Anna Sedlar

Creativity and Consciousness

4/30/2014

Deep Nature

Ecology seeks to understand interactions between organisms and their environment. It is

a discipline both inherently unconcerned with the distinction of humans as the dominating

species on Earth and inclusive of us as an integral and important part of the complexities of the

ecosphere. Traditional and contemporary environmentalism has been structured

anthropocentrically, whereby conservation and management is dictated by human necessity,

opinions, or desires. We select species to protect based on their utility to us, what amount of

ecosystem services they may provide for us, how charismatic they are. Areas are permitted to be

rigged and mined for oil, gas, and minerals based on how useful the space would be for other

purposes or how many people live nearby and would be affected. Deep Ecology is a holistic and

integrated philosophy that does not automatically place human benefit and wellbeing as the main

objective in understanding how species and settings interact or how ecosystems function. Rather,

deep ecology acknowledges humans as a distinct entity but nevertheless still just one player in a

vast web of relationships. It attempts to understand ecology outside the lens we as humans have

so easily viewed it through as the setting to our lives, and instead admit and gracefully accept

the irrelevance of ourselves in the grand scheme of the universe.

Deep ecologys philosophy is distinguished by the belief of a fundamental, inherent

worth of all beings regardless of whether or not they serve to benefit humankind and as such,

views our current societal structure and the way it operates in respect to our environment as in

dire need of reformation. This philosophy argues that humankinds interference with the natural

order of the complex and intricately balanced global ecosystem is wildly inappropriate and poses

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a significant threat not only to the health and well-being of ourselves but to the entire natural

world that we inhabit. Deep ecology is integral it sees the natural world and all the relations

between its occupants as profoundly interwoven, deeply interconnected. It sees Biology,

Chemistry, Physics, Geology, Meteorology, Astronomy not as separate components and fields but

as different avenues for understanding and recognizing the interdisciplinarity and integration of

the global ecosystem as one entity. Deep ecology synthesizes it all and merges it into one vast

and unified base of perception. Just as there are no isolated scientific disciplines in this novel

position, there are no isolated objects, species, or interactions. Instead there are nodes and links

between incomprehensible webs of connections.

Once sufficiently recognized and realized, this concept of ecological holism expands the

singular self into an expanded, ecological self that is conscious of greater and greater wholeness

and oneness within the environment and the natural world just as meditation serves to expand the

consciousness of egoistic self into the unified, transcendent Self. The pursuit of changing cultural

consciousness with respect to our place in the ecosphere simultaneously aligns with the ongoing

and steadily expanding movement of Integral Theory and the evolution of human consciousness

towards a condition of comprehensible oneness altogether. It extends the belief that all humans

are deceptively individual members of the vast Self and posits further that all living beings

human and non-human are the selfs within and among the Self. The goal is to acknowledge the

richness and diversity of life forms, natural structures, and processes and respect the intrinsic

value all have, independent of their functionality for human purposes. It is to understand the right

for all life and forms to thrive. It is to accept our superficially dominant and powerful position

within the interconnected ecological web, yet proceed under the comprehension of the universal

oneness and equality we share with the universe. It is to embrace the uncertainty and lack of

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definitively right and wrong ways to live in relation to our ecosystem. For to assume a convinced

position would draw us out and away from the interconnection and allow the perception of

human distinction.

The natural world can be thought of as one immense system working in magnificent

coordination. The patterns and cycles we may be familiar with or perhaps not so, as we overlook

their constancy and their dependency without much acknowledgement, drive the workings of the

globe as well as universe. The hydrologic cycle, for example, describes the process and

movement of water across the globe as it moves from one reservoir to the next, changing

phases, and exchanging energy with the immediate surroundings. The flow of water across land

shapes the geologic landscape through erosion and sedimentation. It precipitates as rain, snow,

hail, fog, sleet; providing vital hydration to vegetation. It percolates through the bedrock, cycling

biogeochemicals below the surface of the earth. It has important influence over climate dynamics

and climate change as stages in the cycle can act as energy storage or can support carbon sinks

such as hardwood forests which buffer increasing temperatures due to the atmospheric

absorption of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. The pathways water can take as it cycles

continuously through the global system are limitless.

