Human Relations

The third ecological threat that Kohak discusses comes from humans. He believes that human relations have become distorted thus making humans a threat to their environment and each other. This implies that at one point humans were not distorted in their mutual relationships and, in particular, with the Earth. He implies that the worst affect of this distortion is the inability to cooperate with other humans especially in dealing with threats like global warming. He also says that this distortion has caused people to have a twisted form of logic that allows them to callously destroy the environment by driving down the highway wantonly killing animals and corrupting the environment along the way.
Presumably this distortion is not new to mankind. By way of example, Kohak described how medieval monks killed off most of the Bohemian beavers. If human relations have become distorted, then apparently there was a time when they were in harmony. When were human relationships not disturbed? Perhaps primeval man was in tune with nature as he walked through a forest that provided for his every want like the enlightenment idea of ‘children of nature’. Somehow I find this hard to believe, however, he is right in observing that modern man’s view of relationships is seriously skewed in several key regards. For most of the modern era, especially during Gilded Age America, people have viewed the Earth as a tool. People have adopted a new theory of human rights altering the traditional expectations of life, and suddenly we find ourselves in a world where it is a right to own two cars and use electricity in mass amounts. Kohak believes that this modern world has made it a right to have and consume ever more. I would agree with him in this, consumerism has lead to a mass distortion of what our rights truly are.
Kohak also makes a reference to the Kyoto protocol and the reasons why America has not signed it in his example of lack of cooperation. It is true that many Americans do not want to give up their standard of living even if it means harming of the environment, but many Americans sincerely believe that global warming is not directly linked to carbon emissions. Also many Americans are not yet convinced of its existence. Nevertheless, as a superpower that maintains troops in many parts of the world, cutting our carbon emissions may cause concerns for national security.
The question of human relations is certainly intriguing. Man has always believed, across almost all cultures, that man was not in harmony with the world of nature. Man is unique as an animal in that we enjoy the faculty of reason and we can look around us and see how blissfully ignorant the animals are of things like electricity and automobiles. Man has always wondered whether or not he had ever had the type of harmony with nature that the animals seem to enjoy. The Stoics believed that Nature was almost a god machine and all things in it were supposed to adhere to its master plan. Humans were expected to use their reason and follow the natural law to achieve this goal of harmony with all relationships. This is very similar to what Kohak is proposing in his definition of ecological ethics. He defines it as a “system of principles which indicate to humans how they ought to comport themselves in their interaction with the nonhuman world”. The goal of harmony with nature is truly admirable, but man has never seen himself as part of the greater nature. Man has always placed himself either below nature, as in nature worship, or above nature. Nevertheless the goal of harmony with nature seems to be as elusive as the philosopher’s stone.