/r/deep_ecology

Photograph via snooOG

For discussion of deep ecology and how our civilization can be sustainable and existentially-rewarding.

Deep Ecology

For discussion of deep ecology, the environmental philosophy that the cause of ecocide is civilization decline with the inevitable chaotic lifestyle choices as a result and that to fix it we must make fundamental changes to the way we live, and how to re-order our civilization to be sustainable and existentially rewarding.

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/r/deep_ecology

5,039 Subscribers

3

Native American Nature Ambience doesn’t waste resources and helps intertwining with nature. Thought I might share :)

0 Comments
2024/02/12
13:33 UTC

12

How do biocentrists or ecocentrists believe human and non-human interests should be balanced?

I’m learning more about deep ecology and non-anthropocentric frameworks for environmentalism but am still trying to understand the practical solutions to environmental issues these perspectives advocate, especially when human and non-human interests are seemingly in conflict, such as with agricultural land vs. natural habitat, deadly diseases caused by microbes, and human interests in quality of life/leisure activities vs associated environmental impacts.

Some “solutions” that seemingly arise from taking a biocentric or ecocentric perspective I’ve encountered so far:

  1. Opposing logging/mining/other activities that damage remaining wilderness areas with direct action like Earth First!

  2. Ecofascism, using authoritarianism and violating human rights in the name of the greater good of “protecting nature” or “our resources”

  3. Murray Bookchin’s social ecology, which proposes major, anarchist-esque restructuring of society to make it a sustainable part of the natural ecosystem.

  4. Trying to bring an immediate end to industrialized society or agricultural civilization as a whole like the Deep Green Resistance group, regardless of the likely implications for the lives of billions of humans.

  5. Calling for voluntary or involuntary measures to immediately reduce human population, per the suggestions of the book The Population Bomb, despite the racism and scientific inaccuracy of its predictions/prescriptions.

Curious to know what others are out there or if I’m misunderstanding any of these.

5 Comments
2023/12/03
14:23 UTC

8

How Hayao Miyazaki (Ghibl) explored environmentalism, spirituality and humanity

1 Comment
2023/10/07
17:57 UTC

4

The dawn of everything - a new science of human history with David Wengrow [Video]

0 Comments
2023/09/17
05:52 UTC

4

Ribbonfarm blog: Types of those desiring to save the World

I'm guessing that most of us in here are of the Gaian type? Though there may be some disagreement as to how best to go about that.

https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/what-we-seek-to-save-when-we-seek

0 Comments
2023/09/11
20:09 UTC

9

Deep ecological humor.

5 Comments
2023/09/03
05:02 UTC

10

"The Human population is not sustainable" is not the same as "There's too many people"

https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/debunking-common-beliefs-around-population-matters/

There's a lot she doesn't say in this article, but seems like the underlying premise is that the overall Human footprint is unsustainable, and that population size is only a problem as a direct result of that. So, it's a contributing factor that would not be causal if the footprint was modulated below an unsustainable threshold.

Saying that no more Humans should come into this world is an ethical and moral quandry that immediately bumps up against the Golden Rule.

4 Comments
2023/08/17
16:11 UTC

1

Sharing economy

Hi everyone!

For my master thesis, I'm making a survey about collaborative economy.

I would be very thankful if you respond to this survey:

https://kedgebs.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_doscJzaRIvpkVQW

It's about users’ motivations about using sharing economy and their perceptions about its social and environmental benefits. As this tread is about environment, I would be very interested to have your opinion.

NB: it’s in English and French, change the language at the top right corner if needed

Best regards,

Joris

0 Comments
2023/07/28
12:16 UTC

3

Restoring understory diversity in a rewilded Scottish woodland

1 Comment
2023/07/05
18:46 UTC

5

Y'all want flairs? IE, political flags

Flairs are the ability to add icons next to your username in a specific subreddit.

I was wondering about the desire for, and utility of, having flairs that represented political ideologies or leanings? As in, whether this would be constructive towards discussion to know more about what background leanings and learnings a poster has already been willing to support.

Like, will this make discussions more open or confrontational?

Is this enjoyable or not something that people will use?

I've noticed some people escalating arguments might've been less heated if they realized that they were already both in favour of something similar ideologically, but one had chosen to play the devil's advocate (I was only able to realize this was the case after finding out one poster was someone that I knew quite well irl).

If this is something that you would see yourself using, please chime in with a comment of how you think it would affect discussions. And, which flag(s) you would like for sure for me to include.

Specifically, I'm thinking along the lines of the diagonal two-colour political flags

7 Comments
2023/06/11
16:03 UTC

2

The Wild

I’m just writing a little thing to see if I can make some friends. I’m a young male and have recently adopted the ideas of deep ecology. I have believed it’s morals for a while, I just found out there is a word for it. Willing to talk with anyone!

2 Comments
2023/05/06
18:34 UTC

1

Solarpunk is well outta the bag now; Disney's Strange World as an SP enviro allegory

1 Comment
2023/05/02
19:47 UTC

3

Once you know...you can never be the same! Free online screening & live discussion w/ Greenpeace & climate experts

Heya, wanted to share this here!

