Northern Arizona University/Environmental Ethics/Journals/Leopold's Land Ethic

Many of the disconnections that I find in life between humans and their environment seem to parallel Aldo Leopold's 'Land Ethic' concept. I've always wondered how is it that people can say they care about the environment after watching a documentary or hearing testimony on the matter then throw away an aluminum can or ask for a plastic bag at a grocery market? This type of disconnect seemed both fascinating and scarier-than-all-hell when I thought about it. I think a lot of this is contributed, at least in my experience in the U.S., to a diminishing essence of community. All I really know is the time and age of my generation in my experience but I would agree with Leopold when he says "The complexity of co-operative mechanisms has increased with population density, and with the efficiency of tools." I can only speak on my experiences in my generation but it seems that, especially in America, our blinded ambition to acquire the highest valued materials are keeping us from truly uniting and creating an actual community. This disconnection within ourselves is the root of our disconnect with the natural world. If we are having a difficult time to even acknowledge that we're all in this together in the man-made world then how on earth can we take the blinders off to see our interrelatedness in the natural world?

"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts."

As an evolutionary species we are in the struggle to balance our innate ability to become better and find a higher status in life while simultaneously we are also becoming more and more aware that we have a responsibility to ourselves and the environment. The only problem is that we're fighting this message against entities in the world that do not want people to become more aware for if they did it would crash the world as we know it. E.g., if a key corporation has become "Too big to fail" then regardless of their practices it is essential that they continue doing business or we may have an economic catastrophe on our hands.

"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it."

This concept is probably the hardest to communicate to other human beings, especially in America simply because it would require a MAJOR paradigm shift in those that hold power in the world. In all fairness some have tried to do business more ethically but overall we still have a lot of work and a long way to go. We are raised to think the 'land of opportunity' and 'the American Dream' are things we are entitled to regardless of what or whom stands in the way. Look at pop culture today and you can see just how insensitive younger generations are to older generations and concepts such as the 'Land Ethic'.

"The ordinary citizen today assumes that science knows what makes the community clock tick; the scientist is equally sure that he does not. He knows that the biotic mechanism is so complex that its workings may never be fully understood."

This short paragraph remind me of Ken Wilber's work and the model of Spiral Dynamics (Beck/Graves). Don't sleep on this people! This concept is an awesome road map of where we are and where we're headed. The science community holds a good foothold with how we operate our world. Details, numbers, measurements, and such determine our economy and daily life. BUT, a big cause to why environmentalists are struggling to get support is because the scientific community are too focused on the details and need to ease up a bit to connect it to the bigger picture.

The best visual example I've seen on connecting us to the big picture is in the short-film, "Power of Ten".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sOPUAneCl8

This video was one of the first paradigm shifts I had in relating myself to the universe :)