Blog #6

I found this section, which talked about Naess's "Deep Ecology" to be somewhat confusing, but also a little eye-opening. The main point I took from it was that "deep ecology" involves trying to fix the cause of our ecological problems as opposed to trying to fix the problems themselves through avenues such as technology. I found this to be very interesting because I actually had never thought about it like that. When thinking about the environmental problems in the world such as global warming, I always thought about it in terms of what can we do to fix it - recycle? Carpool? Create some new device to cool off the earth? It had never occurred to me that maybe the best and only real way to correct the problem - and have that solution stick in the future - is to change the way we think about the earth and everything on it.

I think Naess had a great point when he was talking about this. Our attitudes are really the central cause of all of our ecological problems. Because the large majority of us don't think twice about hopping in the car and driving to school or work, we don't even consider the effect of the exhaust on the planet around us. I think that because we lack this awareness, we are doomed to continue destroying the environment no matter what technological advances we come up with to temporarily relieve the symptoms of our destruction.

I believe the reason this point of view really interested me is because, as I mentioned before, I had never thought about our environmental problems in this way. Before reading this, my mind always focused on what we can physically to do fix what we've done, but now I'm realizing that fixing ourselves is an equal part of that. Until we realize that our state of mind - that voice inside that tells us it's ok if we cut down the trees in "our" yards because it's annoying to rake up their leaves - is part of the problem, we can never truly stop harming nature. I think Naess was trying to tell us that until we recognize this and alter the way we think with respect to our natural surroundings, we cannot really make any progress.

Kohak mentioned in the section that Naess received criticism for his theory because some thought he was being snobby in calling his theory "deep" ecology and implying that other ecological theories were "shallow." I'm not sure if it was the way Kohak presented it, but I didn't get this feeling from Naess's ideas at all. I saw it, and I believe Kohak did as well, more as Naess telling us we needed to look "deeper" into our problems that just how to put a Band-Aid over them and move on. We need to find out where the problems are coming from and we need to attack that, or we don't stand a chance at really fixing the environment once and for all.