Environmental concern Vs environmental domination

Role of ideology in the ecological dialogue:

by Samangie Wettimuny

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Not everyone would get spellbound by the sight of a dense forest just like the poet Robert Frost did way back in 1922. They would rather replace the poem’s ‘best’ line “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep” with “The woods are a waste, hindrance and a nuisance”!

Such different attitudes are a part of human individuality. The way human beings have been treating the environment since time immemorial, is a reflection of their respective tastes. While some have taken steps to dominate the environment the way they want, the others always tend to have second thoughts before ‘conquering’ the environment entirely.

As the Environmental Sociologist Michael Bell states in his “An Invitation to Environmental Sociology”, scholars have studied the role of ideology in the ecological dialogue in two broad ways, largely drawing on historical evidence.

First, scholars have considered the ideological conditions that make domination of the environment tolerable, focusing on Western cultural attitudes that support it.

Second, scholars have considered the ideological conditions that make such dominating attitudes unjustifiable and insupportable, also highlighting the social origin of the environmental movement.

As sociologists argue three Western intellectual traditions-Christianity, individualism and patriarchy played a main role in providing the ideological explanation for environmental domination which gave people complete freedom to transform the environment to satisfy their needs.

As Bell says, though the ideologies of environmental domination were not limited to the West, their prevalence was acute in those countries.

Moreover, the ideology of environmental domination goes parallel with social domination, says sociologists, as there are close links between the former and factors like hierarchy and inequality.

The rise of industrial economy is normally given as the main factor which laid much emphasis on transforming the earth. Without putting the blame on industrial economy, sociologists go to the roots of it. Michael Bell says that ideas of consumption, work, leisure, social status and community infuse the economy as much as the economy infuses those ideas and a major source of those ideas in the West is Christianity.

Eminent sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) states in his “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” that Protestantism, specially Calvinism encouraged people to work hard, to save money and to invest it. Those were the central factors in the rise of capitalism in those countries.

Weber’s argument was that a man does not ‘by nature’ wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live.” Then why do people work so hard to make more money than they need? The answer according to Weber, lies in the moral anxiety that early Protestants inculcated in their followers.

The main idea that was inculcated in them was if a person is rich enough , he/she could literally buy his/her way to heaven by funding priests to say prayers for them and by purchasing “indulgences” from the church.

In retrospect, it is evident that the history of capitalist development has provided some support for Weber’s argument. Modern capitalism originated initially in the dominantly Protestant countries such as England, Scotland, the United States and Germany. Anyway today modern capitalism has spread well beyond the limits of Protestant countries.

Ideas of Lynn White

Historian, Lynn White too traced a nexus between Western religion and social developments that affect the environment. In the short essay “

The Historical roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” which he published in 1967, he argues that environmental problems cannot be understood apart from the Western origins of modern science and technology, which in turn derived from “distinctive attitudes towards nature that are deeply grounded in Christian dogma.” Western science and technology too have religious origins just like Western economies.

His particular emphasis was on the development of powered machines, the weight driven clock, windmills , water powdered saw-mills and blast furnaces. The most significant invention according to White was the mouldboard-plough which radically altered European sensibilities towards environmental transformation.

Further White was of the view that the exploitative and domineering attitude towards the environment, was a result of the Judeo-Christian ethic, one of the great intellectual revolutions of the Western tradition. People were giving up paganism for Christianity.

The next argument Michael Bell raises is that changing nature was no longer considered a sacrilege as the early Christian doctrine taught that God gave the world to human beings to exploit, to change and recreate. “The Judeo-Christian ethic thus gave us moral licence to change the world as we see fit.”

Anyway White’s ideas have been challenged by his critics as the biblical licence to dominate the earth likely at least facilitated the development of technology and science.

Individualism

Individualism too played a role in making human beings dominate the environment.

As Michael Bell says with an individualistic frame of mind people tend to ignore the effects of their own actions on those wider surroundings.

When man dominated the environment , the earth was exploited to the maximum. Gradually with the rise of certain environmental movements, more and more emphasis was laid on the destruction caused to the environment in the name of development.

Especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, ideologies of environmental concern started emerging backed by three primary reasons: the rediscovery of the moral attractiveness of nature, the increased scale of material alterations of the environment and the spread of democratic attitudes and institutions.

Henry David Thoreau’s views play a dominant role in this ideology.

His writings supported the views of many who were worried about the direction and motivations behind the social and environmental transformations brought about by the thriving industrial revolution.

Thoreau’s writings about the moral value of wild nature, played a great role in highlighting the value of the environment , not as a nonliving object which should be exploited, but as a great asset which should be paid great concern.

Anyway the intensity of environmental concern varies considerably from person to person. Environmentalism has already become a significant feature of political debate in many countries. India’s Chipko movement headed by Indian Environmentalist Vandana Shiwa is a fine example.