I gave my presentation on ‘Sacred Ecology’ at the very first international conference on Pagan Studies in September 1994. Over thirty years later, I found myself quoting from it at an interdisciplinary discussion on ecosophy organised by Interstices: Center for Transversal Thinking. Ecosophy is a term coined by Arne Naess, and further developed by Félix Guattari, to describe an environmental philosophy of ecological harmony.
Environmental philosophy has been around for half a century and I created a website called The Green Fuse to try to make sense of it all. I was rather unkind about environmental philosophy in ‘Sacred Ecology’, claiming that it’s fixed in a philosophical tradition that’s at root of the ecological catastrophe. Is that fair?
As I prepared my talk for Interstices, I began to reevaluate Naess’ Deep Ecology. I found clear parallels between his concept of ecological ‘Self-realization’ with my experiential iceberg model. For Naess, self-realization involves a “deepening of the self” that enables us to “see ourself in others” (Naess, 1988). He contrasts this wider self with with the egocentric “ ‘narrow’ self” (ibid.). I was delighted to see parallels between Naess’ ‘narrow’ and ‘wider’ self with my ‘shallow and ‘deeper’ self. In both cases the deeper, wider self is “conscious of our intimate relation to something bigger than our own ego” (ibid.). Had I been too dismissive of Deep Ecology all those years ago?
The whole point of the Interstices gathering was to explore across disciplines. Exploration typically involves challenge and discovery; I had plenty of both! Several participants provided an Indigenous perspective and it became clear to me how very Eurocentric Naess’ work is. His understanding of ‘nature’ goes back to the Ancient Greeks at least, but it isn’t self evident. Like many other Indigenous peoples, the Inuit don’t even have a word for ‘nature’. Furthermore, Naess’ core principle that we will care for ‘nature’ if we widen our sense of self seems strangely individualistic: The “protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as protection of our very selves” (ibid. My emphasis).
Comparing Naess’ Deep Ecology with Indigenous animist principles will make my point clearer. Animism recognizes that human primates are part of a wider community of beings. It isn’t about identifying with the other than human, but acknowledging relationships. Relationships emerge between beings and entail gratitude and reciprocity. As Robin Wall Kimmerer notes, many Native peoples have something fundamental in common: “we are rooted in cultures of gratitude” (2020).
Animist thinking offers a profound challenge to Naess’ Deep Ecology and Western environmental philosophy in general: I’ve concluded that these philosophies are, after all, tied into the roots of our catastrophe. Where does this leave my experiential iceberg model? I’ve identified clear parallels with Naess, so is it also tainted? The experiential iceberg is a powerful model of Western consciousness, so perhaps it’s no surprise that it reflects Naess’s work. However, it’s very flexible and can help us understand animism.
All of my thinking is influenced by the very Western ideologies I critique, but I believe that the kind of embodied knowing I extolled in ‘Sacred Ecology’ offers a radically different perspective. Therein lies hope.
