Good News – The Ecological Citizen’s latest supplement is out and has nine personal autobiographical accounts of how their authors came to discover and incorporate ecocentric values into their lives. Each author writes about their own path to ecocentrism; they are all very different, and each interesting. A few quotes from the various authors follow:
“One thing that was especially impactful during my lifeguard career was learning, and observing, that the pesticide DDT had killed off most of California’s brown pelicans.”
“Most influential on me were those writers who were clearly grounding their ethics in evolutionary and ecological understandings, which tend to erode ideologies of human supremacy.”
“Chernobyl was the first canary’s death, signaling the system’s failure.”
“I embraced Spinoza like a lost lover from the depths of time, a philosopher who holds up a lantern to show the deserted path the West did not but could have travelled.”
“By beauty, I don’t mean fashion or art, but patterns of relations that engender life.”
“The ‘death of nature’ and the demise of beauty are co-victims of this worldview. To resuscitate the one requires the revitalization of the other.”
“Utilitarian, anthropocentric arguments about environmental conservation seemed a limited and limiting standpoint – one that would eventually lead to acquiescence in the destruction of life and landforms not deemed to be ‘useful’.”
“As we are bearing witness today, the toxic mix of these beliefs and the industrial endlessgrowth economy, legitimized the plundering of our beautiful Earth.”
“The sign and seal of a living natural world, including ourselves as one of its plain citizens, is wonder.”
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