Animal Self

A lot of the environmental issues the world faces today is due to the lack of what David Abrams calls the "animal self." The lack of a connection between people and nature has lead to nature becomed devalued less and less by people and being replaced with things like technology which can ultimately hurt nature. I think an important way to look at this idea of "animal self" is through the concept of evolution. People are animals, we evolved from them not away from them. The thing I believe that has truly seperated people from animals was the developement of culture. Somewhere along the lines people began to think our ability to think and talk seperated us from the animals we evolved from, then we put ourselves at the top rather than as part of the animal kingdom. The farther people put between themselve and the "animals self" the less nature will mean to them. Today nature doesn't mean very much to most people and this is why we are in the environmental situation today. Seperatation from nature devalues animals and makes them food, devalues trees and makes them paper, it makes nature into resources rather than part of a global balance that we used to be part of before we seperated ourselves. If the environmental issues today are ever to be resolved people need to return to nature the value we took away from it.