Perhaps the rock cycle is familiar. It describes the transitions through extensive geologic

time minerals, molecules, atoms, may have among and between three main rock types. Plate

tectonics, erosion and sedimentation due to the water cycle, and many other powerful forces

drive rocks to change in response to changing environments and changing conditions. Igneous

rocks (cooled, solidified magma) break down and dissolve when exposed to the atmosphere, melt

when subducted beneath a continent. Rocks recrystalize when in contact with extreme heat

and/or fluid intrusions and are then classified as Metamorphic. The aggregation and

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sedimentation of fragmented or eroded rock by heat or pressure on Earths surface creates

lithified, Sedimentary rocks. Continents amalgamate, drift, subduct, rift, spread, crack, crash,

orogenate, merge, in endless succession. The rock cycle depicts the dynamic transitions particles

of varying sizes undergo, illustrating the perfect oneness and ultimate unity of all seemingly

distinct forms. There is a divine grace to the interconnectivity of it all.

Despite the empirical, rational nature of scientific disciplines such as geology, all the

geniuses of any discipline express and recognize an understood transcendental quality and

foundational structure to the order and patterns expressed in the natural world. James Hutton, an

18th century Scottish scientist, commonly called the father of modern Geology, famously

declared no vestige of a beginning, and no prospect of an end to describe the rock cycle but

envisioning the cyclical nature of not just geologic processes but all systems perpetually

progressing throughout the natural world. His was the first voice to suggest to the scientific

community that the Earth could be alive. He stated in 1785 that the Earth was a superorganism,

and should be studied as such itself a single living organism playing host to the myriad of

interactions between living organisms on it.

Many principles, theories, and hypotheses have since arisen from this then-novel idea.

The Gaia Theory proposed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s postulates Earth

as a self-regulating, complex system where the living and non-living components of Earth work

together to support and promote life and keep the cycles of the Earth in balance and optimized. It

suggests that life itself acquired control of the global environment and has ensured physical and

chemical homeostasis ever since. This happens via self-regulating feedback loops operated

inadvertently by the ecology and biology of organisms within an environment affecting and

tightly coupling the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere seeking optimal

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physical and chemical conditions for life so that ultimately, the Earth becomes one integrated,

unified and sustaining evolving system called Gaia. The biosphere inherently acts to regulate and

sustain life. Precambrian photosynthetic cyanobacteria spurred the Great Oxidation Event 2.3

billion years ago to turn the Earths atmosphere aerobic and thus set the stage for the evolution of

eukaryotic life. Bacterial colonies fix ions and heavy metals to form salt flats that help regulate

the salinity of the oceans. Shell-forming marine animals build their calcium carbonate shells by

uptaking carbonic acid, bicarbonate, and carbon dioxide (all bi-products of the erosion of

sedimentary rocks) from the water and in doing so neutralizes the pH of the water and keeps it

within the range of habitable alkalinity. The natural world is infinitely complex and unknowingly

wise.

The fractal geometry of nature, a concept explored in depth by Benot Mandelbrot, also

applies the unity of all systems and parts within the natural world through space. Fractals are

self-similar, infinitely repeatable and iterated mathematical and geometric patterns that describe

objects as well as processes that occur through time. They, no matter what scale at which they are

looked, exhibit identical shapes. The classic example is the coastline of Britain. This spurred the

coastline paradox, which perceives that shorelines do not have well-defined lengths; rather, the

lengths depend on the scale used to measure it, since the coastline does not have a minimum

landmass that counts. The length will change depending on if it is measured roughly in meters

or if it is meticulously measured around each pebble, each grain of sand that interfaces water and

land. The resolution is infinite and the complexity changes with the magnitude of measurement.

The length of a true fractal shape, then, will always diverge to infinity. This concept implies that

there is systematic order and intricate patterns throughout the natural world defying spatial or

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temporal magnitude, meaning even the most minute phenomenon are interconnected and exhibit

similarities with the most extensive systems and workings.

Mandelbrot also accordingly produced the Theory of Roughness which identified

roughness in the natural shapes of mountains, coastlines, rivers, plant structures such as tree

branches, animal organs such as blood vessels and lungs, galaxy clusters, clouds, the eddies and

whorls of crashing waves, lightning, snowflakes, and on. In his work, The Fractal Geometry of

Nature, Mandelbrot remarks that nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether

different level of complexity [than pure, theoretical geometry, unbounded by physical time and

space constraints]. The number of distinct scales of length of natural patterns is for all practical

purposes infinite. The scope of the natural world is boundless. Geometry and mathematics, just

like all other disciplines studying nature are just lenses through which we seek to understand and

reshape it in terms and formats that humans can comprehend and make sense. Through this

conversion into comprehendible formats, we must compartmentalize and generate divisions

between different disciplines and fields of study. While useful in studying systems independently,

this makes it all the more difficult to grasp the actual interdependency, wholeness and

interconnectivity of the universe.

