Yes! Finally a reading that I connect 100% with!

Although I had never heard of it before reading this book, I am a big fan of the term “ecosophy.” I have thought for a long time that the environmental movement has been a selfish move on the part of humans, disguised in a mask of environmentalism. Naess put it perfectly in his definition of The Shallow Ecology Movement when he said that the “central objective [is] the health and affluence of people in the developed countries.” From my eyes, it seems as if most of what humans do to “preserve the environment” is for the benefit of humans, and not for the belief that the environment deserves to be as alive and well as we [humans] are. Ads on t.v. asking people to donate money for things such as the National Wildlife Foundation, appeal to their audience by saying things like “Don’t you want future generations to be able to see a Giant Panda in the wild?” This is not asked with the feelings of the Panda in mind, this is asked with the curiosity and hope for humans in the future to be able to see them. In my mind, this is selfish.

My favorite quote in the whole reading was “…the so-called struggle of life, and survival of the fittest, should be interpreted in the sense of ability to coexist and cooperate in complex relationships, rather than ability to kill, exploit, and suppress. “Live and let live” is a more powerful ecological principle than “Either you or me.””(pg.216)

YES! Why can’t the whole world think like this?! If they did, I feel like everyone woud be competing to see who was more friendly rather than who can come out on top.

In Naess’s second piece, what appealed to me most was his talking about the people in the deep ecological movement, and their focus on “voluntary simplicity” and how people who live this way tend to live “lightly” in nature. I am a Quaker by religion, and Quakerism is based on five basic principles of Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, and Equality. Knowing the members of my Quaker Meeting at home, and knowing how they tend to live, leads me to think that the deep ecological movement is a very Quakerly movement. I support this J