Final Thoughts: My Worldview as an Environmental Stakeholder
As the semester closes, I know have the opportunity to reflect on the ethical worldviews of we have analyzed throughout this course. Where the first half of the semester dealt with anthropocentric worldviews (planetary management and stewardship), this second have has evaluated with worldviews that fall under the non-anthropocentric worldview of earth wisdom. I find the latter much for relatable to my own beliefs.
These 'beliefs' of mine have partially been built prior to this semester, but many of them I have inherited through three of my courses this semester, this one included. I was also taking a sociology/theology course, called Religion and Social Change with Dr. Bush, and an anthropology course, called Environment and Human Survival with Dr. Gilbert. All three courses have become interdisciplinary, and a lot of topics that have been covered in this course have overlapped in the other two.
The three worldviews that I really feel intrinsically connected to are ecotheology, Taylor's hierarchical biocentrism, and Callicott's land ethic.
I often stand conflicted as to whether to give moral standing to abiotic constituents. I think it poses problems not to, because when they do not have moral standing, we as humans are often less likely to respect these aspects of the environment. Rocks/sentiment/minerals are all extremely important, especially when it comes to the biological aspects of metabolism and chemical cycles. Yet, its really difficult to justify 'moral standing' of nonliving aspects of the environment, because they simply do not experience 'life'. Although I have yet to completely grasp the answer to this problem, I think merging both Callicott's (and Leapold's) respect for these abiotic aspects and there roles in the complex relationships with biotic organisms, but in retrospect, when it comes for life, the lives of the biotic creatures are more important the abiotic.
The reason I like Callicott and Taylor is because I think they nicely construct a systemic way to analyze case studies that give all biotic organisms a fair standing. Instead of consistently comparing organisms' sentience to humans, Taylor explains that the complexity of each organism is important to analyze on its own. For example, Michael Pollen points out in his essay The Intelligent Plant that plants do not have brains or a heart, because having a brain or a heart would not be beneficial for them. Instead they have constructed a different type of nervous system that allows them to sense the environment in 15 different ways. Just because they do not have a brain and heart does not necessarily mean that they have less value than humans. In order to avoid anthropocentric thinking, we must stop comparing the sentience of animals, plant life, and microorganisms to our human species, and instead look from a broader perspective and the intricate complexity exhibited by each organism. From here, we can then complete a more objective evaluation of the best way to preserve biodiversity and what is best for all involved parties. Both environmentalists offer a detailed evaluation of how nonhuman life can override human life, and Taylor specifically outlines the hierarchy in the animal kingdom, where wildlife has a higher moral value than domestic animals because they rely less on other species, specifically humans.
I will end on my discussion and newfound passion for ecotheology, and my adoration for Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker. One of the hardest things for me being a science major and a theology minor is understanding the complex relationship between science and spirituality. How can I believe in the creation story of Christianity, yet also believe in the big bang theory? How can I believe that there is another power other than that of objective reason? Journey of the Universe offers a nice explanation, basically suggesting that 'all the stars aligned' so perfectly for the creation of life on Earth that another power could be responsible for this 'perfection'. I like the idea of this. But then we look at White's essay that says that until we change our anthropocentric Christian beliefs, we will never solve our environmental problems, which I find interesting, but quite depressing. But then, out of the darkness comes Mary Evelyn Tucker! She offers an explanation that attempts to tackle all my unanswered questions and concerns. She argues that we must USE religion in order to provide solutions to our environmental problems. Its very much a top-down approach where we must reevaluate our spiritual worldviews (religion) in order to better approach ecological problems. This often lies in the idea of human domination of nature, which according to Tucker should not be the case. If we can get more people to reevaluate the moral codes and adopt a less anthropocentric worldviews through spirituality, or ecological crisis will be mitigated. We will reach a much broader audience and we will also have a deeper, more meaningful spiritual connection to the land on Earth, which will hopefully help us to find salvation into the afterlife.
For my sociology class, I wrote an essay called Greening God: The Relation of Ancient Texts to Human Experiences in Modern Cultures. It is here that I evaluated how we can make our religious texts more ecologically friendly without misinterpretation. This process helped me to evaluate how Tucker's ecotheological theory could be applicable, and furthered my appreciation for her and her theory, because it has truly helped to merge so many of my fields of interest this semester, making them more cohesive in clear.
In conclusion, Van Buren's environmental ethics and policy course, as greatly enhanced my knowledge of environmentalism as a whole and has sparked new interests and opened new avenues of academia for myself. It was really fun to evaluate the environment large scale in a policy, compared to most environmental science applications, which are often microbiological and much smaller scale. All in all: thank you!