It has been said
that that it is perceptions which influence decisions in
environmental management rather than the actual environmental
factors which occasion them.
The particular way
that groups and individuals perceive their environment and manage
it involves their shared beliefs and values, ideologies and
philosophies. These constitute an irrational element in perception
and decision making. The influence will not be measurable or
predictable. It has been proposed to deal with it by regarding it
as an 'indeterminate element' within a set of elements that
can be determined. This means management decisions are made
within a defined culture framework within which the decisions will
take effect. There is a screen of values through which the
environment is perceived.
Cybernetics has
shown that there is only one way to manage a system, and that is
via a control mechanism 'which operates by detecting data
essential to the maintenance of the system's stable relationship
with its environment...' The data can be resolved into a 'model or
set of instructions' which ensures the normal day-to-day behaviour
of a biological organism conforms to a norm. The
subjective response of humankind is to be regarded as a random
statistical element in an otherwise predictable model that produces
a deviation from the norm. For a social organism such a model
or template is the society's world-view, and in pre-industrial
societies the main control was religion.
Religion governs the
behaviour of tribal people, who do not treat their environment
simply as a resource to satisfy short-term needs. Through animism
and the like they sanctify it. The absence in industrial society of
a religion which provides a goal structure enabling it to achieve a
stable relationship with its environment drives that society
towards discontinuity and disintegration.
Religion can ensure
that society's basic structure is maintained. It admirably
satisfies cybernetic requirements. Religion encourages some order
in differentiated and structured traditional societies. It gives
the stability which the social ecosystem needs; it ensures that
everyone can have a complete model of the environment and a
corresponding strictly prescribed behaviour pattern. Religion
consecrates or sanctifies the generalities of a society's behaviour
pattern.
Goldsmith, who is
largely responsible for articulating the above view within
environmentalism, forecasts that with increased industrialisation
and increased recognition that a materialist paradise is
unattainable will come
'a growing number of Messianic movements which
will attempt to establish a new social order based on a new view of
man's relationship with his environment. Many of them will adopt at
least a facade of Christianity...'
In systems terms,
religion will be re-established as a control mechanism enabling the
social system to reach equilibrium and stability with respect to
the environment.
There are several
objections to these 'systems' views of man, society and nature.
Some see them as dehumanising and grossly mechanistic, while others
emphasise their essential determinism, placing man in too
subordinate and dependent a role in relation to
nature.
Regarding the use of
belief and value systems in environmental management, we are left
with the following unresolved questions:
Can relationships
between men, and within and between societies, and between man and
nature, be precisely quantified and mathematically
structured?
Can culture and
values, emotion and irrationality be built into a predictive social
model as mere 'degrees of randomness'?
Can religion and
spirituality be regarded simply as a control mechanism
holding a social system onto a particular course?
Are men and society
qualitatively no different from cells or dogs?