Another increasingly relevant field, Systems Ecology, is an interdisciplinary perspective

that approaches ecological systems and ecosystems holistically. It describes ecosystems as

having emergent properties, that is, complex patterns and systems arising from the interactions

between a number of individual agents. The functioning of these emergent properties cannot be

attributed to or predicted from any single such entity and their behavior. Rather, they operate

uniquely and originally, irreducibly. For example, the coalescing of different amino acids to form

DNA, a protein that can perform specialized functions none of the independent acids alone could

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or the cohesion of all the systems of the human body (circulatory, respiratory, muscular) to

allow us to exist. Systems Ecology concurs that ecosystems function in a homologous manner.

Each species interaction, each chemical pathway, each nutrient cycle, all integrate and work

together to produce a local ecosystem and eventually a global biosphere, that achieves a

functioning higher than the sum of its parts. Predatory-prey relationships, natural selection or

species niche differentiation all produce effects that the individual organisms themselves could

not.

There is an idea of a Holon, first coined by Arthur Koestler but studied extensively by

Integral Philosopher Ken Wilber, which posits the hierarchical structure of reality (holarchy),

each level of which having its own structural characteristics that are irreducible to structures of

lower-levels. Holons are self-organizing and evolving. They exist with three dimensions: 1. It is

a complete whole by its own; 2. It is produced from parts whose qualities or behavior is

significantly different and less complex than itself; 3. Holons exist both simultaneously as self-

contained wholes in relation to their lower-ranking parts, and as dependent, inversely. Holarchy

is a series of nested holons, parts and wholes both indivisible and divisible. They are both a

component and something much larger than itself. They are sustained by the flow of energy and

entropy that progresses towards equilibrium. The scope of range at which they exist spans the

smallest subatomic particles and waves of energy up to the construction of the multiverse

comprised of many universes. On a human scale, we can observe them through human social

behavior and cultural interactions. On an ecological level we can see them through the herd-

mentality of animals in response to a predator or the behavior of schools of fish. Wilber

conceptualized the Doctrine of the Fundamental and the Significant whereby the smaller

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holons are more fundamental but the larger is more significant. The individual fish is

fundamental, the school is significant. Wilber sees the evolution of our planet proceed from the

physiosphere (material-physical domain) to the biosphere (ecosystems and member organisms)

to the noosphere (level human and societal thought and conciousness). And as life on the

biosphere both transcends and includes properties of the physiosphere, the noosphere includes

the components, participants and interactions within the biosphere and goes beyond, revealing

novel properties innovative of it.

In all these theories and hypotheses of cycles, depictions of water or rock cycles, systems,

patterns, there are simultaneously two notions both of ecological self-distinction as in the unique

emergent properties of ecosystems; and the ecological Self, a non-dual complete entity

encompassing all of nature. There is recognition that all natural systems are not only just

interconnected phenomenon linking the world together, but they also are the actual bonds, the

connections among all life and existence.

Many scientists were able to discern the presence and inevitability of a higher order

governing the workings of the global ecosystem dynamics. For, if one delves deeply enough into

the mechanisms and tries to break them down to their most divisible parts, one will find them all

inextricably linked. A scientific voice then, could easily turn poetic when discussing the divine

integration of nature. Famous 19th century American naturalist and essayist Ralph Waldo

Emerson in his essay The Over-soul professes: We live in succession, in division, in parts, in

particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to

which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which

we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every

hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the

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object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but

the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. And in his well-known essay, Nature, he

deeply expresses his transcendental experiences when immersed in human solitude but engulfed

in the glory of nature. He writes, I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The

current of the Universal Being runs through me; I am part or particle of God. Humanitys

relationship with nature is intrinsically spiritual, undoubtedly integral, and fundamentally

transcendent.

