“Healthy respect” is still my go-to
If people need to have woowoo spiritualism to appreciate nature, let them IMHO. Its better than people destroying ecosystems. The only real concern I have is people ignoring people as part of that ecosystem or infantalizing other parts.
I would rather people respect that they have immense power, and thus responsibility, but also so can the rest of nature and thus responsibility. You know chastise racoons, train dogs, listen to the birds, carry the spiders you like to better homes, kill with gratitude and understanding, give back when you can, etc, etc.
I tend to agree with this article, but it is also a very slippery slope.
We must be careful not to erase once more indigenous/local narratives because we don’t like the vocabulary used. We risk to contribute into reproducing the colonisers’ power imbalance by disregarding local knowledge, just because it is presented in non-western way (i.e. cultural burnings).
I think “we” (secular Westerners) are more likely to appropriate spiritual indigenous narratives, take them out of context, and trivialize them into meaninglessness - as the article describes we did with the concept of mindfulness - than we are to erase them. And I think this will happen because we, secular Westerners, are living lives devoid of spiritual meaning, and it’s terribly tempting to steal other people’s beliefs in the hope we can find a fraction of their meaning in life.
And though I’m sure people online are going to go full Reddit atheist on me and tell me belief in a higher power is ignorant and primitive, every society in human history that we know anything about has either had some sort of belief in higher powers or has aggressively suppressed such belief, and that belief served a function of social cohesion that a lot of the left no longer have.
Honestly, I think part of the reason Trump won - and part of the reason populist, religious nationalism is surging worldwide, Trump being just one example - is that the secular West threw out its own spiritual narratives without replacing them with anything. We condemned Christianity as ignorant, bigoted, and repressive, but we didn’t create anything in its place to serve its role. We walked away from the churches, which were the “third places” of our towns, the centers of our social and cultural lives, and we replaced them with what? Coffee shops?
People need something to believe in, and we told them “do your jobs and vote blue, but it won’t matter anyway because the environment is fucked”.
The environmental left needs the warning not to engage in empty spirituality because so many people in it are desperate for the kind of meaning spirituality gives.
Of course cultural appropriation of spiritual indigenous narratives from westerners is something that has been happening for decades. And I totally see the point of your analysis.
In a way, what I was trying to say is that even tho this kinds of appropriations need to be fought so they don’t take over the political discourse about ecology, by itself this doesn’t seem enough imo. In order to fight the power imbalance that colonisers have created throughout the centuries, I believe there is also a need to consciously take into consideration, as well as incorporate the suggestions and approaches of indigenous people in the relevant discourses in western politics, ecology, and their intersections. Certainly, without the element of appropriation, but as as equals.
Meh. I agree with the author that we have a problem with the co-opting of “ecology”, but disagree that it comes from the term being used (or at least, that a change of term is the solution). We can strive to avoid falling into “mystified unity”/“personal harmony”/“planetary consciousness” if we want, but those are not incompatible with literacy or reorganizing society.
If we’re placing so much importance on terms, then I submit “literacy” is insufficient as well. Just because you can read doesn’t mean you understand, nor does it mean you can apply the knowledge you have read. The point of taking about ecological “consciousness”, to me, is to designate the importance of internalizing the approach that ecology demands (viewing things as interconnected systems, notably) and remembering to apply it.
We do need to increase ecological literacy, if only to protect people against falling for co-option. We can also encourage ecological consciousness in those that are already literate. One does not necessarily counteract the other.
I worry that “ecological consciousness” is following the same path [as Buddhist mindfulness]. Instead of dismantling the forces behind the degradation of the natural world—capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, industrial agriculture, fossil fuel dependency, and the list continues—we’re told to raise our “vibration” or return to nature and tap into some ancient Earth energy.
I submit that it’s not the phrase “ecological consciousness” that is the problem, it’s people co-opting ecology to make a buck or grow a following (to then make a buck). Who the fuck hears “raising our vibration” and thinks “ah yes this is clearly someone who knows what they’re saying about ecology and knows how to teach others” except for someone who knows nothing about ecology in the first place? Inversely, the “bad actors” are just as capable of co-opting “literacy” — imagine someone starts selling “ecology cheat sheets”, “green SATs”, etc.
I don’t know that someone who would get misled by “consciousness” would find “literacy” any more useful or illuminating. This reminds me of debates on talking about “climate change” versus “global warming”. From what I can tell, the only concrete result was a waste of time and energy while no progress was made on educating nor solving the actual problem. In software development we have terms like bike shedding and yak shaving for designating debates that give the impression of being meaningful when, if you take a step back, they turn out to be utterly insignificant compared to the work that absolutely needs to be done. Xkcd’s “nerd sniping” is another term I have seen for this.
Coming back to my initial statement, we want to be pushing people to learn, think, and then act. Literacy permits consciousness which in turn drives action. Jumping straight to consciousness is risky, as well outlined by the author. Skipping consciousness (which is what I get from the article’s title and some of it’s content) is just as risky if you care about the actions taking place as a result.
I really dislike how the author, while protesting against what I would call sloppy discourse, ends up being sloppy themselves just in a different way. If they were to read my comment I’m pretty sure they would say they aren’t arguing against ecological consciousness per se, but rather the term being the sole guiding light for the “movement”. So then why lump it all together in your own writings?
