Blog #9

Prompt: "Explain your view on deep ecology. How can you relate these views to your lifestyle or society? Which principle do you agree most with and which do you agree least with? Why? What concerns do you have about Deep Ecology? "

My view on Deep Ecology is that it is all about viewing things holistically. No one person or species is better than the rest and you have to look at the whole picture in order to improve the quality of the lives of everyone/everything involved. I think that generally that is true when looking at just about any problem faced either in my daily life or by society as a whole. Looking at only part of the picture usually leads to incomplete solutions.

The principle that I liked the most is “Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes”. I’m a big believer in the power of small (or large!) personal changes. It is easy to get discouraged by the magnitude of a problem and to take no action at all, but then nothing is ever going to change. If you believe in the principles of deep ecology and think that there is room for improvement in yourself and in others when it comes to our relationship with the rest of the world, then it only makes sense for you to do something about it!

A concern I have of Deep Ecology is its perception. Most people probably do not want to read about how human population needs to decrease and that humans do not inherently have the right to dominate anything else in nature because everything has value.