On Earth's surface, in everything we do from painting a house to producing children
we are integral with all its ecosystems. This view of humankind as being part of
complex and relatively fragile chemical systems, together with our evolved ability
to make plans for the future, provides the opportunity to cooperate in maintaining
the ecological processes that sustain our planetary home. We have the technical
ability to change our behaviour, but that is not enough.
Science has shown us that materially we are as just one of many beings sharing a
common origin. This biocentric view of humankind raises the value of Earth's
mothership into the realm of the spirit. We have a spiritual vision of our
relationship to Earth, because as science finds new explanations for our material
being, it also increases the mystery of the unknown. Mysteries, yet to be
explained in material terms, are expressed in the great spiritual emotions of
sublimity, grandeur, and majesty. Like scientific endeavour, these emotions have
also evolved for us to know the unknown. They represent ways of knowing which,
although they have preceded the social evolution of religion, nevertheless define
what is sacred and hallowed. That is to say they are part of mental processes, of
which we are unaware, that endow objects and events with beauty, reverence, awe
or respect. By means of these notions we can communicate the innermost and
most central parts of a thing powerfully and non- scientifically. At a mundane level
they prompt us to choose where we go for holidays. At higher levels they allow us
define things 'of the heart', meaning they are cherished and out of the ordinary, as
when we say 'time has stood still'. Knowing things of the heart is the basis of
motivations to care and protect. Similarly, 'soul' is a spiritual expression for the
innermost part or moral nature of a thing. A close spiritual regard for a sacred
mother earth endows the planet with qualities of mysticism or exaltation, and is the
basis of desires of righteousness to take the earth into the soul and care for it,
irrespective of what it can provide for the material life of groups and individuals.
Of all the living things taking planetary sustenance, we have, through trade and its
lack of care for its sources of raw materials, become the greatest factor
disturbing earth's ecological and climatic equilibria. Because we are able to think
spiritually about Earth as Mother from which we receive nourishment we cannot
receive all these privileges without bearing obligations to keep, to cherish, and to
cooperate. In taking there must be giving and giving allows taking. Scientifically,
the degradation of the planet is plain to see. It is obvious that human self interest
has caused the current environmental crisis. This leaves an appeal to moral
precepts based on a spiritually based environmental ethic, and an heightened
awareness of inequalities of taking and giving, to move us from the economic
realm of trade to the realm of morals, and thereby increase our spiritual stature.
The workings and produce of a sacred earth are also sacred, so we are allowed to
endow them with a moral significance. In this respect, as beings steeped in
spirituality, we are individually obliged to apply this behaviour, and make righteous
use of all our knowledge, to help equilibrate a better social order with Earth based
on obligation and service to its ecosystems. This is also the basis for conceiving
and applying national and racial morals to unify humankind. It then becomes a
social responsibility of education to teach a sacred understanding of the moral
obligations we bear to our Earth as living parts of the vast creation. For this to
happen an understanding of things of the spirit must be placed at the centre of
national curricula.
Non-religious people regard spirit as an educational metaphor – a means to
express subtle ideas, attitudes, and feelings. For the religious, it’s a force, closely
aligned to the concept of heaven, and the world of angelic beings. For most
people it is exemplified by an addiction to sunsets. The internationalist teacher
Krishnamurti, discussing sunsets, lamented the fact that we often miss the best
part of them. We are so busy documenting and trying to capture the sunset with a
camera, we miss the best part of it as a transient experience, where each
moment offers subtle changes in colour, in the positioning of the sun, in the
silhouette of the trees and the shadows. He says, be still, and experience the full
spirituality of each moment the desire for time to stand still. The difference
between a material explanation and a spiritual explanation is, on the one hand, to
compare the satisfaction obtained by measuring angles, the position of the sun to
the horizon, making a table and plotting a graph etc, and on the other, simply
watching the ever-changing colours and rapid darkening of a sky with its shifting
patterns of clouds. In personal relationships, the fact that loving seems to depend
on the ineraction of a small hormone called oxytocin with brain cells, does not add
to our understanding of what it is like to be in love. The latter route to
understanding sunsets and love involves registering beauty, art, love, innocence,
wonder, inspiration, as on another occasion you might stop to enjoy the intricate
weaving of a spider’s web – a very personal understanding, and something you
may or may not wish to share with others. The spiritual value of a spider in a
species survival plan is much more than the size of its population and much easier
to describe.
