Thinking Like a Mountain
As the breathing creatures of our planet lose their forests of presence, and human beings are atomised into disconnected entities, the world is still being held together by the giants who bury their roots into the very soil we build upon each day. Trees are the big, friendly creatures that keep not just humans, but also the rest of the environment alive and healthy through their regenerative and creative force. However, this great example of selflessness has not been given the appreciation it deserves, and as a species we fail to reciprocate the gesture and extend it to other creatures.
In an age where the hungry stomach of economy is driving our world, deforestation and habitat fragmentation are dangerously soaring and increasing the risks of disease pandemics, the Amazon is still burning, forests in many warm regions are weakening as much as barrier reefs and the planet is swarming with conservation refugees who have been displaced from their lands to ‘’protect’’ the naturality of a territory.
As members of the natural family, we must learn to view ourselves as constituent components of the environment, rather than consider ourselves as the unnatural beast or the dominating demiurge. We should instead be deeply concerned with designing a lifestyle that promotes not just conservation, which often leads to the irrational separation of man from his land, but also the preservation of natural spaces, and the native creatures that inhabit them, including humans, in order to leave them untouched. This model is founded on the philosophical basis of ecocentrism, a doctrine of ethical considerations that focuses on the well-being of ecosystems, and the interacting and interdependent relationships of its biodiversity, rather than privileging one community of beings over another.
The ecocentric model, as defined by Aldo Leopold, is based on the habit of ‘thinking like a mountain’, whereby human actions are able to cause an unbalance in the system as a whole, and as a consequence, for instance, deer can become more dangerous than wolfs because they produce profound ecological changes to the local flora. When considering the management of nature from a human-interest perspective, this may ultimately lead to the ‘shooting of Indian wild dogs to preserve deer, and simultaneously the shooting of deer to preserve trees’, as described by philosopher Stephen Clark. In order not to pose this unnatural and demanding responsibility into the hands of mankind, which is nothing but a simple part of the whole, we should allow for a spontaneous symbiosis to take place.
As Aldo Leopold, the father of conservationism, formulated in his grand opus ‘Land Ethic’, an ethic is a ‘limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence’. Our ultimate aim, therefore, is not to live a sustainable life isolated from the rest of the world which remains untouched, but rather to live in such a human way that is embedded within our environment. Our environmental struggle for this reason, must not be considered as an issue of paternalist and controlling salvation of other beings, but it should be moved by the ontological realisation that we are grappling with our very survival. What we must do is transcend ourselves, and think like the earth.