American conservationalist and environmental writer Aldo Leopold similarly expresses

deep appreciation for the fundamental ethical value of the natural world. He wrote his famous A

Sand County Almanac to promote a healthier, more holistic approach to preserving and

conserving wilderness. There is a section of his work titled The Ecological Conscious where

he declares conservation [to be] a state of harmony between man and land. He favors a land

ethic and methods of ecosystem management (himself being an employee of the National Forest

Service) that expands the boundaries or notions of a society to include not just human and

societal aspects, but the biota, the land, the ecology. And in this way, reducing the modern day

isolating division between man and nature; returning humanity to a more equilibrated, integrated,

harmonious existence within and among nature. It changes the perspective of humankinds place

in its relationship to nature from conqueror to member. It changes the perspective of nature as

something dangerous to be tamed and subdued to a cooperating entity, just more parts of the vast

and all-encompassing web of existence and interactions of the comprehensive, holistic universe.

We are all part of the same.

Indeed, Integral Ecology aims to move away from the subject/object divide between

human and nature, allowing an integral interpretation of natural parts of an ecosystem to possess

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inherent worth, despite their perceived utility for our own species. Instead of maintaining soil

health in attempts to keep our agricultural crops cultivatable and healthy for the benefit of our

own economy and food supply, Integral Ecology recognizes the right for soils to posses and

retain their own nutrient, moisture, and microbial community richness without humans first

exploiting it to plant monocrops year after year stripping the ground of its nutrients with no

respite and then smothering it with artificial fertilizers in attempts to regain its vitality and rigor.

Arne Nss, Norwegian Philosopher and pioneer of the Deep Ecology movement, claims that

from an ecological point of view "the right of all forms [of life] to live is a universal right which

cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live

and unfold than any other species." This ideology rejects the environmentalism of the early 20th

century that sought conservation over preservation, attempted (albeit with well-meaning

intentions) to defend components of ecosystems that were most utile for humans. The

components, like freshwater or rich soils, without which humankind would drastically have to

redesign societal workings, orders, and structures. He goes further and even rejects the concept

of environmental stewardship, stating the arrogance of stewardship consists in the idea of

[human species] superiority which underlies the thought that we exist to watch over nature like a

highly respected middleman between the Creator and Creation. Stewardship places humans

above and outside the rest of concept of ecological holism, it is surely ridiculous to assume such

a position. Nss sees Deep Ecology as placing humanity in a neutral position. Nether bearing the

responsibility of protecting nature nor having the right to completely exhaust and devour Earths

natural resources.

To shift ecological consciousness, then, means it is necessary to shift our perspective of

humans as the central role of life on this planet. When we as a global society recognize the

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vastness and timelessness of the natural cycles and repeating patterns, we must face the reality of

human triviality; that humans are not a self but instead are just one holon of an immense and

non-dual Self. Working from this new integral position, environmental policy initiation will

become increasingly effective something certainly welcome in the face of global climate

change, biodiversity loss, increasing environmental social injustice, rapid urbanization, and the

degradation of diverse ecosystems across the globe. With an integral framework, environmental

policy can identify and design crucial methods and procedures to mitigate specific problems. It

can provide insight into the underlying cultural and philosophical background to the

environmental problems that the post-war environmental movement failed to acknowledge and

thus only surficially addressed what in reality are deep, systemic problems.

We as humans are a functioning part of the global ecosystem, not separate from or above

it. We are dependent and dependable. This eco-centric, holistic perspective does not take power

or position away from humans, as perhaps it may seem, coming from the post-war

environmentalism that relied on the supposition of human control and authority over natural

systems. Rather, it prompts a self to (ecological) Self-realization, an expansion of the self to

intuit the oneness and interconnections with the others that occupy this world and are parts of

these natural systems and cycles. It induces and gives rise to a sort of ecospirituality, the

immense power and magnificence of which Emerson, Thoreau, Leopold, Mandelbrot, Lovelock,

Wilbur, and Nss could all attest, having personal experience with the divinity, the oneness, the

vast and impressive holism of nature while formulating and developing their scientific theories,

ecological or mathematical concepts, or eloquent prose.

The study and application of ecology is evolving past the anthropocentric position of

previous environmental movements and more in line with the concepts of Deep Ecology

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whereby all forms of life, all cycles, patterns, rhythms, systems that support it, are fundamentally

valuable beyond our grasp. Deep ecology integrates the entirety of the natural world. It merges

and interdisciplinizes all scientific fields such as Biology and Geology that seek to study and

understand the processes and mechanisms that support the richness of natural life and form the

global ecosystem. The natural world is extraordinarily integral; profoundly, deeply, and

incomprehensibly interconnected. To bear witness to any and all of these mundane yet

completely sensational phenomena is to experience an expansion of the self and encounter the

non-dual, holistic, transcendental and deep essence of nature itself.

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