In understanding the world through spiritual values it is important to distinguish
between ‘religiosity’ and ‘spirituality’.
Religiosity is defined as participation in
the particular beliefs, rituals, and activities of traditional religion. It can serve as a
nurturer or channel for spirituality, but is not synonymous with it.
Spirituality is
more basic than religiosity. It is a subjective experience that exists both within and
outside of traditional religious systems. Spirituality relates to the way in which
people understand and live their lives according to their sense of ultimate
meaning and value. It includes the need to find satisfactory answers to ultimate
questions about life, illness and death. It can be seen as comprising elements of
meaning, purpose, value, hope, love, and for some people,
a connection to a
higher power or something greater than self.
Spirituality is a biological quality. It is a mental feature arising in the design of the
human brain that is expressed as intelligence and creativity. It enables us to live
spontaneously according to deep parts of our brains that interpret reality in non-
rational ways. All human intelligence, creativity and design, are the direct or
indirect products of Darwinian natural selection. From this standpoint, design
cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the creation of the
universe. Accordingly, spirituality is not designed by a supernatural God; rather,
God is the creation of human spirituality as are expressions of nature in poetry
and art.
These biological, spiritual, non-divine, ways of human perception and
understanding of the environment are invigorating, life sustaining and
transformative. As aspects of secularity, they benefit us just as much as when
we live in our rational brains and experiment to provide material explanations for
the world. They are adaptive behaviours like the more powerful and beneficial
practical material explanations of our relationship to the environment, such as
medical science.
L.H. Bailey in wrote in 1914:
The good spiritual reaction to nature comes from putting....
'the man hard against the facts; he might be set to studying bugs or soils or placed between the
handles of a plow until such time as objects begin to take their natural shape and meaning in
his mind".
A perception of the 'natural shape of objects' is the aim of 'deep ecology. This is
one of the principal schools in contemporary environmental philosophy. The
term was first used by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972 in his
paper "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement." The term
was intended to call for a fundamental re-making of environmental thought that
would go far beyond human- centred ideas, and reform environmentalism that
sought merely to adjust environmental policy. Instead of limiting itself to the
mitigation of environmental degradation and sustainability in the use of natural
resources, deep ecology is self- consciously a radical philosophy that seeks to
create profound changes in the way we conceive and relate to nature. Deep
ecology was actually forseen by Bailey in terms of any direct and useful contact
with the earth, placing humankind not as superior to nature, but as a superior
intelligence working in nature as a conscious, and therefore as a responsible
part, in a process of evolution.
Camped out in Death Valley, California, during 1984, George Sessions and Arne
Naess draw up eight basic principles that describe deep ecology:
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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.
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Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realisation of these
values and are also values in themselves.
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Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity accept to satisfy
vital needs.
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The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial
decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life
demands such a decrease.
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Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the
situation is rapidly worsening.
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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.
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The ideological change is mainly in appreciating
life quality rather than
adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a
profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
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Those who subscribe to the foregoing points, have an obligation directly or
indirectly to try to implement the necessary change.
Not surprisingly the early proponents of deep ecology, and what may be loosely
grouped as the 'Deep Ecology School' are nearly all either environmentalists,
philosophers, poets, or Buddhists: Arne Naess (mountaineer, philosopher,
sociologist and environmental activist), George Sessions (philosopher), Bill
Devall (sociologist, philosopher, environmental activist and practitioner of aikido),
Alan Drengson (philosopher and practitioner of aikido), Michael Zimmerman
(Buddhist leanings), Dolores LaChapelle (mountaineer, teacher of T'ai Chi),
Robert Aitken (poet and Zen Buddhist), Gary Snyder (mountaineer, poet and Zen
Buddhist), Michael Soule (conservationist, biologist and Buddhist), John Seed
(ecological activist with Buddhist leanings), Joanna Macy (environmental and
social activist, Buddhist), Jeremy Haywood (Buddhist), Paul Ehrlich (ecologist),
Fritjof Capra (polymath and practitioner of T'ai Chi), Edward Goldsmith
(polymath and ecophilosopher).
