Ecological consciousness of contemporaneity

Sandugash Kasimseitova

Senior teacher of department to philosophy of the Кostanai state university the name of АBaitursinov. city Костанай. Republic of Kazakhstan

We are being challenged to develop ecological consciousness.  All of the authors encountered in the preceding three posts have been writing about this.  But what does it really mean to look at the world in this way—through an ecological lens, as it were?

Each of us, wherever we live on Earth, is brought up to see reality through the lens of our culture—to value what our culture values.  That will never change.  Human beings are social creatures who absorb like sponges the norms and values of the society in which we are born.  Our cultures are rich and diverse—a grand mosaic created over millennia in every part of the world.  The richness and diversity are to be treasured; but we have to appreciate that our cultures have developed and endured only because the conditions on our planet enabled them to do so.  When our cultures become so extensive and active that they work against those life-supporting conditions, we know we have lost our way.  And so it is.  In the 21st century we have reached the point of conflict with the life-support systems of the planet such that our industrial way of life is facing potential breakdown.

 So we are being challenged to create a new and different way of being on the planet.  It is a transformation of lifestyles and values as great as anything ever experienced in human history.  This time we must get it right, because there is little slack left in the system for trial and error.  And this shift will grow out of a change in our minds, as they embrace ecological consciousness—a way of looking at the world so that we design everything we do to be in harmony with the rhythms of nature: from the way we build our homes, how we grow our food, how we travel and communicate, and above all, how we use energy that enables us to do everything we do.

However, it is one thing to understand what needs to be done, but quite another to know how to do it.  This was the awareness that developed for Christopher Uhl, a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.  His answer is contained in his 2004 book, Developing Ecological Consciousness: Path to a Sustainable World.  I am including a review of Professor Uhl’s teaching, for I believe it captures the essence of the challenges we face and the hope and means for meeting them.

And well might all of us look at the web of life with new eyes.  If we did—in great numbers of us around the world—I wonder if we would be so ready to tear into the earth with our bulldozers, or to tunnel with our great machines into what we believe are rich hordes of metals, destroying existing wildlife habitats and spreading toxic waste across the surrounding landscape.

Would we be as willing to unthinkingly destroy in countless other ways the habitat of our sister species who have evolved so elegantly like the monarch butterfly to fill their niche in the web of life?  Would we take more care of our wild salmon stocks by leaving their spawning grounds undisturbed so that the new fingerlings might be born and head out to sea, then in due course return to lay their eggs again, while the bears and eagles might feast their fill on the dying fish who have fulfilled their life’s purpose after travelling for thousands of miles through the oceans?

When we think of all of this, and truly understand it in our hearts, can we not be touched in our minds to be more thoughtful about how we act as stewards of the one natural creation we know, and of which we are an integral part?

If we don’t and we can’t, how can we expect there to be a life in the future for our species?  There is only one web of life that evolved over billions of years before our species arrived.  Surely with our big intelligent brains, we will not take it down.  Can we open our warm and loving hearts and find a place in there for the rest of our fellow Earth creatures?  Surely we can do that, can’t we?