For Earth Month, you can watch Once You Know online. It is a story about personal and collective resilience in the face of energy depletion, climate change, and other systemics risks.

You can watch the film for free and participate to a very special live discussion with Michelle Medeiros, part of Greenpeace International management team and Susanne Moser, protagonist of the film and leading expert on climate change adaptation.

Dates:
📷Film available April 3 to 23
📷Live event on April 23 at 9am EST / 3pm CET. Replay available.

Book your tickets here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/pulpfilms/884424

Hope to see ya there!!!

1 Comment
2023/04/06
10:02 UTC

2

In the world? Or merely looking at it thru metaphysics? YT: Iain McGilchrist & Bonnitta Roy in conversation

Not explicitly Deep Ecology, but touching on many relevant themes. Especially pertinent lately is how abstracted we are from direct experience of the world, to merely describing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH7f7ZchGsU&ab_channel=PERSPECTIVA

"""

Bonnitta Roy and Iain McGilchrist were recently in a conversation titled "Are we unmaking the world?":

Roy: For me, a lot of what you're talking about I see every day. I’ve seen the erosion of the adult mind through the 15 years that I've been teaching. The nature of the question of whether reality is 'real' is extraordinary now. The emphasis is always on the idea that the world is a simulation that we share. My question for you is "Why are we so feverishly trying to convince ourselves that we live in a simulation? Where is that pain coming from, that we don't want to live in the natural world?"

McGilchrist: There's many things to say about that. The natural world imposes limits on us. I think another reason why we're addicted to this idea of a representation is because the left hemisphere is a representation of the world, while the right hemisphere is a 'presencing' of the world; it allows the world to presence to us. That is a vibrant two-way experience. But once it is taken up by the left hemisphere it is dislocated, dismembered, analyzed, categorized, and turned into something abstract - a map of the world - and you cannot live in a map. You have 'unmade the world' once you do that. The left hemisphere can only trust the things that it itself has made. Heidegger actually said that, he was of course not talking about hemispheres at all, but he did say that modern man needs to be able to tell himself that he is the giver to himself of everything that he has. That is part of this problem that we have. That we must be all-powerful, and we must be the one that can do anything. There is a kind of paradox. At the same time that we believe ourselves to be capable of doing almost anything we want, we believe ourselves to be basically pointless and worthless. So happiness and belonging have plummeted while at the same time our hubris has gone through the roof. Adopting a certain degree of modesty and a sense of proper limits would actually help us to regain a sense of respect for what we are and what we can do. If we understood the world in all its awe-inspiring complexity, then a lot of things would happen differently because so much of what's wrong is due to simple hubris.

Roy: Deep down inside we know that we haven't made the Earth, the trees, or ourselves. Everything that we actually are has been given to us freely by nature. Now when I say that people will say "Oh that's very spiritual". But I respond "No, it's just a strong naturalism, that's just actually the case, it's rather mundane". It's all given to us. I went to a conference the other day, and this young man was presenting an argument that the world is intelligible and that communication between people is possible. But to do that he took this long detour through theoretical cognitive science and opponent processing and the free energy principle. And I thought, something very odd is happening here. If people had to understand all that in order to understand that the world is intelligible, and that communication is possible, then most people would be lost. And I told my dog "You have absolutely no chance at all for being in the world". This is an example of something that looked like a well delivered presentation, but it really conveyed to me a sense of collective madness.

McGilchrist: What you're describing is this unnecessarily complex way of approaching the world, and there's a lot of this in science, in which what is extraordinarily obvious is demonstrated at great cost and length. We've lost contact with the live, intuitive, reverberative business of experiencing the world in which it approaches us, becomes available to us, and we to it. At the same time, there are things that are completely obvious that are wholly denied. We've been encouraged to attack and reject our intuitions. We've become paralyzed by a kind of 'Gorgon stare' of the intellect on everything we're doing. The beauty of life is that things work well only when they're not like that. Imagine how bad the performance of a piece of music would be if the pianist was consciously thinking all the time about what he was doing with his fingers. Imagine how diminished an act of sexual love would be if it was entirely contrived according to a plan, an algorithm, or a worked out schema. It's this way of thinking that is absolutely crazy and a huge affliction and makes life impossibly difficult for us. We've moved from a world of intrinsic, spontaneous, and intuitive action to a world where somebody is unable to stand unless they've got scaffolding all around them. And of course such a person is a feeble version of a healthy living individual.

The trouble is the way we think. We think we can reduce the world to parts, but all we find after we've done this is a lot of material elements that have been broken out of a whole. And the whole cannot conceivably be reconstructed from these inanimate bits. What I mean by "the unmaking of the world" is all that structure, all those relationships that enable things or people, and the feelings that they have, the experiences they have that interrelate with one another, are being shorn away. Our world view is becoming simpler and simpler, not because it's approaching truth but because it's moving away from truth. It's running away to a blatant falsehood which it feels it can't escape because of a certain way of thinking, which is that "the only thing that matters is that we should be able to be in control and amass material goods". Those are the values of the left hemisphere. All the other important values are better served by the right. """

0 Comments
2023/04/04
13:28 UTC

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